Year 9 Grow Week

 Report by Jacob, parent:

I love the Grow Week Interviews, look forward to them every year. I have been known to arrange my diary around them, move client meetings, even take leave, to ensure I'm up in Room 315 at 8:30am on the last Friday of Term 2. 

Secondary school presents a very different parenting experience to that of primary school. You go from deeply involved to out of the picture in a flash. But there's this one special day that you get to do something valued and useful: sit at a table and give Year 9s the experience of the outside world, the world of the job interview.

The process is simple enough, we are provided with between 8 and 10 cover letters and CVs and a list of standard interview questions. The teachers show us to our tables, with neat name plates and we make polite small talk as we await the first wave. Ms Fry brings the students in and directs them to the assigned parent. As they approach, you get an insight into the student, some are clearly terrified, some totally at ease, a few nonplussed. 

I usually start with a few of the classic questions because the students will face them in many interviews, especially early on in their career, but then the script goes out the window, like it so often does in an interview. I'll suggest more appropriate answers to the standard questions, get the students to consider what the interviewer is looking for, and coach them through the dreaded "what's your greatest weakness" question.

But most importantly, I try to get the students to show their passion and help them discover that the real them is what a good employer, one for whom they want to work, is looking for. The 15 minute sessions fly past. It's over in a flash. We finish our notes and look at each other, beaming, the first comment is always the same, "what great kids."

The good news is my youngest is in year 8. I get to do four more years of this. Brilliant.