Goodbye face to face interviewer job

My face to face interviewer job ended last year. Rounding off the saga, I’d like to summarise what it was about, and speculate about why, overall, it worked well.

I was quite good at the job, and feel I’ve learned a lot, even though the work was quite repetitive. My boss was happy about my work and communication, and I had plenty of positive feedback from respondents both directly and through the quality control procedures. My response rates were also pretty good – not remarkable compared to the average, but good factoring in that my home range was supposedly hard to get decent results in. I was praised for the quality of my submitted work – data forms and weekly reports – for high accuracy, good order, and entertaining weekly reports.

 

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An easy life

‘You are living an easy life, aren’t you? You ain’t doing nothing!’

the old man said. I pass his house every day when I walk or run* with my dogs. When he and his dog are out in his front yard, I stop and talk, so my dogs get this beautiful rare chance to hang out with another dog that, albeit a bit cranky, doesn’t behave like an erratic maniac like many other dogs around here.

 
Most of what the old man says is difficult to hear, because his voice is like a soft, mumbling creek of linked words strayed with Aussie idioms, and garden noises in the surroundings zap out some of them too. However, I usually manage to pick up enough key words here and there to estimate what we’re talking about, and make friendly expressions and statements (one syllable is sufficient) every now and again to prove my participation in the conversation.

I like him, and I like listening to him.  He is a bit like my grand mother (R.I.P), and I enjoy seeing his joy about having someone to talk to, while my dogs have a great time relaxing in the grass and pestering their ‘friend’.

The above quote is one of the sentences that I did hear in full, and I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. Slightly insulted, I told him that I work as a research interviewer with variable hours, I ain’t ‘ain’t doing nothing’. ‘OK’, he said, and maybe something along the lines of ‘that sounds like a great job’.

Good VS bad performance reviews

This is a spin-off of Yesterday’s post about the recent performance review by my current employer. Short summary: it was a positive experience. The feedback was specific, systematic, actionable, and given in a friendly and constructive way. It was given verbally outdoor in the ‘field’, following observation, and followed up with a written report documenting and numerating what had been said.

I most of my previous jobs there either wasn’t a formalised process for performance review, or I worked as a casual, so it wasn’t for me, or: I never stayed long enough to experience it (mostly the case anyway). But every performance-review-like meeting I’ve experienced before hand (that I remember) was a terrifying experience.

 
Performance reviews as a form of terror

Performance reviews were a regular and formalised procedure when I worked in an export office. It was an event I feared well ahead of the appointed time. They took place in the General Manager’s office, and was a 2:1 situation – 2 managers VS me. The focus was on which mistakes I had done since last review. The General Manager had a list of them in his notes.