The hiring process was one that was long, and clearly geared to elite current or recent college graduates, or elite graduates of good schools with a few years of work experience. During the interview process my own elite education got me to the "final interview" phase, where my nightmarish journey commenced. For grown-ups with say, 20 to 30 years of work or life experience TFA had you jump through hoops. My Carter administration transcripts in 2016! Really not reflective of much. There were short answers which were timed, but not correctly timed. So, set your phone to the 20 minute mark to make sure you get your answers in on time. The questions were about your experience in underserved communities and commitment to education inequities. But, really they want to know if you have big plans to work for TFA and then leverage that into something like an elite law school, medical school or business school which you would not be successful in getting into without the resume builder. There was very, very, very little emphasis on actual teaching, except for a ridiculous 5 minute lesson you are to give in front of your colleagues or should I say college students who in my case were mute and non-responsive to most others instead of interacting. The 5 minute lesson must be perfect. Bring posters, plan an interactive group activity keeping everyone busy. Make sure to state your objective and make sure you meet this objective. I got nervous, went off my well-rehearsed script and choked, which was the cloak of doom in an already doomed "ageism" or "person who worked full-time in the home" elitist scripted interview day. Now, mind you I have degrees from Yale, NYU and such with honors and years of experience, have tried many jury trials and want to return to work after family obligations are no longer such that I cannot work outside of the home. I want to teach and work in underserved schools. I have a recently minted degree with honors up the wazoo that would train me to be great in the classroom, but not necessarily in a five minute lesson where it is artificially limited and you are cut off at exactly five minutes. Kids don't have expiration dates, so while classes have time limits and there are lesson plans, it makes no sense to have a full day of interviews with most of the day pushing the "we create masters of the universe" who teach maybe for the two year commitment and then go on to great things and send our name throughout the world, instead of a full day of teaching related tasks. Instead, you will have an insane and inane policy question which as a group you will have to answer, which is the kiss of death for anyone who actually knows about education policy, because the TFA push is to talk about community and outreach and ... getting to see a pattern here, anything but actually supporting teachers in the classroom who might stay and teach after they have some experience doing so. So, be prepared to spend the day with people, who in my case, did not speak with each other during the breaks, showed themselves to be perfectly prepared with perfect five minute lessons, but no people skills, no ability to empathize. They will get offers.

The interviewer will not give you any indication of what they are thinking throughout the interview and comes off as very cold. This is just how they are instructed to act during the interview so don't let it throw you off!