Job Discussion Forums

[elerrina]

I interviewed Friday in Boston, and this is how it went.

There was a two-hour information session, during which we got a chance to ask lots of questions. The non-socialization policy was mentioned, though not as such; he said you had to have a "professional relationship" with your students. I asked if this applied to all Nova students, or just yours, and he replied that it applies to all Nova students (as I knew). He said it was basically in place to stop people from siphoning off students to become private students, and to stop people from using Nova as their own personal dating service.

I believe that this is the rationale behind it, but the interviewer was fairly easy-going about it, which was interesting because I'd read otherwise. Of course, it's to their benefit to put a good face on it, but it's also possible that the interviewer doesn't see it as a draconian measure, even though it might get implemented that way sometimes. Anyway. He also mentioned health insurance, and again was easy-going about it, saying that it was fine for you to switch once you get over there. Being charitable, it *could* be just his view vs. how it's implemented. Of course, he was over there for 8 years with Nova, so one would think he knows how it's implemented. Regardless, it didn't seem like the right setting to ask hard-nosed questions, so I refrained.

Then there was a written quiz, which I hadn't realized was going to happen. It had three sections of a page each. The first section was a multiple choice. It was, select what response you would be most comfortable giving in the following situations. I think the first question was something like where you had two students in your class, and one asks you if you are married. Your choices are "Good question. What do you think [student #2]?" "Don't you think that's kind of an inappropriate question?" and two others. Basically, about 20 questions in all, most with fairly obvious right answers. The next section was a number of sentences with various words/phrases underlined in the sentence, and you had to circle the one which was incorrect. The reasons they were wrong were mostly fairly simple, such as wrong tense, word, or conjugation. The last section was two "essay" questions, both on one page. Essay meaning short answer, in my lingo. The questions were something like "Why do you want to go to Japan?" and "What makes you think you would be a good language teacher?" We had to complete the quiz in 15 minutes, which wasn't too tough.

Then there was a short break, and the other two candidates went right into their personal interviews, and I had about 45 minutes for lunch before mine. He started off with the 18 questions that you have to answer immediately in 3 words or less. He said they are strict about meaning 3 words or less, though in practice "immediately" seemed to be that they gave you 5 seconds or so. It seems like they just don't want to you think about it forever. They expect to get through it all in less than a minute and a half, he said. The ones I can remember were: how do you respond to criticism, how would your best friend describe you, if you saw someone on a street who you thought you recognized what would you do, what would you do if your students were silent, what's a recent achievement you're proud of, what do you think makes a good teacher, what kind of people irritate you, what would your current or last employer say about you. Clearly there were more, but I couldn't commit them all to memory. Then he asked for elaboration on some of the answers I gave.

Then he went into more sort of typical-sounding interview questions like "What's the most independent thing you've done recently" and "Tell me about a time you had to compromise with your roommates". Also "Tell me about a time you were criticized for your work," and "Tell me about a time you were complimented on your work," and "What do you see as one of your faults?" followed by "Tell me about a time when you did that/when that was the case." Others I can remember are "What do you think would be the most difficult thing about going to live in Japan?" and "What would make you most nervous about teaching for Nova?". They didn't ask anything like "Is there anything else you want to tell us?" so if you have stuff you want them to know specifically, I'd recommend working it into an answer somehow.

Then there was the teaching portion of the interview. He gave me the sheet that others have described elsewhere, with the pet shop attendant and customer. There is a little block of text highlighted, and he told me to read it, and then teach it to his pretended Japanese student, and make sure that he understood what was going on. So I read it out loud, going slowly (but not insultingly slowly) and articulating, and then asked a series of questions that I made up on the spot (having no teaching experience, this made me nervous) to see if he got the passage. At some point, he broke character and asked what I thought would be the two most difficult words in the passage for the student to understand, and I picked (as have many others) parakeet and recommend. He said okay, explain those to me. So I tried to explain them to him, and after I was done, he gave me some constructive criticism. He was not negative or insulting about it, it was mostly like "Conditionals are something that most students you'll get have trouble understanding, so you probably want to avoid those," and just generally friendly suggestions. It seemed clear that without saying "and now we will see how you take criticism", he was testing how well I took the criticism. (He also mentioned that asking the student about restaurants is a good way to teach them the word recommend).

Then he got all my documents that I'd brought, xeroxed the relevant ones, and I was done.

He said that they are pretty good about getting back to people, and that usually we hear within 5 days: by email if they like us, by snail mail if they don't.

I don't know how well my experience generalizes to the other offices, or recruiting trip interviews around the country, but I hope it's of help to anyone who is going to interview with Nova. Good luck!

[Travel Nut]

That's pretty much what I went through in Australia. I think their interview process is pretty standard and hasn't changed since I went for mine 3 years ago. Wish back then I had an idea of what to expect, that way I wouldn't have blundered as much.

[nawlinsgurl]

Wow! I was still in my last semester of Uni when I had my interview in Atlanta. They asked some simple questions and checked to see if I had a pulse. No grammar test or anything like what you described. I answered the questions, just how they wanted me to and got an acceptance letter in two weeks. I think I said "like" six million times in my interview and I still got hired. (And this was just seven months ago)