Face to Face Interview!

The Face to Face interviews were scheduled on November 12^th at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. While I had a longer wait between the results of the application and the phone interview, the wait between the phone interview and the face to face interview was much worse for me. It seemed like it took forever, probably because I was anticipating this interview much more than the phone interview. Between the application and the phone interview, I also had much more to distract myself with, including writing my Major Research Paper for my Master’s degree, defending said paper and writing my LSATs. I did start a volunteer job at a law office though, so between this and working at Wendy’s I was still plenty busy.

Leading up to the interview, I read and re-read through a number of blogs. I wanted to make sure I was as ready as possible. I read through the jot notes that I had created for my phone interview a bunch of times. I also put together a folder with all of the documents that I needed for the interview. This included the application forms, copies of the main page of my passport and I brought several reference letters, which weren’t required but I thought would add to my application and help me stand out.

For the day of the interview, everyone was required to wear business/professional attire. This allowed me the opportunity to go shopping for a new interview outfit! I wore a purple dress top, a black and white plaid skirt, a black jacket, black tights, and black heels (which I got a ridiculous number of compliments on!)

In order to meet other applicants that were interviewing, we were directed to another facebook group for those candidates who were applicants for the Canadian CRP for 2013. Through this group, a number of us organized to meet the night before the interview in Toronto and have dinner together at The Olde Spaghetti Factory.

Since we were meeting the night before the interview and the interview was to start at 8:30am on the 12^th, I got a hotel room the night before the interview. My dad and I got Barrie Burger for lunch (a small burger chain in Barrie that is absolutely delicious!) and listened to the Toronto Argonauts beat the Edmonton Eskimos in the Canadian Football League playoffs on the radio!

I met up with the people from the interview at The Olde Spaghetti Factory at 7pm. There were about 15 of us in total. It was so easy to talk with everyone and made the next day so much more comfortable. The dinner was a great way to meet people, some of which I will be working with in a few months!

On the day of the interview, we were to arrive and check in with the people from Yummy Jobs at 8:30am. I met up in the lobby of the Marriott with some of the people that I had met the night before and we all headed over to the interview together. I was sure that I would have gotten lost had I tried to find the location myself! We headed up to the ninth floor, where our presentation was to be and were met with a hallway full of people! After checking in and making small talk with everyone waiting in the hallway, we headed into one of the rooms for our Disney presentation!

The presentation covered everything that we would need to know about the CRP. We had Jill and Carrie for our presentation and they were our Disney interviewers as well. There were some trivia questions with prizes awarded, but I didn’t get chosen. Two of the people that I met from the dinner the night before the interview won prizes though! We were told that we would hear our results from the interview by November 19^th, a week later.

After this, we got our interview times. They scheduled the interviews by distance away from Toronto, with those who had travelled the furthest having the first interviews. As my city is only about an hour away from Toronto, I was part of the last group of interviewees. I had to check back in with Kristen from Yummy Jobs by 4pm, which meant that I had about six hours to kill before checking back in and than some more waiting before I actually had my interview.

In order to kill some time, a few of us went to the Eaton Centre. We sat around the food court in the mall for several hours, had lunch, got some Starbucks and I headed back up with the people that had to check in again at 2:15 and 2:30. I checked in early and waited around with everyone as they went into their interviews. While it was a bit of a wait, I got to know some more people that I hadn’t had the chance to talk to before.

On the majority of the blogs that I read, people who participated in the face to face interviews were interviewed with another person. We got to go in for our interviews individually, with Jill interviewing half of the candidates and Carrie interviewing the other half. I had my interview with Carrie. I was scheduled for 6pm, but the interviews were running early so I went in at 5:45.

My interview with Carrie went really well, I felt. It was more like a chat than an actual interview and I felt really comfortable from the start. I wasn’t actually nervous going into the interview; I was just ready to get it done after my long day of waiting. My interview started with the basic Disney look questions about tattoos and piercings. I was asked a lot about my experiences working at Wendy’s for the past six years when I was not away at university. I was asked about my university experiences and living with people from different cultures. I was also asked about my choices that I had made for the CRP position (whether I wanted to work in Food & Beverage, Merchandise, or Attractions and in which order).

After my interview I headed back to Barrie with my dad (who works in Toronto and picked me up afterwards). The next morning, I received a text message from Laura at 7:50am telling me to wake up because the emails had been sent out. I ran up the stairs, turned on my computer and checked my email. I had an email entitled “Walt Disney World!” After opening it, my eyes went right to the section that stated:

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Disney World would like to offer you a Role in Food and Beverage

 on the Cultural Representative Program starting

January 29^th, 2013- January 24^th, 2014

Needless to say, I freaked out! I screamed so loud that I woke up both my brother and my sister and my mom thought that I had seen a mouse (insert Mickey Mouse pun here!) It had to be one of the best emails I had ever received! I had to send an email back accepting the position by the end of the work day and I sent back a very excited YES! with a ridiculous number of “thank yous” attached. Immediately afterwards, I went on facebook and found out that a number of people that I had met over the past two days had received acceptances! I was part of the first group that would head out in 2013 with mostly people from the previous set of interviews. It was only 78 days until my program would start in Florida! My dream to work at Disney had come true! 

Currently Listening to: “Hoodie Weather” by The Wonder Years from the album Suburbia, I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing