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I used to work at a language school in Japan where part of my duties was to screen C.V.s and interview applicants for upcoming teaching positions. The quality of person applying was not high and it was easy to dismiss most hopefuls with a quick glance at their C.V. or cover letter. The person, for example, who insisted that she was a “vivid” reader could be dismissed without too much consideration, as could the young man who attached a photograph of himself looking slightly pissed on a beach holiday.
But sometimes C.V.s were deceiving in that they looked quite normal, but when interview time came along, the writers of those C.V.s, to be perfectly frank, were not. In the course of my time conducting interviews I chatted with a guy who deemed it perfectly reasonable to ask whether it was easy to get girls in Japan because in Spain, where he was currently teaching, he was having no luck at all. It was, he confided, because they were all staunch Catholics. Obviously, I didn’t hire him. Well, he clearly had no skills in ascertaining the roots of problems. Later I interviewed a guy who refused to send a document to us by fax because it was too expensive, and a woman who confessed that she wanted to teach in Japan to get away from her personal problems in the United States.
My favourite interviewee, however, was a guy who answered all of my questions extremely well, was pleasant and chatty and whom, in my mind, I had decided to offer the job.
“Well, it was nice to talk to you,” I said. “Have you got any final questions or anything you want to say?”
“No,” he said, then hesitated slightly. “Well maybe just one thing.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Well, I have quite a bad temper,” he said, “and sometimes I just lose it big time!”
“You lose it? In what way.?”
“I’ve stormed out of class on a couple of occasions, but usually I just slam the door closed or punch the wall, that sort of thing.”
There was a small pause as I considered how best to respond to such a confession, and then the silence was broken by the interviewee cheerfully announcing, “But, I don’t do it so much now. It’s probably under control,” and following his statement with a scarily high-pitched cackle. The laughing stopped abruptly and he said with almost frightening sincerity, “Seriously, I’m fine now.”
He didn’t get the job.
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