7 Interview Tips

Wahoo! I'm back from a year-long sleeping spell with a promise not to make any more promises on this blog, especially about "going to post something soon." Whoops.

So, I've got an interview! Rock on! Not my first interview ever (Third ever, maybe? Fourth?), but my first music teacher job interview (maybe second if you count summer band, but that was sort of already a done deal). A little advice:

1. Don't eat an entire pizza right before going to bed. This is a good piece of advice in general, but it's really not doing me much good right now.
2. Do relax before-hand. Right now, I've got about 1 hour before breakfast ends, 2 hours before check-out, and 4 hours before the interview itself. I'm thinking a good long walk and some fresh fruit from the local supermarket will do the trick.
3. Do familiarize yourself with the town. Don't go driving around in the dead of night. I was waiting for my pizza and wanted to find the school, but I did feel like kind of a creep; History Channel in my hotel room probably would have been a better option.
4. Speaking of hotels, don't get up mega-early, drive 6 hours straight, and then interview. Get a hotel room for the night before, relax, swim if you can, and don't eat an entire pizza. I feel like I made most of the right decisions in this one.
5. Do take the easy route to get there and the quick route to come back. I tried taking the quick route to get there and got lost, found my way only to discover a bridge out, got lost again, got found again, and got there an hour-and-some late. Fortunately, because of #4, I still had about 18 hours to burn before I was actually late.
6. Do choose good music. As a music-teacher-to-be, you know how powerful a good soundtrack is, so choose tunes to get you in the right mood. If you want, its fun to experiment by putting on different songs for each of the cities you drive through.
7. Don't worry. [Do] Be happy. No interview is the end of the world, and no job is the "only" job. If they like you, awesome; if they don't, just take it for the experience of interviewing and move on. No biggie.

Anyway, time to catch some of that breakfast. Later!

-Greg

P.S.: Do the kids say "no biggie" anymore?