Anything you say can, and will be used against you...
In a job interview you don't exactly have the right to remain silent. What you do have is the right to say things in support of yourself. That being said, in an interview there are those instances where you can incriminate yourself as if you admitted to committing a heinous crime. Like when you're asked about teamwork, and you use an example of being the student who has been taking classes primarily online for several years, but when you started nursing school you had to work to reintegrate yourself in the classroom setting, you just might shoot your own self in the foot. Or say you're asked about disagreements with previous supervisors, and you give a real world example stemming from experiences with a previous supervisor (of long, long ago) being Korean-American, and one of the other medics you work with was also Korean-American. Nothing I did was good enough in my supervisor's eyes. I didn't work hard enough, or do enough, or anything....enough. I had to work under the umbrella of a sort of discrimination. I pressed on and did my job to the best of my abilities. Again, you shoot yourself in the foot. Your answers are used against you. You lose a job/externship opportunity because you thought you were giving honest, real answers.
You are thusly labeled "not a team player". How incredulous--in fifteen minutes you are summed up by isolated answers.
It doesn't help that "I actually have great news for you. They were on the borderline with you. They wanted to hire you, but..."
I'm the person who got together a group study session...who stepped forward to help a classmate study because she'd received one of those letters (the kind of letter that tells you to bring your grades up or you're out of this program)...who would be the first to stand up, volunteer and work with anyone to help them succeed.
Yes, Monday I received the email seen in the previous post. I texted or called some of my classmates to find out if they'd heard anything. No one had by Monday night. Yesterday morning people started getting calls...or emails. You see, there were six of us from my school, who interviewed in hopes of being one of the chosen five. Three were chosen and three were not, including moi. The three of us that were not chosen have all had some medical experience, on one level or another. The three that were chosen have not. It may be a big coincky-dink, or the elixir of justification I'm choosing to swallow, but I think that may have been a deciding factor.
I mean hello, if these people liked me so much why didn't they call my references? The other two girls thought their interviews had gone very well, and were just as shocked as I was to read their rejection email. Yeah, the ones who were chosen received phone calls, the rest of us got the form-letter email.
Being me, I couldn't let it go. So I emailed the HR rep the obligatory thank you and also asked for feedback. I just received the call prior to heading to Blogland, and well you know the rest.
Oh well, I still have the decision from Hospital #1 to look forward to, and tons of studying to do.
