VSO selection

The selection process is totally different now, but becoming accepted for VSO no doubt remains a lengthy process with no certainty. In the Autumn of 2008 I began with two stages of a written application. If you are successful to this point you are invited to interview. My interview was in March 2009.

I arrived at the Putney office just before 9am. I got up at 6am and was at the station for 7am as I knew it would take me a while to get across London on the tube. They had also stressed a 9am start and that if you arrived later you would be sent home. In the end we were left in a room without being offered a tea or coffee until 9.30am. There were 2 groups. The ones with the blue name sticker were for the 2 years stint and the red group were on much shorter placements organized by their work – more like 2 months. In the blue group were 5 women including myself.

• A 62 year old Scottish woman who was a retired primary teacher.
• A 30 plus young woman from Newport who worked as a youth outreach worker.
• A 25 year old Romanian whose father had run 3 large tyre factories in Romania. He had been set on in the street with an iron bar and went into a coma. Alina and her twin brother had been brought back from their studies at a university in the states to run the factories.
• A 25 year old paediatrics doctor.

The first exercise was an ice breaker to position ourselves in the room in a country we would like to be – it didn’t have to be anything to do with VSO. I chose the Galapagos Islands. The Romanian chose Antartica but went and stood in the Arctic. The second exercise was running a production line to produce newspaper booklets to a model with a pile of newspapers, a pair of scissors, a ruler and a stapler. You have to agree how you will do it then make 3 production runs with a period of review in between to try and see how you can improve production. The purpose is to see how you perform in teams on a task.

Then I had my interview with an older person ex volunteer who had been to Cambodia. This was to look at whether you had the right aptitudes to cope with VSO. It started off quite stressfully as she had been given inaccurate information on my work history to date and was trying to question me about gaps that didn’t exist. The stressful thing was she had the dates in a muddle and when we are talking about a 30 year work history and not necessarily chronologically I couldn’t reel off the dates and it began to make me feel that I was lying. I was also frustrated as I had put all the stuff on the form anyway and it had been transposed inaccurately.

Anyway, that was the most stressful part of the interview which went on for about an hour and a half. I had been expecting to get an absolute grilling and was worried that I might get too emotional, but there was little emotionally searching stuff – it was more about transferable skills relating to my work experience and I could give lots of examples. I was expecting to be asked about protective sex so wasn’t phased by it and I had thought through my family issues. In the end I just presented myself as single as FP doesn’t want to go and was disinterested (not in an unkind way) in getting involved in the process otherwise.

After lunch we had a dilemma exercise. Basically the dilemma was that you arrived at your placement and there was no place ready for you to live. You have seven options and you have to choose one and say why. The long and short of it is that most of them have some political, religious or cultural reason why it might be dodgy and the one thing you have to preserve amongst all else is a) your reputation and b) your neutrality. Three people chose to stay with a colleague while the youth worker and I chose to stay with an indigenous family. I said it was because it may be the only time I get the opportunity to do this and absorb myself in the language and cooking and that I like animals and babies. Some people wouldn’t do this because of lack of privacy. Then we had to agree among ourselves one solution and at this point we became aware that everyone had different information on the cards. In the end everyone opted for the family.

After that we had to do a little feedback scatter map each of the day and then we all left and went to the pub.

The Romanian had been told she didn’t have enough work experience which is pants as she had sent her CV, had been recommended by Romanian VSO, and flown over for the interview. The doctor was hauled back in because one of her references had said she had had a slight breakdown over a family issue and she had said her mental health was fine. The scots woman was just painfully honest about everything and the Welsh girl was just a bundle of fun.

That’s it now – I wait to hear. I was SO relieved it was over. I hadn’t realized what a state I was in about it except that I was rushing to the toilet all the time. I feel OK about how I performed and don’t think I would have done anything differently.

After this there is a long wait.