{"id":110,"date":"2017-02-15T19:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T01:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/?p=110"},"modified":"2017-03-20T18:54:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T00:54:51","slug":"if-a-tree-falls-in-your-brain-does-it-make-a-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/15\/if-a-tree-falls-in-your-brain-does-it-make-a-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"If a tree falls in your brain (does it make a sound)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow I am interviewing people for\u00a0our most recent coop position. \u00a0When talking about the whole process of interviewing with some friends led to a\u00a0discussion of\u00a0\u2018worst interview stories\u2019 (as the interviewee).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I must admit I don\u2019t mind such a competition as\u00a0I hold a pretty strong hand. \u00a0Because you see, the tree in the picture above? \u00a0Fell on my house and car in the wee hours before I had an early morning interview. BOOM.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, being trapped in your house due to a\u00a0tree blocking all exits, the cop on the bullhorn yelling to stay in your house because of live downed power lines, and my poor flattened car \u2026 all of those are pretty good reasons to be a complete ball of stress, and a good reason to miss an interview.<\/p>\n

But I ended up\u00a0still doing the interview, just virtually\u00a0(on my rapidly dying\u00a0cellphone, walking them through wireframes they couldn\u2019t see, huddled near the brightest window I could find). \u00a0She who gets it done, right?<\/p>\n

And I got the job.<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s a good story. \u00a0In this type of competition it’s usually a winning story. It\u2019s also a lie.<\/p>\n

Not the fact that it happened, not at all. \u00a0My house and my car and my wallet all wish it hadn\u2019t, trust me.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s\u00a0not really my worst interview story. Because yes, it was a horrible and crappy day and I was a ball of stress …\u00a0but I won in the end, and it makes me look good. \u00a0It even gets trotted out when my boss likes to give stories of how she knew she wanted to hire me. Perseverance is a useful skill, after all.<\/p>\n

No, my worst interview story comes when I was on vacation, and I got an email from a friend saying a job had come up with the perfect job title at a place that I had quite honestly wanted to work at for a long time. \u00a0Glee! \u00a0I had limited internet so only had time to skim the job posting & figure out how to\u00a0update a resume & submit it from your ancient cellphone on crappy pub wifi.<\/p>\n

And I got an interview, for just a few days after I made it back home. \u00a0Success! I could enjoy the rest of my vacation in celebration.<\/p>\n

The night before, I went back and actually read the job description. \u00a0And \u2026 it didn\u2019t match 100% what I thought it was. \u00a0In fact it sounded eerily familiar. \u00a0But surely that was just pre-interview jitters, right?<\/p>\n

Wrong. \u00a0Turned out that it was a new job title for an old position that had led me and the person who sent it to me astray – and one that was not actually what I wanted to do. \u00a0Right place, wrong job. \u00a0A fact that I only figured out when actually being interviewed.<\/p>\n

BOOM. \u00a0You think the tree falling on our house was loud? The one that fell in the back of my brain was in many ways worse.<\/p>\n

I honestly cannot remember most of the rest of the interview. I do remember babbling something about the location of their office being great because of how close to home it was, and other things unrelated, as my brain tried to regroup and failed miserably.<\/p>\n

My own fault – my excitement and my lack of preparation. I messed up, and ended up paying for it.<\/p>\n

\n

Trees are one thing. \u00a0Physical barriers are things that suck, but they\u2019re easier to explain away. \u00a0They\u2019re definitely easier to flip into a good story – even if I hadn\u2019t made it to that interview, explaining \u2018I can\u2019t do it because there\u2019s a tree on my house\u2019 is easier and feels more acceptable\u00a0than explaining \u2018I can\u2019t do it because I messed up\u2019.<\/p>\n

Internal is harder to deal with – and harder to let go of mentally. The lesson is understanding that it happens and letting go at the same time as learning from it.<\/p>\n

Hopefully one those coop students are able to learn\u00a0quickly.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow I am interviewing people for\u00a0our most recent coop position. \u00a0When talking about the whole process of interviewing with some friends led to a\u00a0discussion of\u00a0\u2018worst interview stories\u2019 (as the interviewee).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,18],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tree.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p86peW-1M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialnerdism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}