The Phone Interview

Well, I had my phone interview last Friday and I have to say that I was probably the most nervous out of all my phone interviews in the minutes beforehand! I tried to distract myself for the hour leading up to it by having a shower and then straightening my hair (one of my least favourite pastimes!) before sitting down at about 9.40am to have a read through of my notes.

Yes, I had notes... I don't remember using notes in any of my previous phone interviews but this seems so important to me that I didn't want to get stuck and it also helped me think of some good/unusual points rather than the things which automatically come to me straight away. Using other blogs and Vlogs (Video Blogs - I'm thinking of doing these in the future possibly!) I knew some of the questions they could potentially ask me. Some would say this is unfair but to be honest, having been through two ICP phone interviews I was expecting similar questions. The main difference (which was one of the reasons I did notes!) was that I knew I'd be asked a culture-related question as, after all, it is called the Cultural Representative Program. I knew this was my key to making the answers to my questions more relevant than I gave at the ICP phone interviews as it's the main difference between the two programs (except length of course).

So... I sat at my desk shaking my hands to try and get the nervousness out of me and then suddenly my phone rang at about 2 minutes to 10am. I was expecting them to call my home phone as that's the primary number I gave them but they actually rang my mobile... so cue quick dash across the room to be near the window as my signal is highly dodgy in my house and the last thing I wanted was to be cut off from Yummy Jobs by Orange! My interviewer was Amy and she was lovely... very easy to talk to and (as usual) the interview was more of a chat than an actual interview. She asked me the predicted questions regarding my personal appearance (piercings and tattoos), my availability (she laughed when I said "Well, I'm really available from next week!) and what role I would opt for (I said I had more experience in Merchandise but I'd be perfectly happy to do Food & Beverage alternatively). She then moved onto the more specific questions (well... kind of!) as obviously she had my application and CV in front of her. First she just asked me to talk about myself and my motivations and then moved onto questions such as why I wanted to do the program and how I'd feel about living away for a year, customer situations and the expected question regarding my hometown - it made me glad I researched Bristol prior to the interview! But really... there was nothing unexpected in there which I was glad about as it didn't throw me off or make me nervous. My nerves really disappeared as soon as I started talking to her... it was just the waiting I couldn't bear! So, all in all, the phone interview was fine, I did the best I could and the questions were very similar to those I'd seen and heard about online.

She also mentioned we'd hear within the next 2-3 weeks and that the face to face interviews would be in the first week of June which is a relief because it means I don't have to think about the awful possibility that I'd be on holiday for them! Of course, it all depends on whether I actually get a face to face interview! Fingers crossed!