Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Co-op Interviews #7, 8, and 9

Note: all of these interviews happened on Monday

Co-op Interview #7: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Had an interview with DFAIT for a position with the Central and Eastern European Trade Relations Office. While I was waiting to be called in, I saw Brie come out of her interview (finally we bump into each other!) and chatted. There were so many people coming in and out that when the girl called my name, I barely heard it. Hehehe. We proceeded to the conference room and she told me that the person who was doing my interview wasn't able to make it so he sent one of his colleagues. The interview was a little weird because all he asked me was "Can you tell me a bit of your work experience?" and "what skills did you learn from your past work experience that would be beneficial for this position?". I answered them the best I could, then he asked me some commerce-related question and I had to admit that I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave me this look and then proceeded to tell me what it was. And that was it. I was out in 10 minutes.

Co-op Interview #8: Citizenship and Immigration Canada
I quickly put on my snow pants (I didn't want to ruin my pants with slush stains) and headed out to the Sports Complex. This was my second interview with CIC, but this time, for the position of Youth Network Coordinator. The reason I applied for this position was because I found that a lot of the job description and requirements to be quite similar to what I did when I was a Summer Work Student Exchange coordinator and my present role with Elijah Fellowship. Anyway, they asked some pretty tough situation questions (in French too!) and I screwed up the French part. I couldn't think of the words...oh well. I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of working from 10-6, but when they asked me if that was okay, of course, I agreed. I can't remember much details of the interview. It just went by pretty fast.

Co-op Interview #9: Service Canada
Finally, the end of the line. By the time I went to this interview, I was exhausted. My brain was killing me and I went into this interview with the mentality that "I don't want this job...cuz job description sucks" and working for Service Canada just wasn't too high on my radar (no offense to anyone who works or have worked there...just my opinion). The interview was for a position with their Identity Management Directorate.

Anyway, good thing I arrived half an hour early because the interviewer called me in at 1:50pm when my interview was supposed to be at 2:00pm. The interview went really well. He asked me if I wanted the interview in French or in English and I responded in French and he's like "wow, you don't speak with an accent!" I replied with a resounding "I speak with an accent". And so he's like, if you do, I can barely notice (and he's a francophone too). Spent a few minutes discussing what I knew about Service Canada. I scored brownie points with him because I knew the minister and the deputy head as well as the former ministers. Hehehe. So the interview went well. In the middle of it, his BlackBerry started vibrating and it scared the crap out of me. I thought it was the fire alarm. Hahaha. Good chuckle both of us had. At the end of the interview, he explained to me what the Identity Management Directorate does and it sounds really really interesting! Why? Because they do policy work on how to identify Canadians and how to better serve Canadians through identification cards/certificates, etc. Very interesting. Anyway, after the interview, I thought to myself: "maybe I could see myself working for Service Canada". We shall see...

And that's it folks. Round one interviews are over! Results came out yesterday (Tuesday) but you're going to have to wait a little longer to find out what my results are because at the moment, I have to study for two mid-terms. But some of you already know who ranked me #1 and who I have chosen to be my employer for the summer 2007 work-term.

1 comment:

Andrea said...

hi Lydia!!