I don’t do many job interviews, I like to let work find me and it usually does if I’m open to it am definitely wait long enough. A few years ago I was nearing my last pennies (a common theme in my life up until now that I’m hoping to soon put to rest) when a friend gave me the contact information of a woman who ran a tutoring school. She was desperately seeking someone to teach 5 classes before the end of the week, before the student went abroad.
I went in, and even though I was technically “desperate”, I didn’t frame it as a job interview, I framed it as a company interview. I was interviewing them, not the other way around. I didn’t act cocky, but I didn’t wait around for her to ask me questions. She looked pretty modern and pretty cultured, kind of familiar with the underground, like she had stayed in hostels before and I heard through the grapevine that her husband was a photographer. That made the whole thing easier on me.
I first told her flat out who I am and how I work. “I take my work seriously and try to do a good job in everything that I do, but I don’t like to be overworked, I need free time. If there is an easy way to do something, I’ll take it, but I don’t sacrifice quality, I’m capable of finding a balance. So if you expect someone who is constantly going to work their ass off, Sorry but that’s not me. If you want someone who does a good job and then enjoys the free time they’ve made by working efficiently, that’s me. I want to make the people around me happy, but not at my own expense. That means I only function well under a system of mutual respect, are we good so far?”
She smiled and nodded and motioned for me to continue my monologue.
“Im sure you know how terrible the relationship is between teachers and the schools around here, teachers take off without any notice to the schools and schools dock pay for teacher students who didn’t do anything wrong, there is all kinds of BS, and I know you’ve seen it before because we all have. I don’t want any of that. I want you to trust me so I’ll try to earn your trust by being honest and I hope you can do the same. Rather than trying to impress you by trying to fit exactly what you ar looking for, I’ll tell you what I need upfront, and you can be the same.
Through the rest of the interview, she talked a bit more and replied to a lot of things that I said, I can’t remember exactly what she said to anything so I’ll just share what I said.
“If you respect me and give me my freedom, I will do better than anyone else you could hire and I will respect you and everyone else at the company. Respecting me means knowing what I do and what I don’t do. I don’t cater to parents, that’s your job. I don’t deal with advertising or take photo shoots for your ads. I don’t wake up until 9:30 so I don’t start work until 10:30, anything after that is fair game. I don’t teach classes I don’t know how to teach, and I need warning before anything in the schedule changes. I don’t teach all day without breaks, but I’d love it if you could schedule all my classes in the afternoon or all at night so I can get everything out of the way. If you start changing things on me last minute, expect me to do the same.”
So far, so good.
I went on to tell her about my teaching style which is far from typical and as bare-bones and direct as possible. She had questions about it but I assured her that I knew what I was doing and I gave her a 3 minute sample lesson without her asking for one. I told her what I’m not good at and how I planned on making up for it.
We talked about the salary next. I told her an insane amount for how much I charge, then I joked. “I know how much the schools make and I know how much teachers make. I also know most schools will say they pay a lower rate than whatever the teacher requests, so I might as well request something really high, right? Ok, your turn.”
She told me a reasonable but low rate and I squirmed a bit and said “Come on, I can tell we are going to get along great, like I said, I’ll do anything you need as long as you respect my boundaries and I know this money isn’t coming out of your pocket. The more you pay me, the closer I am to living my dreams.”
She agreed to pay me 50% more than the average teachers were making, and over the next few weeks we became best friends. “I have no loyalty to any company but I can be loyal to you I feel you are a good person and a good boss, and you are”. We hung out on the weekends. She let me reject certain classes and students and helped me make a full time salary working part time hours for a year until she quit to go help her husband with his photography.
We are still great friends and meet up every now and then and that was the best formal job I ever had. I apologize that my portrayal of this conversation makes her sound like a pushover, she is actually a very strong and opiniative person who knows what she is doing, and I wasn’t dominating her in the interview like it sounds when I leave out her lines.
I also recognize that I had a lot of things going in my favor. Firstly she was desperate for a teacher and secondly it was obvious halfway through our first conversation that we are similar in how we deal with others.
Still, I think this is the best approach to take in any situation. When you act like yourself and remain confident without pretending to be better than you are, and also show that you respect and care about others and want to make their lives easier, things tend to go smoother, and you find yourself in a more pleasant situation.
