Interview

As many know, I have not had great luck in finding a job. I finally got a interview! Woo Hoo!! It's for a receptionist position with the Paradise Valley School District. Receptionist... it is a step down from my previous job (outside the home) but at least it's a interview. I had to take a typing, math and spelling test before I was even considered. I graduated from UNLV, took Calculus and the "math test" that I had to take for this position almost killed me. It was a 45 minute test ~ addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Oh my gosh!! The addition part wasn't so bad. Just adding several groups of numbers with decimals. Then subtraction... same as addition but subtraction. Those two sections took awhile to complete because calculators were not allowed. I finally made it to the multiplication part with about 25 minutes left for the test. I didn't do so well in this section. Yes, it had decimals and I bombed it. What didn't make sense though, I did awesome with the division. Oh, I forgot to mention... long division with decimals. Something that I haven't done since I was probably in the 8th grade. When we finished, we got our scores. Oh, I was so ashamed... but the lady giving the test said that I did great! She said the median score was in the low 50's and I got close to a 70 score. Again, not sure how I did so bad in multiplication but great in the division section... don't you need multiplication with division?

The other two sections weren't so hard... typing and spelling. Well, I did a lot better with spelling than I thought because I am really horrible at spelling. I guess I got lucky on that one. The typing test wasn't so bad either because at least now I know how many words that I can type. Again, I am well above average. Not so bad considering I have been out of the work force for over 3 1/2 years.

At the end of the test, I told the lady that was giving the test that I understood the reasoning of the testing but if this was for an admin position, why didn't they test on the knowledge of Word or Excel? She understood my question and didn't really have an answer.

Anyway... I am honored to have this interview as it was told to us during the testing process that they have about a 100 applicants per posting and they interview between 3 to 5 people per posting. So, yea for me! I made it in the top 95%.