Being the silent interviewer

And you wonder if it is a good thing or not. Today, i tried to juggle my part time job in interviewing. Sat there with someone very well seasoned in this role. Doesn't help that she is the very full on banker. very typical firm's person. In comparison, i sat there, smiling and being silent. " any further questions from you, Lorraine?". Nope.....It was pretty much a one woman's show, with a puppet beside her--> me. She was very natural and engaging. She even makes much effort to engage her dummy partner. " blah blah....., i am sure you will agree with me lorraine, that blah blah blah. " All I managed to do was to nod vigorously to reflect my enthusiasm. The candidate must be thinking that " well, if she can get a job and stay around in the firm for 3 years, i think i can too. It's not as what they made up to be that challenging to get into xxx firm." Poor Claire must be just trying hard to say with conviction that working in the firm is challenging cos everyone is very brilliant. Maybe almost everyone....

I am probably just not the interviewing kind of person. I think i am even more nervous than the candidate. I keep thinking what i should ask so that i sound professional and interested. But somehow, the more i try, the more gibberish my question sounded. Full of inconsistency. Should I be in the candidate's seat once again, i do not think i would even be able to get through to the 2nd round.

I remembered the last time i volunteered to help out in some courses for FBN. It was this interviewing workshop for the students. And there was this role-play thing, which i found out last minute. The students were told what is a good interview and what is not. Then they were assigned to ask me some questions and i was supposed to demonstrate "good" interviewing skills. Unfortunately, i was all nervous and the answers made it look like i was a bad candidate. I did try. And was shaking my head furiously when people make comments like " you should be fine, you have been through so many rounds of this before you could get this job anyway." Maybe i just managed to slip through the net. I think i did.

Well, one interesting thing about today was that the firm decided to do some integrated programme for the summer internship together with employments opportunities, this society for disabled people. I guess disabilities is something that many of us just tend to know a little and over compensate with that little knowledge and prejudice. Humans are definitely prejudice. As much as we were briefed earlier on looking at these students as though they are in the firmwide first rounds, you just wonder if everyone really did that. This is a separate day. We are aware that there is some kind of disability. Not too sure what exactly, but there is. It's bad to know but yet not know cos half the time, both of us were just looking furiously, trying to figure out what the disability was. And you wonder how much you would say, well, given this and that, he is brilliant. But really, is that sufficient a reason to strongly believe they can survive. It is a cruel society. People, who don’t know, are cruel at times. People who know, and believe they do thoroughly, prejudge and react adversely, but unknowingly. SO then, how should we be looking at this without much prejudice? I am not too sure. Well, i guess we did say no to one coos somehow, we couldn’t see him surviving. Academically inclined, but then what? Yet, we had to bring that across in a PC way. We tried. But they probed. And so the brutal truth just surfaced.