Hey everybody!
The interview has finally concluded.
I feel good about it (now). Yesterday was an epic failure. The DoD and subsidiary agencies are operating remotely in many instances as are we all due to the current COVID-19 crisis. This includes the agency conducting my background investigation. I received notice and invitation to a videoconference meeting via Microsoft Teams. Yesterday the Special Agent and I spent almost an hour trying to get me connected using the instructions and invitations (plural) she generated for our meeting, all to no avail. It was very discouraging.
We decided to try again today, but with the appointment booked as the last one on her schedule for the day in case we needed to hammer out the problems we encountered yesterday. This turned out to be a good idea. I won't go into / speculate why it didn't work. Well, not much. I used to be the mercenary admin for several companies that needed this work done but had no interest in doing the necessaries themselves. I had some thoughts on the matter.
But I did not think it was appropriate to barge in and mansplain to this person what she was doing wrong. That seemed very, very inappropriate. We worked together, me taking her lead, try, try, trying again and again to get the systems to connect using the instructions.... computer says not no hell no.
Finally, today, we/she got to the end of her rope after the better part of an hour trying to make it work. She said she'd contacted her tech support people and their first opening for assistance was tomorrow at 10am. Turns out I had some undeployed rope of my own. I explained that I have done this work for a living, that this was the work I was applying to do, etc, etc. and that I had some suggestions. I told her I'd done some research on the error messages displayed on my machine, found a useful FAQ from the Coast Guard related to this issue, and let's try something different. OK!
Well, we tried what I suggested and it worked. I believe there is some kind of misconfiguration in the template that she is using to generate the emailed invitation--that one never worked and we tried repeatedly. The instructions clearly state, and I quote:
Quote:
CONNECT
Please follow the personalized link below to access your video interview.
(link redacted)
|
Narp.
Her workflow produced two messages per invitation and I copied the contents of a link in the preceding message from her and was able to make it work. We finally got our respective computers to each display the camera feed of the other, audio worked, all was great! The interview was an anticlimax after that struggle, even if it did take more than an hour recovering ground I'd covered in the original *very* extensive background form.
We concluded the interview both glad to have finally succeeded. She said it had to go to a reviewer then to an adjudicator and then god knows where, but it seemed to be moving expeditiously. Spoken like an employed person, I said to myself.
Anyhow, back to waiting for the email to ring.