October 26th, 2016

Post date: Jan 26, 2017 9:14:33 PM

Four of us met last night at Dysart's (3 PWS - Mike, Ravi, and myself; and 1 spouse, Jane) and we had a good dinner and lively discussion.  We missed the rest of you!  Jane and Mike will be off to Florida soon and Marybeth is back from trips to Italy and Virginia.  She stutters in Rome just as easily as in the USA! 

After checking in, Ravi reported that the grant he is currently working under at the University of Maine is over in December and so he is currently looking for a job. He has had three phone interviews thus far and has had a second interview for one of them! This led into our major topic of the night!!...stuttering and phone interview, job interviews and the impact of stuttering on your job performance. Mike shared from his vast experience of both moving through several jobs in his "long" life and also from the perspective of being a town manager and being on the other end as he had interviewed and hired many many kinds of municipal employees. Ravi shared that although his first phone interview didn't go that well, he learned a lot from it and really prepared for the next ones and knew that they had gone well. I think we all agreed that when approaching these types of situations its important to 1) be upfront about informing the interviewer that you stutter so he understands what he's hearing and 2) to be confident in your job skills and ability to do the job because you wouldn't have gotten that far in any job hunt process if the potential employer didn't think you had the skills. 

You can use this confidence and knowledge to know that the future employer is interested in you and wants to hear what you have to say.