Interview Who?

My wife and I just applied for a place in a kindergarten next year for my son who is just over 2 years old.

After submitting all the necessary documents, we were handed an acknowledgement slip which stated an interview date for my son 3 months from now.

Interview? A two year-old?

Interesting enough, just last month, I heard from a friend who brought her son to be interviewed at a kindergarten about her “ordeal.”

It was her son (2+ years old) who was supposed to be interviewed but it was her who was completely stressed out.

In fact, she got so upset with the interviewer she almost cried when he said, “Most children at this age should be able to follow my instructions without problems. But it seems that your son couldn’t.”

Such experiences are very real today. Competition is so keen that schools, even kindergartens, must institute a selection process.

But they beg the question, “What are schools for?”

In my mind, the mission of schools is to educate. This means that the a school would best serve its reason for existence when it manages to turn an “uneducated” student into one who is “educated.”

However, with all these selection and filtering processes, schools are taking in only “the best.” These are already the better lot and so, how much more education do they need to be excellent?

Look at it this way: It is a matter of “INPUT > PROCESS > OUTPUT.”

If a school can produce excellent output no matter what input it is given, then that is THE ONLY VALID indicator of the quality of the school.

Just like many parents are busy trying to impress the schools just so that their children can get in, most job-hunters will go to interviews thinking it is a one-way street – That is, employers are choosing them.

I beg to differ.

As I have always taught, an interview is a two-way street. They choose you and you choose them. There are so many employers out there, why should you work for this particular one?

My point is this: You should not be there to beg for a job. If you are, then you are putting control into their hands.

Remember that an interview is a business meeting to discuss a business problem. No business will hire if they don’t have a problem.

As such, you are there to provide value to help solve a business problem. Thus, employment, when it occurs, is a fair exchange.

This is one key reason why you MUST have questions to ask in any interview.

Coming back to the school topic, I’m sending my son to a school to be educated, not to be judged.

You can be sure that when I bring my son for his interview, I will have loads of questions for the teachers as well.