A Terrible Experience: My First Video Interview

If you thought Skype calls were bad, allow me to introduce you to video interviews. You may be required to complete one when you're applying to a university and in-person interviews can't be arranged. You might think that these sorts of interviews are good and can be carried out wearing pyjamas or a lungi and a formal shirt in the comfort of your home – but you're wrong.

A few weeks ago I had to sit for an online video interview for a business school. This means I had to create an account, use a computer with a functioning microphone and webcam, and respond to questions in real time - none of that rehearsed, pre-recorded answers nonsense. It was my first time and I got dressed in formal wear and took my laptop to my cousin's house because the DeshiTiger internet connection at my house is a joke. I had spent the previous night researching on the university and preparing answers on why I'm interested in Economics as a major. You can imagine my disbelief when one of the five questions was "Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?" I kid you not. I had a 15 second preparation time before the 1 minute response time and all of it was being recorded and saved, to be viewed by an admissions committee. This means they saw me sitting there, my expression changing from shock, to panic, to wanting to be punched in the face by Superman himself. What was I thinking, right? As a Comic book noob applying to a business school, I should have foreseen this question.

I tried my best to recall my nerdy friends debating about this in the past and somewhat managed to answer the question. The next few questions were reasonable enough and this helped me regain my confidence. Although I chose an empty room to carry out the interview and I shut the door, it wasn't enough to drown out the sounds of my baby cousin wailing outside the room or the domestic help complaining that the freezer was devoid of fish. I tried my best to ignore it and raised my voice during my answers to drown out the embarrassing sounds, so I probably sounded more aggressive than I had intended while explaining my stance on electric cars.  I'll never really know, because I wasn't even allowed to replay my saved responses. 

I was told that with 5 questions, the interview should take around 15-20 minutes, but thanks to the internet connection I had to sit there for a whole hour, trying to smile politely but not come across as creepy. This was extremely difficult because there was no interviewer on the other side (the questions just appeared in writing) and no human face to focus on. Talk about awkward. When it was finally over and the screen read "Thank you, your interview has been completed successfully" I was relieved beyond explanation, mainly because I could finally go to the bathroom.