I got into Atlanta on a Friday, scheduling a two day stay for the interview process. My friend, who was also applying, secured accomodations with a friend who was living near the Hilton where the interviews were to take place. Seeing as how the drive from Orlando was terribly long we thought it best to rest up for the early interview the following morning. And so we awoke in pomp and splendor in our best shoes and suits, clean shaven and with dapper new haircuts, ready to take this thing by the short hairs.
The introduction began at 11:00 sharp in the room that AEON had reserved for the meetings and interviews. They spent about two hours going over the minutia of their textbooks, lesson structures, the types of schools, work days, vacation time, school atmospheres, grammar and function lessons, and considerations for a potential employee’s financial situation, as well as their health, emotional state, documents, and commitment. It was pretty enjoyable and informative. The video in particular that they showed really pumped me up about going over to Japan to work. I understand that everything was being sugar coated and that I was watching their presentations through a kaleidoscope of hopeful expectations and Japanese cultural euphoria, but I never got the impression that the two AEON representatives were trying to fool us or make their company out to be something that it wasn’t.
There were about 30 other people there, all dressed appropriately sharp aside from the one or two odd-balls who wore jeans or leather jackets or sneakers. Nice guys all, but many appeared to be socially maladroit. The sort of lot that you might stereotypically envision as those who would pursue a life in japan simply by the virtue of their cultural infatuation with Japan’s animated exports. Whether or not this was a large deterrent for them during the interview process, I can’t say. I have no idea how many people were or were not accepted, and this seems to remain a closely guarded secret by the AEON staff.
Anyway, after their spiel was said and done, they gave each of us a time for a group interview where we would be presenting a five minute portion of a previously prepared thirty minute lesson plan. I focused my lesson on prepositions even though I never explicitly explained this to the group of 7 other interviewees who were acting as my “students.” Because the lesson is oriented towards beginner students of English, I figured that any exaggerated explanations or complex words would simply fall upon deaf ears. Unfortunately, many of my peers either failed to understand this point or didn’t care, as their lessons were wrought with lengthy diatribes and explanations upon the finer points of English grammar. My lesson was much more casual, and I incorporated several different techniques that I had picked up on earlier in the day from one of the AEON employees when he gave us a sample lesson and had us participate. Lots of repetition, and lots of enthusiasm peppered with simple instruction. I had the distinct impression that execution was much more important than content. After all, you’re not expected to know how to give a lesson to students who speak a foreign native language. They’ll provide that training for you.
When everyone finished their mini-lesson, we were shuffled back out into the lobby where we waited for about 20 minutes until the interviewers came back out with sealed envelops that held within them our fate, and after a short lecture about how it’s not appropriate to open them in front of everyone else, we were off and back in our cars. Fortunately for me, I was invited back to a second hour-long personal interview the next day.
It went about as I expected it would. It was a pretty normal interview aside from a 5 minute on-the-spot lesson I had to prepare and deliver to the interviewer. Otherwise I was just grilled about whether or not I was ready for the commitment, the level of support from my friends and family, and if I could understand that AEON was a business that had to do business-like things to, well, stay in business. Things like selling learning material to students and performing sample lessons to potential customers and sticking to a strict lesson plan to teach students. Some people seem to take great offense at these things as though they thought they were getting into a Greenpeace charity venture, but I accept it as par for the course.
I drove home that same day, and about a week and a half later I got a call telling me that I’d be hired and a position would be found for me as soon as I was able to send them either my diploma or an official letter of graduation, and that’s where I stand now, three weeks away from graduation.
