The bubble bursts

I've only just found out during the last two years that when you are applying for a job, certain SOP's are to be followed. There is generally an interview process, a standardized IQ or psychological exams, and an imperative skills test. It was in my management class in graduate school that I learned about this. I cringed when I first heard of this because in all the jobs I applied for I never went through a skills test or an IQ or psychological exam. I've only ever been employed as a professional librarian in two institutions and in both cases I was only given an interview. On my first job, it was only the chief librarian who interviewed me and on my second job interview (my current job) I faced a panel of interviewers who if I remember correctly had not asked any difficult questions. Although I did apply for another two posts during my first job, I only ever went through an interview process.

In the past couple of years I have applied for two different jobs because I thought I would relocate. In one institution, the formal interview and the skills test were scrapped because the librarian knew my academic performance personally, but had I completed the whole list of human resources requirements, I would have taken a standardized IQ exam just to comply with requirements so the librarian said. In another job I applied for though not a librarian post I took a two-hour grammar and composition skills test, waited a week for a call to interview if you pass that exams and managed to go through a grueling 20-minute interview for each of the five individual interviewers and wait another week for the interview results. It was the first time I ever experienced that kind of procedure and it was nerve-racking. I realized then that the process I was going through was what my management professor was talking about. Even if I did not get the job I want to believe I went through with flying colors because the last time I heard from them after that difficult interview was that they have already contacted my reference persons and that I should wait for their call within the next three days. I don’t know if they did call but it was also during that week that my phone went dead. Or maybe I flunked that interview.

At the moment three of us in the library had finished with two of the three processes or procedures to a new job. There is supposed to be a promotion for one of us. We had the panel interview three weeks ago. The skills test—classification and cataloging and indexing were administered by one of the senior librarians yesterday. Within the next week or so we will take an IQ or a psychological test to be administered by human resources. Everyone in the library is surprised by this process because not one of them it seems has undergone the whole standard procedure but it seems human resources department is cleaning its act as per civil service hiring regulations. I have no big hopes for this. I got very low scores for my academic qualifications being a non-MSLS or its equivalent degree holder. But it is nice, painful but it lets you grow, to be once in a while shaken out of your complacency and taken out of your comfort zone.