Mock Interviews

Location: San Jose Obrero Mission

Date: Thursday, October 18, 2012; 5:45-7 pm

During my career with my current as well as past company, I have been lucky to interview a lot of candidates for a variety of positions.  This made signing-up for the mock interviews session at San Jose Obrero Mission an easy choice.  This is an interim housing facility that provides temporary housing and a variety of programming to homeless men, women, and children.  Chicago Cares runs a mock interviews program once a month in which volunteers conduct one-on-one interviews with the male residents to assist with their job search. 

San Jose Obrero Mission

The Mission is located in the Pilsen neighborhood, which meant I had to get on the Pink Line CTA train - something that I had never done before.  There was a light rain when I arrived at the 18^th street stop and as is the case usually, promptly set off in the exact opposite direction to where I was supposed to be headed.  After couple of consults with the map on my phone and another wrong turn, I finally arrived at my destination with a minute to spare.  Our volunteer leader Alyson was already there along with some of the other volunteers.  Aly explained the task and the process that we would be following.  We had approximately one hour to conduct mock interviews with some of the men who would be visiting the shelter that evening.  Almost all of them are currently unemployed and some for a long time.  Our assignment was to prepare them for a real-life situation that they may encounter at a job interview.  We were asked to follow a template which consisted of us introducing ourselves and then handing them job descriptions.  There were three ‘fake’ job descriptions and we would ask the ‘candidates’ to choose from one of them or if they wanted, they could describe a type of job that they had in mind and we could improvise.  Once the job had been selected, we would follow the template which consisted of 5-6 General questions and about 2 behavioral questions.  Once the interview was done, both, the candidates and the interviewer would fill out separate feedback forms where we would give our impressions on how the interviewee performed.  Then we would discuss the feedback forms, as well as the overall interview and provide coaching.  The idea was to conduct as many interviews as possible in an hour, but I knew that if had to provide any kind of help that would enable these people to succeed, we would need to spend as much time as possible with them. This meant one interviewer per interviewee.

Reception area where we conducted the interviews

I was paired up with a middle-aged gentleman named Javier.  We settled down at one of the tables and I explained the process to him.  We looked at the job descriptions together and there was a flicker of disappointment in Javier’s eyes when I told him that none of the jobs were real.  These people really wanted to work and I wished that these were actual jobs that they could have applied for.  The first job was for a janitorial position in retail store, the second was for a warehouse assistant and the third was for a managerial role in a grocery store.  Javier wanted to interview for the manager’s job, until we realized that it required a Bachelor’s degree and he did not have one.  We thus settled on the warehouse job and the interview began.  I asked him the questions from the template and also followed-up on some of his answers based on his response and the job requirements.  Through his answers, I was able to learn a lot about Javier.  He had multiple jobs in the past, some that were in a managerial role.  He appeared to be a stand-up guy who was honest, hard-working and believed in doing the right thing.  He provided examples to almost all situations, including the behavioral questions.  At the end we filled out our respective evaluation forms and then proceeded to the feedback session. 

Javier had been slightly hard on himself and for many of the questions had rated himself one grade lower than what I had given him.  I told him to have confidence in his own abilities and to trust himself.  I pointed out some areas of improvement and told him that there was no reason why he could not do the manager’s job for the grocery store, even though he lacked the college degree.  Everything that he had told me about himself had convinced me that he could be an asset to an organization like that and he could definitely supervise the staff.  It was then that I learned that Javier was just a few credits shy of graduation and a long time ago had been accepted to Law school, provided he completed his college.  As is the case with many lower-income families, he had responsibilities that forced him to quit and then life got in the way.  I told him it was never too late and he had to believe that times would change and this too would pass.  We shook hands and he thanked me.  This was my first opportunity in almost an hour to look around and I found that all the volunteers were finishing as well.  We debriefed with Aly and she asked us for feedback on how we could improve the process.  I gave a few pointers, as did others.  I inquired if there was any way that we could use these sessions to do a screening for some employment agency because I would have no hesitation in recommending Javier.  Aly and some of the others said that I should think about being a leader for this program. Maybe, in the future.

I walked back to the train station with another volunteer, Irina, and we spoke about our experience that evening.  One thing was certain, these people may be visiting a shelter, but by no means were they bums.  They are self-respecting, hard-working individuals who have fallen on some tough times; and as clichéd as it sounds, it’s all about taking the punches and getting off the mat for the next round.


*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy