Living as a Social Worker within the State of Florida is probably one of the hardest gigs you will ever score in life. Living within a conservative state where you have to justify your job on a daily basis is more than just a mild threat towards your livelihood, it’s pretty much a direct insult. Living in Florida you are surrounded by people who accuse those who accept handouts as deadbeats, lazy, the degenerates of our society that continue to make America awful again. I had gotten my fill of not being appreciated with my sole goal in life being to give back to my local community, and decided that I needed a new frontier where I would be more appreciated. Portland, Oregon looked like the New Frontier that I had in mind. A place where there was a social worker for every issue, every person, every difference.
Due to my relocation from coast to coast, I am now on my journey to discover a new career in a new city, hell, a new state, where I know absolutely no one. Although I carry eight years of child welfare experience under my belt from the state of Florida, the hunt for a social worker position has resulted in a fruitless search. I am going on four months now and diligently applied to at least 20 social worker jobs per week, sometimes getting one or two interviews per following week. Here is what I have learned about interviewing in Portland, Oregon.
Every interview is exactly the same. The interviewers are not really trained in the art of interviewing someone to see if they would be a good fit for their team. They are just given a list of about 10 questions to run through with the person they are interviewing, and then jotting down as much of an answer as they can while trying to listen at the same time. So here I am with eight years of child welfare experience under my belt. Instead of tailoring this interview to my sole experiences and what I can bring to the team, they are being forced to just run through the motions and jump through the hoops of asking me questions that you would ask someone who would never had a position like this before. There are two main questions that I have answered at almost every interview that is really starting to get to me. Maybe it’s because I have been to about 20 interviews of the same exact questions, but it’s starting to make me question if I’m answering these interview questions right at all.
The first question: Why are people poor?
Really? That's the question you're going to ask me to gauge if I am going to be able to be a good asset to your team based on the eight years of working with the general population, by the way, not all being poor. So what do you mean by why are people poor? Why are people poor in Portland? Or in Florida? Or the United States? Or the world? This is too open-ended of a question and it's really just a filler question to put you in an awkward situation to say something weird.
So we all know the textbook version of why people are poor. We all know the answer that we are supposed to give when we are explaining this question. People are poor because of generational culture that comes down. It is a cycle that needs to be broken with some sort of support or initiative to want to change your behavior and modify it to take a different path then how your family did in prior generations. But is this the answer that you want? You know we are all going to answer the question exactly the same way, so why even waste our time asking this?
The second question: working within our field you will have to deal with different and diverse populations. Tell us about the time when you have worked with a diverse population.
Here is another question where we are wasting our time talking about answers full of fluff that has absolutely nothing to do with what I can bring to this position. Again, I'm just going to give you the textbook answer, the answer that you're expecting to hear. You're not getting the feel of who I actually am and what I actually can do. All you're getting is robotic answers that are being repeated over and over again from the same 20 people that keep coming in to interview for the same exact jobs.
So I've been trying to do something that puts me above the rest of the other interviewers that are coming in and saying the same exact things that I am saying in these interviews. I want to be able to make myself stand out and will make me memorable to be the one that has hired. You know we are all coming in saying the same exact thing, I'm doing this because I want to help people, blah blah blah. So what makes me any different than the next person that comes in before me or after me? I got the bright idea to do some writing samples to bring in with my resume and cover letter when I go into interviews. I put together a sample case note that I would enter into a child welfare system which consists of about a half a page documenting what my observations are of a regular run-of-the-mill home visit would go on. I also put together a safety assessment of an initial case that I would be given, what I would talk to the family about, and then the type of services that I would recommend to that family. I was very excited about my writing samples and I had not been trying them out at my prior interviews that I had been completing.
So yesterday I got up, got dressed in my nice business attire, and put together all of the paperwork that I was going to present for the first time in order to stand out to a supervisor that had the capacity of hiring me. I walked in confident to the office, introduced myself and shook hands with everybody in the room. I quickly pulled out all my paperwork and handed it to the supervisor and explained in detail what each paper was that I was handing to him.
He sets the paperwork to the side and mutters, "Thanks". He had appeared to already have been in a pretty crummy mood and definitely had other more important tasks that he had to attend to, rather than sitting in a room with me asking me a bunch of vanilla questions about how much we like to help people.
The interview starts out really strong. I go ahead and I start off the interview by going into detail about how I got into child welfare. Where I started and why I started there, and then about the journey through privatization and how the child welfare system works in Florida as opposed to Oregon. I then tried to go into detail about how I had spent time researching the Child Safety Model that they used in Oregon as opposed to Florida. He seemed impressed for a moment, then saw his opportunity to be a clever asshat.
He asks, "So tell me what the name is of the Child Safety Model that we use in Oregon."
In all reality I had not researched or even looked at the Child Safety Model since 4 months ago when I first started this journey to move into a position out of state. I originally had done my homework like everyone says that you are supposed to. But at this moment in front of this interviewer, I could not remember the name of the model, nor did I really think it was important. I just explained in detail with the whole gist of it was, and now you want to know the name of the stupid fucking model? I sat there for what felt like way too long trying to think of some sort of verbage I could spit out to make it sound like possibly it could be the name of it, but of course I was drawing a blank because it was not within the first ten questions that I had been regurgitating at the last 20 interviews that I had to attended over the past four months. So my response was, maybe I should get more clarification. "Uh, are you asking me what the specific name is of the specific child welfare model is that you use in the state of Oregon?"
There! Maybe if I stated the question over to him, he would realize it was a stupid fucking question and it really didn't matter what it was called. But nope, he ran with this opportunity to be even more intimidating. "Yes. I want to know the name of the Child Welfare Model that you say you have spent so much time researching. What is the name of that model?"
His snarkiness made me not even want to entertain this question anymore and just move on. I just smiled gritted through my teeth, and replied, "I don't recall". Then I catch him scribbling something down on the paperwork for the interview that he supposed to fill out. What the hell was he scribbling down? That wasn't even in the range of the 10 questions that he asked. Was he drawing a big :-( next to my name? Was he writing out that I do not remember the specific name of the model that is used in the state?
After answering all of the cookie cutter questions, I felt that even though I had not known the answer to that one question, the rest of the interview seemed to have went relatively well. I mean, it was dull of course, and it did not make me stand out yet again, but at least I didn't say something that would totally disqualify me, like I drink a 12-pack of beer before coming to work and get pretty hyped about what surprises may be in store for me. As I'm getting ready for the second part of an interview where they turn the table and you get to ask them questions, he throws in a last minute question that was not in the line up.
He barks, "WHY ARE PEOPLE POOR?" It was a deliberate way to try to antagonize me to be thrown off of my game and give a weird or absurd response. Thank God I had answered this question and about 11 of the 20 interviews and I knew what to say right away. But it was a weird question to throw in last minute. And was he doing this to other people that were coming in for interviews? Did it unnerve them like it did me the way he presented the question?
At this time he also let me know that there were temporary positions that were coming available, where you would assist the Child Welfare workers with their caseload pretty much doing their busy work. He asked if I wanted to be considered for those positions, and I said yes. But in real life, fuck no I don't want to be considered for those positions. Why would I want to be in a position where I probably would have double the years of service than the person that I'm supposed to be assisting. So pretty much I would be training someone that supposed to be training me. It pissed me off but I kept the smile on my face anyway.
After I asked my two obligatory questions I stood up and shook everyone's hand again, and headed towards the door of the interview room. I turn around to discuss the weather and an expectation that I would be escorted down the hall and out the door by the supervisor, but that did not happen. He just shut the door and left me standing there in the hallway. I looked down the hallway both ways and realized that I didn't even really pay attention how I got into this interview room. I was following the supervisor in merely talking about the weather when I first got there it was not paying attention to how many lefts or rights we took.
After meandering around for a few minutes and finally finding which door led to the outside I started on my path back to the Max Train. Once I made it to the station I sat down on a bench and began to cry. I was completely defeated after that interview. Not only did I feel like I was somehow answering these questions in the wrong way, but I was rattled by the complete attitude of the supervisor. I need a job so bad that it's getting to the point where I can't start getting choosy about where I work. So there's a pretty good chance that this will be my supervisor for a while. Is this someone that I really want to have to work with? I knew I had to send a thank you letter the next day for this interview, but I sure didn't want to. I would much rather sent him a picture me flicking him off and tell him to shove it up his ass, ride along with his poor people questions.
I have never had this issue before where I have pretty much had to beg for a position in social work. I kind of fancy social work because it is a position that literally nobody ever wants to do. It is a high-demand job with no appreciation and you can always trust that they are always hiring. It takes a special kind of wacky to be able to do this kind of job, and I think I have a pretty good proven track record with having eight years under my belt, considering the average person in Florida doesn’t make it more than two years. it appears that Portland is full of social workers, with opportunities to serve many of our diverse populations that we come across. It is so competitive here that it doesn’t really matter how many years I have under my belt at this point, but I’m not sure what it is that I have to do to get a job that I’m so passionate about that others feel are a shithole aspiration. This experience is making me doubt my own self confidence, my answers that I’m giving, and the way that I have been doing my social work as my career.
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