Navi's rambles: Small surprises in game and out of game

I grumbled a lot on Monday because I had to go in on my day off to do job interviews.  Yes, yes, I hear lots of people saying "You should be grateful because you have a 3 day weekend every week!" but when you're the boss, you should be able to work any time you damn well please, in my opinion :) And I wasn't getting paid to go into work to do it, so that was another bee in my bonnet... it's school holidays and I want to stay at home with my daughter and son and go bike riding and eat ice cream!!!

But, despite my grumbles, there are always at least some interesting things in that non-WoW day that catch my interest.  And though I freely admit that I overgeneralise and jump to conclusions before I meet someone, at least I am open enough to be able to appreciate something that is good despite my initial prejudices.

Initially I had 64 interviews to do - that had fortunately been brought down to 38 as most people got jobs elsewhere and declined interview.  My hospital is not prestigious, nor is it in a well to do part of town, so a lot of people from posher places wouldn't bother applying here.  I also dislike phone interviews. I can't see the person, they often can't hear my questions clearly, and then if they can't hear the questions properly they don't answer properly and I have to repeat myself to try to get them to do the question again.  Last year I said no phone interviews at all, but we had to let that slip this year.  I think next year I will do that again - there are plenty of candidates to choose from who are more than adequate who came in person for their interviews.

We started the day with 2 girls, who were quite good, and then we went through a few bad ones, then a few good ones again.  Then we had a streak of bad ones - I like bad interviews because I immediately put them in the chuck pile.  Then we had some phone interviews who were all terrible.

Two of the candidates were people I knew (and had spoken to me and I was a referee for one of them), and I was disappointed that they interviewed very averagely.  I would have liked to hire them but some of the others were so good on paper and in person at the interview.  We had a few from the eastern suburbs who moaned about the drive and that they had been on night shift so they were tired, but I just smiled and reassured them they were doing fine, as I listened to their answers and put them into the discard pile.

Two people were late, caught in traffic.  I thought to myself that they should have left earlier, and moved on to the ones who had arrived.  When one of the late ones did arrive, he was late because his plane had been delayed and he had a plane to catch at 6pm to go back to where he came from.  Well, that was a real decent excuse, so I got him in.  This candidate was working in country Victoria and had obtained his medical degree in Nigeria.

Inwardly I groaned.  Medical degrees from countries other than UK, Canada, US, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa tend to produce substandard doctors (in my experience) and even though they pass their AMC (Australian Medical Council) exams, their safety standards are not to the expectations that I think are required for the job I was recruiting for.  This one had some prior experience so that was one thing in his favour.

When he interviewed, my opinion changed as I found his answers to be sincere, and his thoughts were logical and sensible.  My question was the hardest question in the interview, and he answered it well, displaying insight into his own capabilities as well as good troubleshooting and the correct emergency procedures.  At the end of the interview, I had some questions of my own - why did he leave his country when he had not finished his training to come here?  I was expecting an answer related to political unrest, but he said that he had just gotten married and his wife had managed to get into University in Australia to study, which was a huge opportunity for her, and so he left his job and his training to come to Australia.  He did not realise that it would be so difficult for him to complete his specialty training once he had arrived here, and so he had been forced to spend some years working in rural Victorian hospitals.  Well, that was an unexpected answer!  I was impressed - putting the wife's career ahead of his own, was a very noble sentiment.  It was the next question's answer that blew me away.  I asked him why he flew here for the job interview, when he could have had a phone interview like the other interstate candidates.

He said that he had never been to NSW, and he didn't know anything about the hospitals here and wanted to see it for himself, to see if he would like working here.  He had been on night shift last night, finishing at 8am and had flown here after his night shift, and he was flying back to Victoria for his night shift tonight.  I couldn't help it - I smiled at him.  Now I was really impressed.  None of these local trainees whinging about having to come out to my hospital after night shift - this guy had taken a huge effort to come here for our interview, and immediately he went to the top of the good pile.  The director of department looked at me after the candidate walked out and I immediately declared I wanted that guy.  He laughed at me but the other panel member had also put him as a favourite too, so I wasn't throwing a wide curve ball.

The end of the day was rapidly approaching, with two phone interviews to finish off the day.  At least during phone interviews I can drink and make faces and roll my eyes at bad answers - can't do that in a real interview.  I didn't expect much from these two and I had already mentally discarded them as I sorted my "keep" pile to rank them.

The first phone interview - dud.  Easy discard.  The last one, was a girl who was in Italy on her honeymoon, and she spoke brilliantly.  Her voice was confident and clear, her answers were methodical and she had a hint of sweetness in her voice that was earnest and try as I might, I could not find anything in her answer to suggest arrogance or disdain.  Our head of department really liked her, and her CV was impressive, having completed exams, being invited to become an assessor on the resuscitation council, and lots of courses and interests in research.  When invited to ask us a question, her question stumped me a little.  "What opportunities does your hospital offer for my personal and professional development?" Personal development?  I looked at our head of department, my hand covering my mouth, smothering a giggle.  "Without meeting you in person, I can't say what we can offer you in terms of personal development, but there are many opportunities here in our department for research, audits and teaching."  Personal development? Now that threw me!

So, my top two candidates came from areas that I thought I was least likely to recruit from - a phone interview, and on overseas trained doctor working in country Australia.  I have to say, I was pleased to have my expectations turned on their head.

The other thing that happened, occurred later that evening.  I was with Aza trying to kill people on the Timeless Isle, and I got a whisper from a level 1 toon, wondering if they could ask me a question.  I replied "What's up, is there are something I can help you with?"  I thought it was a gold spammer.

"I was wondering if your guild is recruiting social members?" he asked.

"We aren't recruiting social members," I started to type but I got distracted by a hunter and his pets attacking us.  There might have been a paladin as well.  I didn't answer the guy for a long time.  I went to reply him and was surprised he was still there.

"We don't really recruit social members," I said.  "Usually we invite people as socials who are friends of other people in the guild.  Do you have a friend in Frostwolves?"

"No, not really," he replied.

I wondered why he wanted to join our guild.  We don't advertise for members.  I decided to ask.  "Why did you choose our guild?  There are lots of social guilds out there."

"I read your blog," he replied.  "And Frostwolves seems like a nice friendly place."

WELL.  I was chuffed.  Who wouldn't be??  Someone who reads my blog?  I was excited to find out more about this person, as I always am when I find a new reader.

I told him the rules of our guild, which included not being nasty in guild to other members, and no trade chat trolling and no griefing of other players.  I also said that we don't have many levellers, so there may not be many people to play with as he was levelling, but he was welcome to help himself to whatever low level mats were in the donations tabs of the guild bank.  I also mentioned that begging is frowned upon, maybe not in those exact words.  I asked him if that was acceptable, and he said yes, so I invited him to guild.  Now I will have to get to know this new person better!  LOL, they will not know what hit them after I bombard them with the full force of my enthusiasm and curiosity - they might regret joining our guild!

So it was a nice finish to what I thought was going to be an unpleasant day.  I may not have been able to get my Taro flavoured yoghurt with freckles, gummi bears and mini M&Ms that I had been planning to have with the children, but I managed to find two interesting and exciting new trainees for next year, as well as meet a reader that I would like to know better.  I think that's a pretty fair trade off!

Comments

  1. Glad the day turned out better than expected. I was wondering why your sis was babysitting :P

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  2. Sounds like a pretty eventful day in my mind :P but my days are sat around keeping one eye on the PC and other other on my mum, so I suppose ANYTHING would seem like an eventful day to me :P I actually really enjoyed reading about those interviews, though! I really am interested to find out just who gets the job in the end!

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    1. Thanks for reading my rambles Daeaye! I will let you know who got it in the end :) Oh, and I even tried to make some of your challenge! It's not that good though...

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  3. This made me think of interviews I've been on and I remembered at least three of them at one point talking about our dogs. I think interviews for creative positions may be a little weird, lol. Weirder still those were jobs I got. Now I need to go to the frozen yoghurt shop for cappuccino yoghurt with dark chocolate shavings.

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  4. Thanks Navi, now I want frozen yogurt!

    At least Columbus has started getting some places. I miss San Diego with all the awesome yogurt shops!

    I would love to hear about who ultimately gets the position. Now I am curious! When were you guys planning on deciding?

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    1. I will let you know Lyss :) Now we shall all go out and get those frozen yoghurts! Wait, isn't it getting cold over there?

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    2. Yes, but I love getting ice cream and frozen yogurt when it is cold. :)

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  5. That's a full day indeed. I can understand the draw of looking up bloggers in-game who have peeked yur interest with their many guild adventures. Heck I've been tempted to do just that a few times haha.

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    1. Which reminds me Starre, I need to go back and visit you when you're NOT raiding :)

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  6. I loved this post for so many reasons: thank you Navi!

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    1. Thank you Matty! I'm not sure which bit, hopefully a lot of it! But I think the frozen yoghurt bit seems to be a favourite /grin

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  7. I enjoyed it, but I have to say, I can't remember my own last interview. That would have been... well dang, let's say "Ages Ago".

    I have done interviewing recently for my boss. Our most recent hire (on my recommendation from an excellent interview) is the same age as my daughter! He doesn't play WoW, but plays MtG. Hired him anyway.

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    1. Well he sounds cool! Lucky you were interviewing! When I was going through the CVs of our 140 applicants I came across one whose hobbies were e-sports. My colleagues sitting around me said "What the hell are e-sports?" I gave them one of my don't-you-know-anything looks. "He is a computer game enthusiast," I said. They said "OMG there is no way we're having him that's so pathetic!" To which I replied "Are you joking? He definitely gets an interview! Look at this, he's a league player in SC2!" Lucky for him I guess - but he ended up declining interview.

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  8. Totally with you on telephone interviews both from an interviewing and an interviewee perspective.
    Your yoghurt sounds interesting. What are edible freckles and why don't we have them in this country?

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    1. Sent you a tweet Erinys! Are you sure they don't have freckles in the UK? I am sure that they do!

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    2. I have a feeling edible freckles are hundreds & thousands or possibly sugar vermicelli :)

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    3. YOu are correct about the hundreds and thousands! :D

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  9. ...and just when you thought nobody reads blogs!

    I have to admit I'd be impressed by that interviewee too. I get people who don't know much about my line of work try to bluff their way through, and you can see that one a mile away.

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    1. I am still shocked people read my blog. It makes me think I should censor what I say more, because I am usually talking to myself in my posts - what if people don't like or get offended by what I talk to myself about?
      People say that you can't tell much about people in an interview but sometimes you can. Don't ask the usual questions and get the person to relax and talk about themselves a little and you can get an idea of what the person is like without listening to the rehearsed answer.

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