I haven’t woken up early in a long time, but today I had to because I was attending an interview at the Material Support Center in the morning.
Strictly speaking, this was my second structured interview. The first one was when I took the civil service selection exam in Anshun before graduating. Back then, I didn’t prepare seriously—I just watched a few videos to get familiar with the interview process. Naturally, the lack of preparation led to failure, though I was surprised to have made it to the interview stage with a completely unprepared written test.
This time, I thought I should put in some effort. If I wasn’t going to prepare properly, I might as well not go at all. So, I asked Huanhuan to help me practice for two evenings, and I also did some brief solo practice. Niwa was incredibly patient and thoughtful, explaining all sorts of interview details and precautions to me—so much so that I got a bit annoyed, haha. But deep down, I was really grateful to her.
Today, I left the house in a rush and ended up forgetting my ID card. However, the staff were very meticulous and checked my identity information through 12306 and Alipay, allowing me to proceed without having to go back for my ID or being denied entry.
After the check, I sat down in the waiting room, and the instinctive nervousness of an interview kicked in. I chatted briefly with the staff there, which helped me relax a little.
When it was time to draw lots for the interview order, I was the last to pick—there wasn’t much choice left. I ended up with number 3. Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of videos on Bilibili from interview training accounts that mock nervous candidates in funny skits. They always use “Candidate 3” as an example, so when I drew this number, I couldn’t help but laugh.
Then came the interview. Compared to my first time, I was much more relaxed, and everything felt natural. There were still many examiners—a small room packed with over ten people under bright lights.
There were three questions, with 15 minutes in total:
- A quote from Xi Jinping;
- Emergency response to natural disasters;
- A junior staff member unwilling to fulfill emergency duty obligations.
I hadn’t seriously practiced the first type of question, so I just said whatever came to mind—things like life values and patriotism. The second question was similar to what Huanhuan and I had practiced, so I was more familiar with it. For the third, I approached it with a people-oriented mindset, emphasizing understanding and leading by example in persuasion.
After the interview, I waited in the scoring room for what felt like forever. Time dragged on because we weren’t allowed to do anything—no talking, no reading, no phones. I don’t know how long I waited, but it seemed like they were discussing the scoring criteria for quite some time.
Finally, they called us over to hear our scores, and soon it was my turn. My final score: 85.8. I was quite satisfied with this result—barring any surprises, it should be the highest.