Security Industry Authority interview questions

I applied online. Had a call to organise a first interview on Teams which was a fairly informal chat with the outgoing Manager. As it was over Christmas there was a huge gap between interviews. Second interview was also on teams and felt disorganised. Partly due to me be being a complete novice at civil service interviews and not really giving them what they were after but I was bombarded with questions. Since having had another successful CS interview experience, with clear expectations on behaviours to be covered and signposted questions it could have been structured a lot better. I am still waiting to hear back from my second interview which is very poor. An email doesn’t take a lot of effort.

I was invited by email for a formal interview for a Graphic Designer role. The email was informative and prepared me well for the interview so that I knew what I needed to know about the organisation and what to study about them. They also offered a good range of timeslots to have the interview. A few days prior to the interview I fell very ill with a flu, however I still spent the majority of my weekend and evenings preparing for the interview and researching the organisation - this is my standard personal routine prior to job interviews. I was hoping to feel better by the time my interview approached, however I was not feeling better by any means, so naturally I emailed the SIA coordinator to ask if we could re-schedule to a later time in the week. They replied promptly but they said they weren't able to reschedule and that I was welcome to apply for future roles in the future. I didn't want to lose out on my opportunity so I decided to push through the illness and responded by asking if we could still proceed with the interview via Zoom video call, instead of the initially planned in-person interview. To which they replied yes, which was a relief, however I also understood that my impromptu illness was inconvenient and not their problem. I was still thankful that they compromised for me so that I could still partake in the interview. I was waiting in the Zoom meeting for an hour from the proposed meeting time, however I was still patiently determined as I was mindful that I had changed their plans by asking them to compromise and switch my interview to a Zoom call. After they joined the meeting after being an hour late, their connection was very bad and it took them even longer to figure out how to get their audio mic working. They cut in and out of the call a couple of times but I could see they were trying so I wasn't too bothered however I was still fighting through an illness on my end while I was waiting all this time. Once they got their connection working, they communicated that they needed to ask me one question before proceeding with the rest of the Interview. The question was how long was I living in the UK: To which I my answer did not meet their security clearance criteria. This meant that we could not proceed with the interview as they weren't able to hire me based on that one criteria alone. I said that it was okay, and that they seemed like lovely people to work with, and we said our goodbyes and parted ways. Despite the friendly goodbye, I was indeed very disappointed and regretted that I did not convey my frustration as I was really too occupied by trying to function through my illness. I had spent a lot of time on getting to know this organisation so that I could be as best prepared for the interview as possible. This is something that I think is expected for all people being offered interviews. However I think it's only fair to expect an equal level of communication from the employer. They had all the specific information they needed for the security clearance criteria, from my CV and Cover Letter, so they should have known whether I passed the criteria or not based on reading my application alone. If not, they could have simply asked me this before offering me an interview, or even better, made it clearer in their job application post so that I didn't also spend time applying for the role in the first place. I could have ultimately spent the many hours I spent on other job applications or simply resting while sick without the need to prepare for a job interview. I understand that the people on the panel who were going to interview me may not have been responsible for this, but I'd hope that the HR or hiring team fixes this so that future applicants don't have the experience I had.