Whew!

Just got done with a telephone interview and I'm strung out. I spent all day worrying about it and being completely distracted and now that it is over, I'm still kind of twitchy. I was worried about what kinds of questions you could possibly ask during an interview for a patient-care job. Maybe, do you find patients annoying? If someone does something stupid, are you willing to smack them around a little? Are you willing to talk about people behind their backs?

It hadn't occurred to me how much harder it was going to be to interview over the phone where you can't see the reaction from interviewers or have any sense whether you're giving a good answer. The whole time I'm just envisioning them making faces at one another like "ewww, why would we hire her?", or pushing mute and laughing at my stupid answers. Hard to sound confident when you have thoughts like this going through your head.

I've never felt so nervous about hypothetical questions either. What would you do if...your head fell off in the middle of a shift? your partner turned out to be a raving lunatic? your patient runs off while you turned around? Jeez, I don't know, is scream for help the right answer to all three? How about... 1) keep working, company very important. 2) sock him or her in the nose and see if that fixes it. 3) my patients never run off, I always tie them down securely.

One guarantee about interviews, you're always going get the "why do you want to work here" question. Sometimes I want to tell them, "I don't! I hate you all and think you suck, I just sent you an application to amuse myself at your expense." Then cackle madly. Don't think that would work to get hired though. I don't know if my honest answer today was really any better though, I guess we'll see.