{"id":11442,"date":"2020-11-30T12:53:33","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T20:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bclaconnectrev.wpengine.com\/perspectives\/?p=11442"},"modified":"2025-01-22T11:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T19:25:29","slug":"hired-in-covid-lessons-learned-from-interviewing-during-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bclaconnect.ca\/perspectives\/2020\/11\/30\/hired-in-covid-lessons-learned-from-interviewing-during-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Hired in COVID \u2013 Lessons learned from interviewing during a pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t always get hired for my dream job, but when I do, it\u2019s in the middle of the first wave of a global pandemic.<\/em><\/p>\n

Leaving the public service for academic librarianship was a dream I\u2019d nourished for years. I vividly recall one point in 2018, while walking around the gardens at Royal Roads University, when I said to my husband off-hand: \u201cin an ideal world, they\u2019ll have a UX librarian position open up here in a couple of years and they\u2019ll hire me for it!\u201d Well, this is clearly far from an ideal world \u2013 but this spring I joined Royal Roads as a librarian in user experience, outreach, and assessment.<\/p>\n

When life hands you lemonade, you take it \u2013 even if it\u2019s April 2020 and the whole world is in crisis mode. However, it turns out that applying and interviewing for a job, while always a bit awkward and convoluted, is doubly so during lockdown. In case you, too, are hoping to hire or be hired during COVID, here is a Buzzfeed-style listicle of three key things I learned from the pandemic hiring process.<\/p>\n

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1. (Don\u2019t expect others to) know your tools.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Naturally, I expected all aspects of the hiring process to take place remotely, although I live a five-minute drive from campus. What I didn\u2019t anticipate was that this would require three separate video conference software solutions \u2013 none of which were the same as the two we used regularly at my previous place of work. Unfortunately, it turns out that not all conferencing software is created equal.<\/p>\n

Case in point: I called into my preliminary interview a few minutes early, expecting to wait in a \u201clobby\u201d for admittance. Instead, to my surprise, I was tumbled right into the meeting unannounced. I found myself suddenly in the midst of a private conversation amongst my interviewers and spent an awkward few seconds contemplating which was worse: bursting rudely into my interviewers’ conversation to announce my presence, or listening in without their knowledge? (Obviously, the former, but what a way to start the proceedings!)<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/strong> We\u2019re all video conference aficionados at this point, but your Zoom skills don\u2019t necessarily translate across platforms. If you\u2019re going into a job interview with unfamiliar software, make sure you understand its parameters before the big moment. If you\u2019re on a hiring committee, consider providing your applicants with explicit guidance about when to sign on and what to expect.<\/p>\n

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2. Plan on technology going wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point, we\u2019ve all definitely been in meetings where someone just couldn\u2019t get their internet to play nicely, no matter how high-speed and hardwired it was. This is never ideal, but it\u2019s arguably worse than usual when it happens during a job interview. The good news for me was that my internet connection did not <\/em>drop during my job talk. The bad news was that it did<\/em> drop during a one-on-one chat with my soon-to-be-boss\u2019s boss. By the time I\u2019d run downstairs to reset the modem, our scheduled time was up.<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/strong> There are a lot of steps in the hiring process, and therefore a lot of opportunities for your Wi-Fi connection to fail you. This is a foreseeable consequence, so why not foresee it? In my case, I should have kept my HR contact\u2019s phone information close to hand. She\u2019d thoughtfully provided it to me in an email, but I hadn\u2019t written it out. Scrabbling through dozens of emails on my phone\u2019s data when I needed to call and explain what had happened was neither an enjoyable nor efficient use of time.<\/p>\n

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3. Virtual snacks can be delicious.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even \u2013 perhaps, especially \u2013 during stressful and strange times, creativity and genuineness can shine through. As one of the final components of my virtual \u201ccampus visit\u201d, I sat in on a staff meeting with my colleagues in potentia<\/em>. During this meeting, our University Librarian invited everybody on the team to describe the delicious treats they would<\/em> have brought to share had we been able to meet in person.<\/p>\n

From this exchange, I learned:<\/p>\n