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[bleah]

Hey everyone, just wanted to add to the plethora of experiences already on document with a recent Aeon interview.

My interview was held at Aeon's Los Angeles Office and consisted of two parts: an informational section and a group interview that lasted from 12.30 to about 4.30

The "informational" meeting was basically a rehash of the the website. Everything presented has been, in one way or another, articulated by other members of this board and/or should be common sense; Including aspects of living abroad, culture shock, commitments to the company and work environment. As you can imagine, although its a necessary exercise, its a thoroughly boring ordeal. Although the presenters tried to maintain that it was aimed to help adjust and maintain your interest in the program, I couldn't help but continually get the feeling it was just an end-around in trying cover their own behinds and make sure you didn't bail out midway through the program. (Albeit, understandably so, considering the resources they commitment to you.)

Now the part you all are probably most interested in: The group interview section. Since we had quite a number of applicants (8), we were split up into two separate groups and "interviewed" in much smaller and intimate groups of four.

The first exercise involved a sample handout from a 10 minute lesson plan. It consisted of a dialogue exchange/role-play between two people regarding a subject (Himeji castle). Our group of four was then presented with a worksheet and asked to COLLECTIVELY ascertain: (1) the target level of the lesson plan (hint one of the handouts you were given in the informational section has Aeon's "Step" scale which works nicely for answering this section), (2) The grammatical point of the lesson and then to (3) Develop a by-minute breakdown of how to teach the lesson plan. I would suspect that the point isn't so much answering and filling out the lesson plan as so much as them watching you interact and discuss the process with other (potential) educators. After all, part of any employment involves inter-colleague relationships and they certainly don't want anyone who doesn't get along. In any regards, this exercise is fairly straight forward.

The next exercise is presenting your lesson plan. The first impression is that five minutes goes alot faster than you think. You educate the other applicants and although the process sounds stressful, its actually not. So for everyone that was a little nervous about this section, as I was, don't! It's more about style than substance. Above all, keep your composure and smile, with lots of encouragement. And sprinkle with lead questions after explaining each detail. (E.g. Everyone understand?, Okay?, Ready?, etc.) Since I'm still in the process of being interviewed (haven't gotten to the personal interview yet), I'm hesitant to reveal the sample lesson I performed since I could be singled out (I doubt there are any repercussions on my explaining the process, but just to be safe .. .. I'll update later if and when I get past the personal interview section.) But a few general points that seemed to stand out: (1) Try to bring in some sort of prop: flash cards with pictures on them, etc. they really showed you made an extra effort, (2) This isn't a lecture. Its not supposed to be you standing up and reciting from a page. Get the "students" to interact. Prod them, have them repeat words. (3) I'd suggest doing something basic like learning vocabularly with flashcards. Present the flashcard picture, say the word and have the students say the word. Follow up with an game or activity. (One person did this and I thought it really worked.) Again I have to stress how much of a non issue this stage was. Definitely prepare for it, but I'd say if you have read through the other suggestions and help on this board you'll be fine.

The last part of the process involved a basic grammar test. It was two parts. Both parts were testing the same area: your recognition that a sentence was improperly formatted be it an ommission, incorrect verb, tense, etc or that it needed a re-write. The first section had letters over certain parts of speech and you had to circle the area that needed to be corrected. Although it sounds daunting, the process isn't too bad. Just read the sentence aloud in your head, and even if you don't know why its wrong, you'll at least KNOW that section is out of wack. The second part tests the same subject but with a twist. Instead of just identifying the part of speech that is wrong in some way, you have to re-write the section so that it is correct. Again a no-brainer. If you're a HS grad (not to mention college grad) you should be able to get through this. So long as you didn't graduate from Hollywood upstairs college.)

Coupled with the grammar test was a questionnaire sheet. The interviewers seemed to be more interested in your completing this than the grammar test as they stressed that although you were given only 40 minutes to do both, they said to move through the test quickly so that you had enough time to answer all the questionnaire. The questionnaire was just another blind stab at gauging your commitment level. You be the judge. Here are a couple I remember off the top of my head: "If you had a family emergency back at home, what would you do?" "What can you do to assist your manager with the workplace?" "Name three things you would miss from home and how would you deal with it?" "Besides teaching what else can you do to improve Aeon"

Again, I haven't made it to the personal interview, so take these opinions accordingly. I'm more than willing to answer questions, just post up in this thread. Hope this helps!

[katk]

Ther personally interview was fun....(UG) I still don't know how i got hired bc i was not feeling well during my interview, i had almost changed my mind about going to Japan, and just felt like i was doing bc i got called back. Maybe it helped me bc i wasn't so worried about "what if i don't get it" and felt more like "if i get it i am supposed to go to japan" I was shocked when i got offered the job, but by the end of the interview i kinda felt like they were going to offer me the job from some of the things they were telling me.

I think you need to REALLY be yourself. Don't try to be someone else or who you think you should be. They really want to get an idea of your personality.

[wintersweet]

Thanks for posting this, bleah!

[QueenSerenity42]

How'd your personal interview go, bleah?


And KatK, how long after the personal interview did they offer you the job? (I have an interview next month, so I'm curious)

[yelley]

here's my interview experience with aeon...

chicago office
information session and group interview on 3/24
personal interview on 3/25

group interview
there were seven people total in my interview group. the information session lasted about two hours and was basically just the interviewer reciting all the things that can be found on the website, going over the details of the contract, and some time for questions about the job and living in japan. then he showed us a video that showed some of the teacher's experiences and a tour of a typical apartment and such. then more time for questions and a 20 minute break.

after the break we all presented our 5 minute lesson plans. my advice would be to not stress over this too much. i was really worried but it turned out being okay. a couple of the other people in my group looked really unrehearsed and kind of unprepared, so that made me a feel a lot better about mine. five minutes goes by a lot faster than you think it will.
most of them had handouts and copies of their lesson plan outline for everyone.

after the lessons the interviewer went over the other duties of aeon teachers and there was time for questions about that. then we had 15 minutes to fill out the questionnaire and grammar quiz... it was 5 or 6 questions like what will you do to help make aeon better and other things like that. the grammar quiz was 5 sentences with parts underlined and you just need to circle the part that's wrong.

the whole group interview lasted from 2 to 6:30ish... at the end of the interview they gave everyone an envelope that said whether they were invited back for a personal interview or not.

personal interview
shortly after i arrived for my personal interview the interviewer (who, at the chicago office at least, is very softspoken, unintimidating, and easy to talk to. yay for that) gave me a photocopy of a page from one of aeon's textbooks and said that i had 10 minutes to prepare a 10 minute lesson to present to him pretending to be a japanese student that has had 6 years of english classroom experience. i was really nervous about this, but again it was not anywhere near as bad as i thought it would be. you'll have a whiteboard that you can use for your lesson also. things to remember... make sure that you greet the 'japanese student' when he enters the classroom... 'good morning so and so, please sit down' or something like that. remember to speak slowly and try to rememebr to use simpler words for your explanations... the interviewer will stop you and ask you to explain what some words mean... i was asked to explain 'modify', as in adverbs modifying a verb, and that's kind of a hard one to explain with other words. the interviewers questions will take up a lot of time from your lesson plan... i was only able to get through half of what i prepared in the ten minutes. by the way, the ten minutes goes by so fast it's ridiculous.

after the lesson plan, he'll ask you typical interview questions. if you have past teaching experience or have traveled abroad before be prepared to answer lots of questions about these experiences and how they will help you if you get the job at aeon. questions about your previous work experience, your best and worst traits from the perspectives of your friends and your previous employers, what your family and friends would think of you working in japan, how you think you'll adapt to living in japan, etcetera are all likely to be asked.

the personal interview took a little over an hour and was not as scary as i thought it would be. i think that i had a pretty good interview experience though... anyway, i find out sometime before april 22 if i got the job or not.

hope that was a somewhat helpful description ^_^

[katk]

I interviewed Feb 13th and 14th, and they said that they would contact me around around March 17th and let me know something but they called me i guess towards the end of Feb. So they contacted me sooner than they said they would. But also it may have to do with when you said you would be ready to leave i told them i needed time to get a passport and save up some money.... so they asked if i could be ready by June.

[das]

My interview experience:

AEON is one of my choices when it comes to English schools since they seem to be one of the least shadiest.

There were two interviewers, both of them were rather young attractive females which was rather pleasant

First hour and a half was rather dull, just a video of a typical day at AEON, how work is like, and then going over contract stipulations, benefits, and all that jazz.

They then went on a long detailed explanation of what is NEGATIVE of Japan, such as how Japanese are friendly and hospitable, but likely, you will always be gaijin to them. That this is real work, not a vacation. Lack of suitable clothing, bad dental stuff here, etc and how different Japanese culture is. They went into alot of details and kept emphasizing "this is not for everybody, so please reconsider if you can handle this change"

it was followed by a 10 min break, we came back, had to do this grammar test and circle what was wrong, it was harder than I thought. then you had a questionnaire asking about stuff like: If u had a family emergency what would you do? how would you prepare yourself before coming to Japan, etc.

Then we took an hour break, people were split into 2 groups at one time frame and another 2 later.

when we came back.. our group was given a page out of their text book and we had to write down and identify what the purpose of that page and plan out how we intend to teach it.

after that, everyone had to do their 5 min demo. Everyone had props so its best if you bring some. I had a weather theme that I imitated from this Genki English site and I guess it worked because they called me back for a personal interview .. will post more later.