If you have your interview scheduled in a hotel –BEWARE – the Agents are staying in the same hotel!
Funny story and a piece of advice to your future candidates when going into Phase 2.
On the day of my Phase 2, I got dressed and went down to the lobby to get some breakfast before the big day.
On my way down, I ran into a woman in the elevator that was in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and looked like she just woke up 2 minutes ago. She obviously was going down to get some breakfast and go right back to sleep.
I greeted her in the elevator and let her leave first when it was time to exit. As I suspected she was going down to get breakfast as well. We were both in line and she was indecisive on what you wanted to eat and almost ran into me with her food getting real close to spilling her food on my suit. She apologized for almost running into me but instead of me getting mad at her or telling her to be more careful, I smiled at her and told her don’t worry about it she is totally fine.
She thanked me and asked my name. I told her and said it was great to meet her and we both went our separate ways.
As the seven of us Phase 2 candidates had just got done with our writing portion, we were asked to wait in the lobby while we were assigned our panel rooms in preparation for the interviews. She asked us to line up and head to our panel rooms.
I get to my panel room, knocked the door to be let in and sure enough I was greeted by the lady that I ran into in the elevator and at the breakfast line. This time she was dressed up and I now found out she was the special agent that wanted to interview me.
She smiled at me, told me I conducted myself this morning just like she would want an FBI agent to be with the public and we went about our interview.
I would like to think that I passed my Phase 2 interview because of all the preparation I did and not how I acted before the interview but I’m sure it didn’t hurt either.
Although my behavior wouldn’t have changed the way I normally treat people regardless of this situation or who is watching.
My advice to any candidates going into the interview, is to treat everybody kindly, respectfully and professionally from the minute you board your plane to when you get back home because you never know who you will run into throughout the Phase 2 process and how your behavior could affect the opportunity of a lifetime.