How Long To Wait For An Interview

A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from a Peace Corps Placement Officer.  She was not the Placement Officer I mentioned in my last post.  This second Placement Officer acknowledged that I had indicated that I wanted to be considered for work in the sectors of Youth Development, Health and Environment.  She asked me whether nevertheless I would like to be considered for an Education Sector position in the country of South Africa.  In other words, she asked me if I would like to be considered for being a full-time teacher in South Africa.  In her e-mail, she included a couple of links.  One link was to a description of the specific volunteer position.  The other link was to a more general description of the Peace Corps' presence in South Africa.

I clicked on the link which described the particular volunteer position.  It indicated that the position required strong classroom management skills.  I called the Placement Officer and told her that I did not want to be considered for the teaching position.  She asked me why.  I explained that my ability to manage classroom misbehavior is the weakest link in my teaching skill set.

I capitalized on the opportunity to ask her some questions about the application process in general.  I asked her if there was any way to know how long it would take to have an interview.  She told me that there isn't really any way to know how long one will have to wait for an interview; she added that I might have to wait two more weeks for an interview, or I might have to wait two more months for an interview.  Given that I submitted my application on October 5, if I wait two more months for an interview, until mid-January, then it will have been three and a half months from submitting the application to interviewing.  However, she also told me that they are now just getting around to starting to deal with applications for positions which are scheduled to depart the US in July, August and September of next year.  Given that as of right now, the Peace Corps is considering me for a Health Advisor position in Benin, to depart the US in September 2016, I may be hearing soon about interviewing for that position...  

First Steps After Submitting Application

I'm excited to report that I've submitted a new application to once again be a Peace Corps Volunteer!  I've already detailed elsewhere how I've felt drawn back again to being a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).  I shared those thoughts on one of my other blogs, the one which has been describing life in the monastic community in which I've been living, and in which I was scheduled to become a monk early next year before I discerned that I am not going to become a monk.  Since I've already shared there why I'm not going to become a monk, and why I've felt drawn for quite a while to re-enlist in the Peace Corps, I won't redescribe those thoughts here.

I write at this particular point to let people know that I'm again applying to the Peace Corps.  I also write so I can share with others how my application process has been going.

To get more specific, I submitted my online application on October 5.  Within moments I received an autogenerated response from Peace Corps, in which they provided me with the information I had provided to them in my application.  They also informed me that I would soon be receiving another e-mail with a link where I would have to complete my Health History Form, in which an applicant tells the Peace Corps about medical and psychological conditions that he or she has had.  Indeed, within a couple of minutes, I received that e-mail.  That same night, I completed my Health History Form within a few minutes. 

The next day, October 6, I received another e-mail from Peace Corps, informing me that based on the information I had provided on the Health History Form, they had determined that they could potentially consider me for service in about 30 countries which they listed in that e-mail message.  In that e-mail, they asked me to click on a link and tell them my service preferences.

In the form I accessed through the link, I was able to select three specific countries.  As I started to think about specific countries I would list, I stopped.  I thought that if I wanted to go where God most wants me to go, I should mark that I would go where I was most needed, so that's what I marked.  These days applicants can apply to be a PCV in a specific country.  When I last applied to the Peace Corps, in 2009 and 2010, applicants could not apply to serve in specific countries.  They applied to the Peace Corps, and told Peace Corps where they would prefer to serve, but Peace Corps picked the country to which each applicant was invited. 

In that same form, they also asked me what kind of work I would like to do.  I told them I'd like to work in the sector of youth development, health or environment.

In the e-mail in which they asked me to tell them my service preferences, they also asked me to fill out a soft skills questionnaire.  In that form, they asked me to describe my personality in terms of what qualities and traits were most important to me.  In my upcoming Peace Corps service, how important was it to me to have experiences in which various parts of my personality were fed?  Peace Corps asks applicants to rank these traits to help get a better sense of a certain applicant's work style, and to determine in what type of environment a particular applicant will excel.

Then after that quick succession of e-mails between Peace Corps and myself, I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks.  Then, on October 21, I got an e-mail from the Peace Corps Placement Office informing me that they are considering me for the group departing for the country of Benin in September 2016.

I became a little bit curious.  The next day, on October 22, I e-mailed the Placement Office and asked them if they were considering me for a specific sector of work in Benin, or if their consideration of my application had not yet become that specific.  Within a few hours, a Placement Specialist had e-mailed me back, telling me that I'm being considered for the position of Community Health Advisor in Benin. 

Here is another difference from the last time I applied to the Peace Corps: back in 2010, the Placement Office only contacted me after I had gotten my medical, dental and legal clearances.  That is, the Placement Office contacted me only after Peace Corps had ascertained that I didn't have any medical or dental conditions that doctors wouldn't be able to accommodate in the countries where PCVs serve.  Back then, the Placement Office only contacted me after Peace Corps had determined that there were no legal impediments to my serving as a PCV; a person can't become a PCV if he or she is a party to a lawsuit, or has been convicted of certain offenses.  Now, at this point in my application process, I haven't even had an interview yet, and therefore haven't even begun going to a doctor or a dentist to get the forms filled out which will be used in processing my medical clearance and my dental clearance. 

And so... I wait for an interview.  In the meantime, please feel free to ask me questions.  I'm excited at the prospect of being a PCV again, so I am happy to talk about the Peace Corps! 

The invitation is in the mail

After being contacted yesterday by the Placement Officer, and responding to her immediately, I was settling in for another wait, perhaps a couple more weeks. Much to my surprise, I logged into my e-mail today and learned that an invitation is being sent to me in the mail this week. Needless to say, I am thrilled that it's on the way! I don't know what departure date or host country the invitation mentions... Stay tuned for another post, coming very soon!!!

Placement Officer Makes Contact

This morning, upon logging into my e-mail account, I saw that I had a message from the Peace Corps. When I opened it, I saw that it was not from the general e-mail account at the Placement Office, from which I had received previous messages from Placement. No, this was the actual Placement Officer. This is the final person with whom I will be in contact during the application process.

Now, the Placement Officer can say very different things to different people in this initial message, depending on the timeline for which they're considering someone. Some people, initially being contacted by the Placement Officer, receive an e-mail asking them something like, "We're considering you for a position in X country, leaving in six weeks. What do you think?"

In her e-mail message this morning, the Placement Officer asked me a half dozen general questions to help her evaluate me for a placement. That makes me think they're evaluating me in a less rushed fashion. So, it seems unlikely that she's going to contact me tomorrow, saying something like, "We know it's short notice, but would you be interested in departing for Benin (or Madagascar) in the middle of July?"

FYI, I've been regularly (but I honestly don't think obsessively) visiting the site www.peacecorpswiki.org and reviewing departure dates for various countries. That site contains information contributed by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as current applicants. It also has some information obtained from formal FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to the Peace Corps. So, it's a helpful source in terms of trying to look at where and when a potential invitation could invite me to go. That's where I came up with the theoretical invitations to Benin and Madagascar in July. But I digress.

So, the Placement Officer sent me some questions this morning. I felt that some of them were following up on questions I had been previously asked. For example, in my interview last September, I told the recruiter some steps I was going to take to prepare to enter the Peace Corps. In my response to the Placement Officer this morning, I told her the various things I have been doing to continue preparing to enter the Peace Corps: studying French; volunteering; attending Peace Corps information sessions, which, BTW, I have found to be probably my best source of information, since at them, I hear from former Returned Peace Corps Volunteers; reading about the Peace Corps; and figuring out what I'm going to do with my stuff, which will mostly be getting rid of it.

I have to say that it felt good to get that e-mail message this morning. When I posted a cryptic status update on Facebook today about being contacted by the "P.O.," my friends were jokingly writing that perhaps it meant "parole officer." I feel like I am about to embark on a grand, joyous, wonderful, beautiful adventure. By contrast, I also feel like I'm about to leave behind a line of work which I don't think I'm going to miss. Hence, I was happily amused at those jovial comments expressing symbolism of an escape out of something which I want to leave behind, and into an experience which I strongly suspect I am going to find incredibly liberating, empowering and enlightening.