Your Personal Timekeepers

Dad Joke: Why do time zones never get invited to parties?

Answer: Because they always “zone out” and arrive at the wrong time!

Well, unless you come up with an effective strategy for handling all your interviews with international schools located in different time zones, you too will arrive at the wrong time. Once the schools you applied to start wanting to schedule interviews with you, it will become increasingly difficult to keep those interviews organized within your regular daily schedule, but here are a few helpful tools that are guaranteed to make you more successful.

The first is a website known as the World Time Buddy that also has widgets and apps for you to utilize. I have been using this website for years and absolutely love the slider tool that helps you look at several times zones at a time to discover the best interview time for everyone involved. This is particularly handy when, for example I was interviewing with someone attending a job fair in Thailand while I was living in California, USA, but the rest of the interview panel was in their home country in Hong Kong. I have downloaded this app for my iPhone and have embedded it as a widget on my websites and blogs before, but I still prefer the original version on the website as there seems to be more functionality that way.

The second is Google Calendar. Did you know that you can easily customize your Google Calendar by doing a few easy steps? If you go into your Google Calendar App at calendar.google.com, click on the Settings Menu "Cog" at the top right corner, and then click on Settings from the drop down, you will now be able to add a second Time Zone to your Google Calendar, label it with the name of the country or school, and now see the times displayed running along the left side of your weekly calendar view. This makes choosing interview times easier to match. This little feature helped me avoid making the mistake of agreeing to meet with an interviewer at 3am my time, but 1pm her time. Instead, I was able to choose more reasonable times (such as 8am for her and 10pm for me) that wouldn't require me to wake up in the middle of the night to interview.

That's not all Google Calendar can do. On that same settings page, there is a section called World Clock that enables you to several different World Clocks to the left side view of your Google Calendar in weekly view. If you, like me, have several interviews scheduled that week from various time zones, this function keeps you from getting them confused. 

Lastly, the "Clock" app on the iPhone has a few helpful tools embedded within in to assist you. As soon as you know where the school is that you have an interview with, I would go to your "Clock" app and click the "World Clock" icon at the bottom. From there, all you have to do is click the + sign at the top right corner to add a new location to your app. The benefit of doing this means that now you will know exactly what time it is in the country you are thinking of moving to compared to your current time, which knowledge will also help you plan interview times and to double check that you aren't running late for an interview if the interviewers only mention their times and not yours in correspondences and Google Invites.

The second feature inside of your iPhone is the good old "Alarm." This may seem like a simple tip, but never underestimate the power of setting up alarms to remind you to get to your interview location regardless of whether or not it is in-person or via an online connection using Zoom, Meet, or Teams. Double check that you have indicated which days for the alarm to go off. You wouldn't want your alarm to wake you up on Friday at 4am for an interview you were meant to have on Monday at 4am, but that you missed because the time was set wrong; this may have happened to a friend of a friend of mine, or me...so just be sure the days are marked correctly and you actually set the alarm by moving the switch to the right.

Such simple, yet effective tools. Mind blown, right? Wishing you all the best getting to your interviews on time, no matter where they or you are located!

Online Interviewing Isn't Getting Easier

You would think that after 15 years experience of online interviewing, I would be a wiz at it. My constant declaration that I am tech savvy is starting lose its reliability as I struggle to connect with potential employers over the internet. So allow me to share all of my missteps with you in the hope that you may avoid making the same mistakes I have made. At the bottom of this post, I have even written out a handy-dandy checklist to run through the next time I attempt an online interview that you are free to use.

My first rookie mistake was my assuming that the internet connection I had was strong enough to enable online video interviews. Though the speed was adequate enough to handle my surfing the internet and streaming all of my favorite Netflix shows right up until the interview, it didn't have the connection power to sustain what I was trying to accomplish using Google Meet. Even though we both tried turning off our cameras and closing tabs on our devices, the flow of the interview was having too many interruptions which led us to reschedule. You would have thought that my past experience being interviewed with a slow connection where the interviewer’s face was frozen in disappointment for ten minutes after one of my question responses would have taught me never to use a slow connection again - nope, lesson still unlearned! 😱

During my second attempt to connect, I tried to rectify the connectivity issue by having a back-up device ready (my MacBook) while using my iPhone as the default device. My thinking was that should the wifi fail, I still had the 5G cellular data plan to keep me connected to my interview. 

At first my two device plan was working until I realized that the headphones I was using with my iPhone weren't connecting properly so that I couldn't hear any sound coming from the interviewer. After unplugging them and going to the speaker option, I still couldn't hear her. And yes, I even left the meeting and rejoined several times on both devices to see if that would help, but to no avail. By checking the Meet sound  icon on the top right of my phone, I could see how my sound had several options to connect - my iPhone, my MacBook, and my headphones, but no matter which option I chose, all hope of hearing the interviewer vanished. I truly began to feel like I was in an old Verizon commercial repeatedly stating, "Can you hear me now?" which is only funny in hindsight.

As the flexible educators we are, we tried continuing the interview using the Chat function on Meet, but it seemed writing our questions and answers was taking too long to make the process worthwhile for either of us given the time constraints the interviewer had. Even after disconnecting the interview, I still couldn't locate where issue lie even when enlisting my family to connect to the Meet link with me.

So with the third interviewing looming, my plan for successful connection hinges on my ability to follow this checklist and keep my fingers crossed that a new issue doesn't arise.

Online Interview Checklist for Google Meet:

• 🎧 Where is my sound? - Check where the sound is connecting (headphones, Macbook, Projector, iPhone).

• 📸 Lighting - is my face even identifiable in my video camera, or is that my shadow?

•  🐈 Backgrounds - ideally I would like my background blurred, but that requires stronger internet connections so instead I will keep my back facing a plain wall without clutter, or cats.

• 💻 Internet Strength - Are any of Starlink's satellites being obstructed?

• 📱Cellular Strength - How many bars do I get here?

• 🪫 Battery Power - Are all of my devices fully charged, or connected to power?

• 🧻 Interview Notes - Do I have my CV, Philosophy of Education, and Interview Questions handy?