Tuesday, June 07, 2005
On Being an Interviewer and a Teacher
First of all, as I'm sure after the Schapelle Corby decision (poor girl), you have all been waiting impatiently for the result of the Cambodian Supreme Court in Visal v Tech... The five judges annulled the decision of the Court of Appeal, ruling, among other things, that it was illegal to have held a closed court. However the decision was sent back to the Court of Appeal at a time to be set and both sides are claiming victories because nothing was really decided about the presidency and all the international donors and Cambodian legal community are in the same position of uncertainty. Enough about that. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see previous blog post.
Interviewing
Last week my supervisor at CDP asked if I could be on the panel to help interview candidates for a new CDP accountant. This particular round of interviews was to be in English, bien sur. My understanding was that I was to observe and help assess how good their English was (important for the job to write reports to donors etc etc). Then I felt some pressure when I got an email saying "The recruitment committee has decided that only you would be allowed to judge ability of candidate in speaking English and score them". I have never interviewed before, know relatively little about CDP and even less about accounting yet I felt I was more or less conducting the interview and deciding who should get the job - it was quite fun!
I asked them some 'Australian' type questions that I have been asked many times in interviews such as 'tell us about a challenge you faced in a previous job and what were the steps you took to overcome the challenge' etc etc... I got very blank looks, even after I re-worded to 'how would you fix a problem?' Although one girl did answer if she couldn't solve a problem she would resign... They have clearly never been asked more than what's your education and what did you do in your last job? We interviewed the top 4 out of 158 applications. I was very surprised at their apparent total lack of preparation. They couldn't even say clearly what CDP did. One girl said she wants to work for an NGO to help people but when asked if they wanted to particularly work in an NGO the others mostly answered 'not at all, I just want any job' - not a great answer, I thought! But maybe it was just the language barrier... If I were interviewed in Khmer I would only be able to answer be saying I am happy and healthy and I like rice. I can also say I sleep a lot which is never a great think to say in an interview!
So I gave my report to the committee and the director has interviewed the top 2. I don't know yet who got the job.
Teaching
My fortnight long teaching career is going well! Much better now that I have quit the weekend classes. It was way too hard to be at work at 8am Sat and Sun, especially after the very social Phnom Penh Friday nights! Also, that was a writing class for adults and I think I prefer teaching young people. It's more fun! So now I am only teaching 3 different classes at the one school. One class has only 3 students, aged 11, 13 and 16. The 2 youngest are very hyperactive boys probably from wealthy families. They are at the English school full time and I haven't figured out why they don't go to 'normal' school. Anyway, the 16 year old girl puts up with a lot! I walked into the classroom the other day and the littlest one had written up 'rules' on the board which included 'you can throw things at the teacher, you can hit and kick the teacher, you can steal the teacher's things, you can throw phones out the window'. None of this was serious of course but shows how cheeky they are. I corrected the spelling and grammar mistakes in the rules then wrote them all out again as negatives. I was proud of that technique - I think it worked well!
These kids speak pretty good English already and have finished their course book so the challenge is just to keep them interested and entertained. I copied some exercises from a book of idioms and taught them colour idioms like caught red handed and white lie etc. I quickly mumbled 'a blue movie is a pornographic film' and moved on so they wouldn't ask me to explain the vocab.
I am planning to keep working until the end of the term in about 3 weeks time then do some travelling! Bye for now....
Interviewing
Last week my supervisor at CDP asked if I could be on the panel to help interview candidates for a new CDP accountant. This particular round of interviews was to be in English, bien sur. My understanding was that I was to observe and help assess how good their English was (important for the job to write reports to donors etc etc). Then I felt some pressure when I got an email saying "The recruitment committee has decided that only you would be allowed to judge ability of candidate in speaking English and score them". I have never interviewed before, know relatively little about CDP and even less about accounting yet I felt I was more or less conducting the interview and deciding who should get the job - it was quite fun!
I asked them some 'Australian' type questions that I have been asked many times in interviews such as 'tell us about a challenge you faced in a previous job and what were the steps you took to overcome the challenge' etc etc... I got very blank looks, even after I re-worded to 'how would you fix a problem?' Although one girl did answer if she couldn't solve a problem she would resign... They have clearly never been asked more than what's your education and what did you do in your last job? We interviewed the top 4 out of 158 applications. I was very surprised at their apparent total lack of preparation. They couldn't even say clearly what CDP did. One girl said she wants to work for an NGO to help people but when asked if they wanted to particularly work in an NGO the others mostly answered 'not at all, I just want any job' - not a great answer, I thought! But maybe it was just the language barrier... If I were interviewed in Khmer I would only be able to answer be saying I am happy and healthy and I like rice. I can also say I sleep a lot which is never a great think to say in an interview!
So I gave my report to the committee and the director has interviewed the top 2. I don't know yet who got the job.
Teaching
My fortnight long teaching career is going well! Much better now that I have quit the weekend classes. It was way too hard to be at work at 8am Sat and Sun, especially after the very social Phnom Penh Friday nights! Also, that was a writing class for adults and I think I prefer teaching young people. It's more fun! So now I am only teaching 3 different classes at the one school. One class has only 3 students, aged 11, 13 and 16. The 2 youngest are very hyperactive boys probably from wealthy families. They are at the English school full time and I haven't figured out why they don't go to 'normal' school. Anyway, the 16 year old girl puts up with a lot! I walked into the classroom the other day and the littlest one had written up 'rules' on the board which included 'you can throw things at the teacher, you can hit and kick the teacher, you can steal the teacher's things, you can throw phones out the window'. None of this was serious of course but shows how cheeky they are. I corrected the spelling and grammar mistakes in the rules then wrote them all out again as negatives. I was proud of that technique - I think it worked well!
These kids speak pretty good English already and have finished their course book so the challenge is just to keep them interested and entertained. I copied some exercises from a book of idioms and taught them colour idioms like caught red handed and white lie etc. I quickly mumbled 'a blue movie is a pornographic film' and moved on so they wouldn't ask me to explain the vocab.
I am planning to keep working until the end of the term in about 3 weeks time then do some travelling! Bye for now....
