There were obviously a few people that missed the deadline to register for the first batch of candidates for the MCA programme and it did the rounds on some blogs and IT news sites.  Amongst the news circulating were statements that only one in five of the candidates applying were going to make it past the initial screening.  Although I don’t consider myself in the bottom eighty percent of anything, it was enough to make me nervous.  Obviously I have no idea of the kinds of people that have been applying – are they really hot architects, PowerPoint Architects or just hopeful developers?

More than a month after I submitted my written application I received an email scheduling the phone screen for the next week.  A month  is plenty of time to work up doubts, concerns and second thoughts, but I did use the time constructively.  Although a clear theme within the MCA programme is that you cannot study for it – you are either an architect or not – only experience will change it; but I didn’t think there would be much harm in brushing up on some of the latest trends, jargon and such.  I suppose that this was beneficial in some respects, but did also raise concerns that although I believe that I know my architectural niche backwards, there are whole heaps of architectural ‘stuff’ that I only have cursory knowledge – plenty of space for trick questions and ‘I don’t know’ answers.  In those few weeks I found myself asking a lot of questions and verbalising some of my thoughts on this blog.

The email that I received proposed two time slots that my 30 to 60 minute phone screen could be scheduled in.  After a response and a confirmation I had my interview scheduled.  The supporting documentation was quite interesting and useful – one provided a useful guide which I assume was the reference sheet that the interviewer would use. In the content of one of the emails the author went to great pains to explain the process and the necessity for personal interaction with the screeners/mentors and noted that there was limited capacity and that candidates would be ‘invited to continue in the program based on the stack ranking until all slots are filled’ – another (formal) reminder of the bottom eighty percent threat.

I tried to schedule my interview for when I was home from work and not during my commute and had it pegged for 7pm.  I wish the Americans would understand that Pacific Standard Time is much easier expressed as GMT-7 for the rest of the world – it was something that I had to look up; I even tried to confirm the time expressed as GMT something, but failed to elicit a response.  I made sure I was available in plenty of time and began a long, nervous wait where I read over my submissions as a reminder of what the interviewer had in front of him.  When my scheduled time was long overdue I started to think about what my waiting threshold would be – a phone call at 1 am wouldn’t be the best time for a difficult interview.  Fortunately my interviewer sent me a ‘I’m running late email’ and phoned a bit later – enough time for me to Google him which, although didn’t help me much, at least indicated that we would not be totally misaligned.

Eventually the phone rang, starting off disjointed during the first few seconds until we adjusted to the two second time lag.  I quickly dropped a disclaimer that the time difference would render me blunter than usual due to the lateness of the hour which was quickly answered with “Don’t worry, it’s not that kind of interview’ – setting up for a more relaxed environment.  The interview started with my interviewer, Charles, going over the objectives of the MCA programme and even though I have been following it closely, some additional insights were provided that were not in the official documentation.  I realised that he had already had a tough morning, some really difficult conversations and even some careful letting down of candidates that began to realise that they were not up to the grade.  Before we got into the swing of the interview he was interrupted and had to disappear for a few minutes – already running late, I could picture email and meeting requests building up while he took up a huge chunk of his day on something that was not related to his usual job functions.

Charles pointed out that he liked what he saw in my submission documents (good, he read them properly) and wouldn’t go through every single detail in each competency area.  He started off by asking me to introduce myself, which I tried to answer as briefly as possible while still trying to impress.  He then asked me why I chose the particular case study, which I answered differently from my submission which he had in front of him.  He then said he would ask me some random questions to asses my knowledge and abilities, but asked only one – about the testing process on the project which applied to my case study which I answered in a lot of detail (probably too much) – the completeness with which I addressed this in the project and the two second lag, which prevented any ‘Please Stop!’ interjections, meant that I covered all bases and probably waffled a bit.  By the end I am sure he thought that he was speaking to the same person who wrote the submission documents and probably decided not to give me another chance to bore him with another exhaustive answer to a random question.

He gave me some positive feedback and mentioned that I would be a good candidate to put forward.  I was grateful and positive about the feedback but could still picture the ‘stack ranking’ of other candidates that could push me off the acceptance list.  Before closing off the interview he asked if I had any other questions – never having spoken directly to someone who has been through the programme I jumped at the chance, while trying to be considerate that he had other stuff to do and other candidates to screen.  Although I have architected big, complex systems my case study was not one of those and I raised my concern that possibly the suitability of the architect was measured by the number of interfaces or the size of the database (as total budget is used by project managers for dick measuring) – he quickly put those concerns at ease.

I wrapped up the phone call by thanking Charles for his time and his input and left him to get back to other nervous candidates who were waiting for his call.

The schedule promised a result of the screening process by 1 September 2006, and on the day I received an email announcing a delay in the screening process.  I was not surprised as things ran a bit over when I was scheduled but was disappointed that I would have to wait for two more weeks.

I don’t know the final outcome of the screening, hopefully I’ll let you know this Friday.

Simon Munro