Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Hi all,

Failing is hard. It’s even harder when you’re failing but don’t know until the last moment.

This can happen when testing for level 3. You’ve been underprepared in an area that doesn’t reveal itself until you’ve submitted your L3 checklist. You’re working on your pre-event interview, an in-depth process where many aspects of your judging ability are examined. Your interviewer sees you going towards a Major Deficiency, and has no choice but forward their conclusion to the panelists. As a result, during the whole panel, the panelists know you will not be promoted, but still maintain a straight face while interviewing you. In the end, you’re not promoted, and it dawns upon you that the panel’s conclusions must have been obvious already in the PEI. You’re angry. The weeks between the two feel like a waste of time.

Is the above fair? Hardly. Is it a common scenario? Not that common, but it has definitely happened a few times.

The main takeaway is that a deficiency was detected early, but instead of giving the candidate a chance to learn, the process blindly goes on. Instead, those weeks between the initial assessment of the deficiency and the panel’s event could have been dedicated to learning and starting to fix the identified deficiency.

That’s why we are slightly modifying the testing process:

If, during the course of the Pre-Event Interview, the interviewer suspects a Major Deficiency, two members of the L3 Panel Lead group will be invited to examine the interview, so as to have as objective an assessment as possible. If a Major Deficiency is found or if 3 or more Minor Deficiencies are found, the candidate is informed and the panel is delayed. In that case:

• full feedback based on the information collected so far is provided by the pre-event interviewer;
• interviewing can resume at a later point, at least 3 months and at most 12 months from the moment it’s interrupted;
• in order to resume interviewing, the candidate must receive two reviews from L3 judges testifying of progress in the identified deficiencies.

We hope this is going to improve experience and let candidates go back on track faster.

(note: a previous version of this post mentioned a choice by the candidate to panel immediately or to delay – this was wrong and been corrected above. Apologies for any misunderstanding – Daniel)

Thanks for reading,

Daniel