Interviewing II

Interviews are quite strange... Every company does them differently so, no matter how many interviews you get, you always find something new and unexpected in each.

For example, today's lasted about an hour and a half.

Yes, you read that right.

This one actually involved a test, too... putting together an advertisement from supplied materials. Nothing I haven't done a million times over the last almost-20-years and, the way it was introduced to me was almost apologetic. Not only did it sound as if they already knew it was well within my abilities, but they gave me 15 minutes to familiarise myself with the materials: "but I don't expect you to finish in 15 minutes".

Gentle reader, back when I was dealing with 6 magazines (plus editions) every month, 15 minutes was about all anyone could spare per ad. Maybe a little more if it was something special, but deadlines are deadlines.

I'm not sure how long it ended up taking me (probably not much more than 15 minutes, largely due to my fumbling of InDesign keyboard shortcuts) but, by the end of it, I'd taught my interviewer a new trick (Shift + Command + Alt + click-and-drag to scale an image in proportion), and created an advert that she preferred to the version she'd made up last week.

Sometimes, I'm just awesome.

So, the reason the interview lasted as long as it did was largely down to the amount of small talk and talking around the job - comparing previous experiences, and the like. Quite unlike most of the interviews I've had, particularly those for temporary jobs, but it all added to the fun of it. Weird, to say that an interview was 'fun'...

Not a bad day, all told, considering I arrived early enough to drop in on the nearby HMV and pick up the Wii version of Telltale Games' Back to the Future and Studio Ghibli's Arietty (the anime adaptation of The Borrowers).

Then, on the way back home, I stopped off in a branch of Sainsbury's and a branch of Tesco, hunting for other things... and finding a 3 DVD set of 'The Barnabas Collins Episodes' of the ancient TV series Dark Shadows for a mere £10. A quick phone call to a friend - who's a massive fan - and I bought a copy. Also grabbed a cheap-and-cheerful copy of the recent prequel to The Thing. I loved the John Carpenter original, and skipped on the cinema release of the new film due to mixed reviews... Now the DVD costs about the same as a cinema ticket, I figured it would be a worthy investment.

I'd say I'm open to being proved wrong... but the cast includes Mary Elizabeth Winsted. That's good enough for me.