Every year now, January and February pretty much become
a blur to me—oh yes, the jet-setting life of a recruiter leaping from job fair
to job fair has its exciting elements, but it still is a little bit of a blur
since the job fairs are so consuming.
So five weeks since my last post, and I am finished
with the job fairs for the 2014 season…and I can look back fondly and reflect
on the London and Boston job fairs. (Bangkok, as you will note, was my previous
blog post, five weeks ago).
London and Boston are my favorite spots for the
intense job fairs—not least because I just love the cities of London and
Boston, love walking around the areas around the job fair, and because I know
people in these cities and at night, after the resumes are put away for a few
hours, I can go and visit with some peeps.
The London fair that we attend is in the
neighborhood of Kensington—oh, my, I love Kensington! The hotel is in a real
neighborhood, just a stone’s throw from a tube stop, near some good restaurants
(like my favorite, a farm-to-table English place, and yes, there can be great
English food, at a place called Bumpkin’s) and book stores (just catty-corner
from the hotel is a great little nook of a bookstore called “Slightly Foxed,”
and then a little ways further the great Daunt Books) and then the wondrous
Victoria and Albert Museum just about 10 minutes away by foot. So whenever
there is a lull in the job fair—out we run for a gastronomic experience, a book
experience, or an artistic experience.
But, the bulk of our time is spent in the Millennium
hotel. As I have explained in other blog entries, there is the pre-interview
stage when you search through the website of candidates, noting and sending out
missives hoping they will come by our table at the sign-ups; then there is the
interview time, when half-hour interviews run from 8:00 AM to about 6:00 PM;
then there is the reception/schmooze time at evening socializers. Between the
London and Boston fairs we interviewed about a hundred people—a little fewer
than last year (we decided to be a little choosier).
The day begins with breakfast at 7:00: you stuff
your face at the breakfast buffet; then you interview; then you fall into bed
exhausted at night. You wake up the next morning ready to go and smile and
interview again. And you wear a suit and tie—essentially, your school uniform.
The job fair world exists in fancy ballrooms and suites and hotel breakfast
buffets, and then at the end of the fair, you go back to your real world.
As I have explained before, there is a sign-up time
at the fair—essentially a cattle call, and rather exciting to behold. There are
about 200 schools at each fair, with anywhere from 400-700 candidates, all
wondering where they might end up. You stand behind your table in the ballroom,
all 200 schools, and an official of the fair clangs a bell, and the candidates
are let into the ballroom. They move around, looking at the schools from A-Z
(seriously, from Angola to Zimbabwe!) and what jobs are available in each
school. They form a line, you meet them for about 60 seconds, set up an
interview time, then research the candidates, trying to decide who will be the
best match with your school. From that initial meeting you learn about them, meet
them by the elevators, exchange smiles at the breakfast buffet, put notes in
files, wait for the interviews and try and develop a relationship in 36 hours.
In the interviews and reading the confidential reference letters, you learn
about their emotional lives, dreams, ambitions, and disappointments. In the
interviews you piece together their back story. I often go on “stalk and
schmooze patrol,” which means that I try and “bump into” our most desired
candidates, chat them up, and remind them of the school, hoping they will be as
interested in us as we are in them.
And yes, it really is about those relationships
forged. The highlight of these job fairs is meeting the interesting people. It
would fill many pages of the blog to chronicle the people I have met—ex-pats
working in Burma trying to find the right school fit and mend their marriage; the
woman who has had some job problems and hopes some school will look past her ‘misunderstandings’
with other schools; the young man from Edinburgh who dazzled us with his accent
and command of history and political theory; the young man who sat there
opining that “I don’t think I want to work in a school”; a couple with an
engaging husband and a severe-looking wife who wants the adventure of Jordan
without any of the duties (!!); the bohemian polymath that left the fair headed
for a hike in India; the college seniors who are enthusiastic and bright and announce
they are ready to tackle the classroom. We met couples who were lovely, couples
who seemed demanding, math teachers like the Hungarian man who said, “I would
like to work with the boys in the gym to have muscles like me,” and people like
Frances who bonded with us, but in the end chose a school much nearer to her
home in Florence, Italy. There are thank you notes in the folders, and
reminders of etiquette and protocol.
The fairs in London and Boston were with the LJJ
team: Lilli, Johns Austin and Leistler. We three have done the most fairs
together, and we laugh a great deal during the down-time of interviews. We head
out for a great meal, head to the book store, or even one night of serious
theater in the West End, seeing The Weir.
What bonding you do when you are together non-stop at least 12 hours a day!! The
best part of the job fairs comes when you are trying to close the deal, and
hoping they will join us in Jordan. Inevitably, at that point they begin to
interview us. Is it safe? Do you like it?
What challenges do you face? John lets us answer these important queries,
and I have been known to mist up when I talk about my nearly seven-years at the
school. It is as if all the blog entries are right at the tip of my tongue and
I try and articulate what has been so important, challenging, life-changing and
inspiring about being at KA.
It always boils down to this observation made last
year by Reem at one of the fairs: “So many lives changing here in this hotel.”
This year felt a little more relaxed at the fairs,
maybe because we know the territory well, and maybe because we did have a
little more time away from the fair to see alumni and/or friends. In London, at
night, I would take a little jaunt around nearby Hereford Square and imagine
what life might be like for me if I taught and lived in Kensington. Lilli and I
always commiserate that the only place for which we would abandon KA is London!
And then in Boston we had the good fortune to
interview an alum of the school for a teaching job. Our first graduates of KA
are seniors in college now, and what a beautiful coming-full-circle it was to
interview Ghassan Gammoh. Ghassan is a senior at Harvard, and while we have
been in touch ever since his three years in Jordan, and seen each other every
year while I was at the job fairs, he did not know the current headmaster, John
Austin. I had filled John in that Ghassan had been my advisee, my student, my
actor in plays, my stellar student in the first two AP history courses at the
school. But Ghassan still needed to interview, like everyone else. It was a
delight to listen to Ghassan share why he would feel comfortable and ready and
challenged and inspired to come back and teach here. John offered him a
contract right then and there and told him to think about it for a few days.
I met with Ghassan a few days later and he couldn’t
have been more excited about returning to Jordan, teaching high school
students. Besides the fact that Ghassan is a brilliant learner, he is also
compassionate and funny. What a great testament to the school that he would
return—Ghassan will be a great role model that one of our students can go to
Harvard, dream of being a doctor and yet
come back to teach, serve the school well, and compel our students to reach
high and aim big.
On the last day of our time in Boston, John set out
for a meeting in Philadelphia, and Lilli and I found ourselves with a free day.
A free day??!! We shopped around the stores at Copley Square, but we also made
a phone call and invited our former boss, the founding headmaster Eric Widmer,
to come up and join us for lunch. Now a retiree, Eric said his big job that day
was to empty the dishwasher, and figured he could spare the time and move that
task to the evening. Eric joined us, and we had our last meal in Boston at
Legal Seafoods, recounting our memories of the founding year of the school, the
ups and the downs of the “toddler” years of the school, and the great joy at
our friendship over the years. As I said earlier in this blog, “It is as if all
the blog entries are right at the tip of my tongue and I try and articulate
what has been so important, challenging, life-changing and inspiring about
being at KA.”
The photo above is of the lunch reunion last week with
Eric before Lilli and I set out for the return to Jordan, for the return to our
regular work-a-day school world here. I waited a few days to write the blog
entry so I could confirm that Ghassan will indeed join us next year on the faculty,
the first alumnus to return and teach a new generation at KA. I am certain that
that will ensure some more blog entries in the fall. But anyway, the fairs have
ended, the traveling finished for a while, and more blog entries soon to come
about the life here at our school.
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