Just had a job interview today, at Framwellgate School Durham. Started out as a bit of a nightmare; when I got to Durham I got on the right bus, but going the wrong way, so I had to get off and get a bus going back the other way. Then when I got to Framwellgate Moor, the stop wasn’t near where the school was, so I had to traipse around there a bit to find the place. I ended up arriving about 15 minutes late (not exactly the best first impression). There were 4 candidates including myself, and the school had set up a rotating programme of a test and an informal interview, after which further shortlisting would take place and the shortlistees would go on to the formal interviews. I chatted to one of the other guys while waiting for my turn at the test and it turned out he’d been working in a school for 6 years and had an MCSA and CCNA, so it was pretty clear I was outclassed to start with. I took the practical test (finding out why a particular PC doesn’t work) and found some of the obvious things (mains socket not turned on, cables not plugged in properly etc.) but was stumped by the last two problems, which turned out to be bent pins on the PS/2 mouse plug and monitor plugged into onboard video instead of video card (the card was not immediately visible when looking down the back as there was a lip of the case hiding it from view). After that I had the informal interview, which went okay until they dropped a scenario on me – and it wasn’t the usual one about “what would you do if you found inappropriate material on a pupil’s computer” or something. I ummed and ahhed a bit but couldn’t come up with an answer to their question and finally had to admit defeat. This left me unsurprised to discover that I was not included on the second shortlist. Oh well, back to the grindstone.