Penumbra Interview Questions
& Process

So I went for an interview for the mental health and wellbeing service at Penumbra in Aberdeen. It was face to face with the service manager and a senior practitioner at their head office. They have loads of services but this one was for mental health and wellbeing. They made me feel really comfortable, and I had a good chat with them both before we really got going. They asked me stuff about the role and mostly about what I've done before and what I can bring to it.

Got a text from a temp agency saying they wanted to do a virtual interview on Jobfairx. I got on early and the recruiter (who wasn't the person from the text) joined and was having tech issues. I couldn't hear him and the call dropped. He called my cell and I answered right away. He didn't pick up, but called back like 15 minutes later. We started to talk about my resume and I felt weird because he made some discouraging comments, like 'your experience is with banking not IT...ooohhh I'll have to see what they say'. He said I'd hear back by Friday. Two weeks passed and I finally got the rejection email.

The interview process involved looking at a report that's used to gauge wellbeing. You'll need to be able to read basic graphs and discuss progress in different areas. After that, there's an interview with three people: a senior staff member (like an area manager), the hiring manager, and someone who is currently getting support from Penumbra, which is good because they get a say in who works with them. It's all about competency-based questions, and you have a lot of freedom to use examples from your daily life, not just work experience. Be ready for probing questions, maybe some good cop/bad cop tactics, or being asked to repeat yourself to see how well you communicate and adjust your language for different people.

The interview process really showed their values of respect and dignity - or lack thereof. It was an online interview that took an hour, and then they wanted another 30 minutes for a task. I used to work for Penumbra and had a terrible experience with a manager there before, but I thought I'd try again in a different position and service area, so I was pretty optimistic. But the attitude during the interview was really bad towards me from the start. They didn't even bother to tell me I was rejected, just got an automatic email days later. Definitely not worth using my annual leave for!