From Screening To Interview

I wasn't expecting my "interview" to actually be a screening call, but that is exactly what happened. A human resource specialist called me at a predesignated hour and day and made it clear this contact was a screening call she would hand over to supervisors at Aventa Learning, to which end, I MAY receive a callbackand. She went on to ask me a set of pointed questions: What did I think was the biggest barrier to an online student's learning? Why did I want to become an online educator? And the such. .

I answered as if I were explaining my passions to a friend over coffee. I felt confident in my beliefs that non-traditional students require more than the traditional face-to-face instruction of the brick and mortar school. As a result, I think I came off as an interested, educated applicant.

I got an email the very next day, inviting me to call in for an interview.

I still didn't know where this all was going or how the hiring process went with KC Distance Learning, so I felt confused. For some reason, I trusted these HR gurus to lead me through the steps that would prove my competence as a future employee.

I called into the interview and spoke with Janice and Lisa on a conference call...my first. They were kind-voiced women who made me feel comfortable and they lobbed questiones back and forth readily. I lobbed them back with the same confidence I had given to my phone "screener". Again, I felt very condident in my beliefs and knew they were parallel to those of the company, but this time, I felt a little inadequate. I really didn't know how to answer some of the questions, because, quite simply, I hadn't ever learned the technology skills to which they were referring.

I didn't know how to grade papers within a learning management system. I didn't know in what mode I was going to be able to motivate an unmotived learner. Those skills simply weren't in my teaching toolbox.

I grasped ahold of my feelings of shame and just told her what I knew. I knew for certain I would give Aventa Learning exactly what they wanted, as long as they offered training in that certain something. At this, my interviewer was clearly surprised and her tone revealed a relieved sense that she felt I had redeemed myself.

Would I get the call back? Lisa said they'd contact me by Thursday. With the interview on Monday, I expected a long week of waiting. Would they call me at 4:00pm, Thursday, to softly break the news to me? Or would it be nothing more than a form-letter email?

I was overly surprised to get a call the very next day, during which I was offered employment, and to which I accepted.

Now, I could relax, right. No more nerves. No more confusion about what came next, right? Um, no. That's not how it worked. I would find over the next two weeks I would be walking blindly, once again, through a Human Resoure maze of emails, faxes, notarizations, and contracts...and like the conference call, it was all new to me.