JET Interview
Well we survived it! Actually, the JET interview was nowhere near as scary as I had heard….
Before the interview
There was a brief English language test before the interview which was ok, although a bit trickier than I’d expected. The questions took the form of:
- Which of these four words is the odd one out?
- Where are the mistakes in this sentence?
- Which of these options is the correct spelling?
- How would you explain the difference between these two phrases?
I know for a fact that I got one of the questions wrong, but hopefully that won’t count against me too much.
After this I was shown a brief DVD of the JET programme, featuring interviews with participants about their experiences. The footage of actual classes were really interesting, and I’d like to get another look at the DVD if possible, as I spent a lot of the time chatting with Colin, a former JET participant only just back in the UK, who had escorted us down to the room and who was a very nice guy. I asked him quite a few questions – not to ‘look good’ but purely out of interest. Everything he had to say was valuable and I quoted a couple of his comments in the interview itself.
The interview
The two interviewers (one British, one Japanese) were very nice, plenty of smiles and happy to laugh with me. The interview was a little under 20 minutes long, and seemed to fly past.
No great surprises with the questions – the usual ‘what is your interest in Japan?‘ and ‘what do you think you have to offer the JET programme?‘. One question that threw me a little, mainly due to its broad scope, was ‘what do you know about Japan?’. How specific did they want me to be? I could have listed countless place names, famous people, musicians, artists, buildings; I could have quoted demographic and economic statistics; I could have given them a history lesson… but I didn’t. The whole interview felt more like a conversation than a test, so it didn’t seem appropriate to run off a load of numbers and facts. I was very general and perhaps that wasn’t the best response.
I had heard that some of the questions might be aimed at catching you out, and indeed I got a couple of that nature. The first asked what my partner and I would do if only one of us was successful. I answered that, of course, the successful person would go and the other would perhaps try to find work out there. The second question was how would I feel about being asked to take my earrings out (I have two hoop earrings at the top of my left ear). Again, I said that of course that would be no problem. I suspect they would have been looking carefully at my reaction to see if there was any indignation or rebellion, but I was completely fine with the suggestion so hopefully they saw that.
All in all I think I came across positive and enthusiastic, and hopefully they liked what they saw of me. I would have loved another ten minutes with them to talk more about my interests in Japan, but the main point was that I don’t think I messed up on any of the questions.
We’ll hear if we were successful in April – until then we’ll be keeping all fingers and toes firmly crossed!
