my last job interview
1 of the 3 jobs I currently hold and each of the 3 jobs I held previously, I interviewed for them outside of the country where I was employed.
Korea
Working my way backward in time, after I unexpectedly stepped away from a teaching position I had held for 10 years, I spent the summer interviewing despite travel plans that had been booked prior to the separation.
The interviews where I was not offered a position were the most chaotic. The Google Meet background I had chosen included bamboo stair posts and classy but uncomfortable seating in the backroom.
The sparse feng shui-inspired visuals could not overcome the airport intercom gate change energy enhanced by the curiosity of children in strollers waiting for family outside a bathroom. I sat in headphones listening intently to rehearsed questions from a table full of teachers and administrators in the middle of their own summer break. My layover was the only time slot available for this job interview.
Similarly, at a seaside village that is a favorite for Korean people, I interviewed with a different school district at 11 p.m. local time which was 9 a.m. Michigan time. I had left our hotel room so as not to wake my parents, and set up my laptop in the lobby. The small town hotel did not have a business office. The potted plants in the google meet background were providing cover as couples returned from romantic moonlight strolls on the beach with convenience store snacks, searching for key cards.
The 2 interviews where I was offered a position took place in a private airbnb room and a business office, repectively, with only one interviewer. I ultimately accepted both positions when I returned to the US, but that is a story for another day.
Indonesia
Previous to the summer in Korea, I had received the offer for the 10 year teaching position I had left, as a result of an interview I took at the end of a 2 year contract at an international school in Indonesia.
The interview took place from my bedroom in a gated ex-pat villa. Again, the interview was at night due to the 13 hour time zone difference. We used Skype. No virtual backgrounds in 2014.
What stands out most distinctly about that interview were the questions about the recent vegan challenge I had participated in and the offer I made to prepare some dishes for the team if we were ever to meet in person. I fulfilled this commitment by preparing a staff lunch less than a year after accepting the position.
USA
Going back even further in time, I took a leave of absence from a teaching position in Michigan after 11 years to give international schools a try. They were part of the origin story of our family. The reason my parents and I met—I was adopted from Korea while they were international teachers from Michigan.
I interviewed for the position in Indonesia while at a job fair in San Francisco. This was a face-to-face interview with the principal. What I remember most about the job interview for the school in the tropics, and subsequent offer were:
reassurance that my current phone (iPhone 3) was capable of placing and receiving calls in Asia
mango sticky rice was about to change my life.
Both of these claims loomed large as:
My US phone was “locked” so I had to buy a flip phone for local use — while on an almost daily basis expats from Australia, Britain, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere explained with enthusiasm that "all that was necessary was a SIM-card,” unaware that US locked phones were not capable of these at the time.
I finally was able to enjoy mango sticky rice on a holiday trip to Bangkok, Thailand. I never found it available on a menu in Indonesia, inexplicably.
3 part time jobs
I discovered even while remaining in the same country (the USA) for the past few years, life can feel foreign at times. I currently hold 3 part time jobs, rather than 1 full time job—a reality of life after living with the consequences of making difficult choices based on principles.
Interviewing and working inside and outside of my country of residence, is a privilege I take for granted. For others, it’s a source of great danger and extreme suspicion. The throughline is that we are all dependent on a series of wild circumstances as well as community formed across national and international borders.
virtual backgrounds: the hardest workers at google meet
