Tough Interviews and Hot Seats

Last week a friend of mine, who works in another part of London, had two job interviews. One for a senior position in outer London and the other an interview for the post she currently holds. She told me the interview for the senior position was gruelling -really tough - and she was told almost immediately that she had been unsuccessful. A disappointment yes, but she was quietly confident that she would be successful in interviewing for the post she is already doing, and has been doing for the past two years. After all she is constantly being told that she 'reaches targets' and that her work is 'having a positive impact' and that she 'is making a difference' for the families she works with. So she was shocked and very upset to find out today that she didn't get her own job. How does not even getting your own job feel? How do you continue working out your notice in the job the interview panel decided you weren't good enough to do?

So here is someone who feels confident in their own abilities, gets feedback from managers to say they are a valued, productive member of staff and then - whattdaya know - someone better comes along. How's that for a lesson not to get complacent, not to believe everything you are told, or indeed, everything you think you know. Life is full of nasty surprises.

My team all have to reinterview for our own jobs soon and the unsuccessful ones (50%) will be made redundant. As you can imagine things are a tad uncomfortable at the moment. Sadly the first thing someone muttered to me today, on hearing the news that a colleague (who has just returned from maternity leave) is 3 months pregnant, 'thats her job safe then - pregnant women are untouchable'. 'Maybe IVF is the way to go?' I joked as the mutterer and I are 'of a certain age'. She gave me a withering look and said 'its not funny. If all the younger staff get themselves pregnant we don't stand a chance.' See what I mean? Sense of humour failure and serious paranoia. Forget tad - the uncomfortable level is already whatever the opposite of tad is.

Hot Seat

The way to escape all this is to stay out of the office as much as possible and I had the chance to do this yesterday as I was invited to a dance festival in a primary school. It started at 10am and I arrived at 10.05am to find the playground transformed into an open air arena with chairs arranged in a huge square and standing room only with a crowd of parents three deep. I was watching the opening number when a member of staff made their way towards me through the thong and taking me by the arm said 'so glad you could make it. Come this way, we have saved you a seat' and they led me, like some dignitary, to a front row seat with 'reserved' pinned to it. I sat down, very embarrassed, but soon got caught up in all the fun of the show. Unfortunately the seat was in the sun and I could feel the back of my neck burning but felt it would be ungrateful to leave my reserved seat - especially as the some of the children's parents only had a restricted view. However it was a wonderful show and made me want to get back into working in a school as soon as possible. Oh how I miss it!

Hot Head

Today was very different. I had to visit the home of a gentleman who is known to be violent. He has attacked a social worker and someone from housing and neither of those agencies are to carry out home visits. Therefore I had to take a police officer with me and Iast week I wrote to the gentleman to inform him of this. He was unhappy about this as he is very anti police. Last night he rang me several times to tell me how unhappy he was about the visit and although he would start the conversation sounding quite reasonable he would soon snap, not because of anything I said, as I was rarely able to get a word in, but because as he puts forward his view, which is mainly that he gets no support from anyone, he gets more and more angry and then just explodes. So I wasn't looking forward to the visit. The funny thing is I actually agree with some of his points but he just doesn't listen to any possible advice or solutions. He rang again this morning to say he wouldn't let the policeman in and I told him he didn't have to. After all it was his home and in this instance the police had no power of entry and that I was happy to talk to him on the doorstep as I wasn't going in without the PC. Anyway the visit went as well as could be expected. He let us in, we managed to see and talk to his child and he didn't beat us up. The amazing thing is I can't invite him to see me in my office, something he was prepared to do, because the risk assessment meant security refuse to let him in. So it is ok for me and a young PC to visit a known violent man (with a long record for violence apart from the poor social worker and housing officer) and sit, perched on the edge of a stool, in his small kitchen (with lots of knifes and bottles) than for him to meet me in my huge, safe, crawling with security office. Good job I'm charming because the PC didn't even have a Taser.