Today we heard from Jen Bennett about the interviewing process! Here are the meeting notes:
Jen Bennett
Bennett.1075@osu.edu
- There’s no perfect candidate – bring your uniqueness to the table
- Don’t interview without practicing. Even 15-20 minutes of practicing can make a difference! It’ll make you more comfortable
- Look at interviewing as storytelling
- You already have your own expertise (your own stories)
- Leadership potential
- Take a look at interview skills
- Your empathy and exposure to diversity
- Resiliency
- USE EXPERIENCES TO DISPLAY COMPETENCY, SKILL, AND POTENTIAL
- Self awareness
- A source of confidence
- Can talk about something that you know well
- Get to know your accomplishments, missteps, your personality, your core values, your goals, your strengths and weaknesses, your competitive edge
- Explore assessment tools to get to know yourself better or meet with a counselor
- Stories bring specificity and they’re memorable/hold attention
- List your experiences
- Use your resume, mentoring, jobs, internships, hobbies, talents, research, etc.
- Develop 6 basic stories
- When you solved a problem
- A time when you overcame a challenge
- When you made a mistake (be selective)
- When you were a leader (how did you impact others?)
- When you worked with a team
- When you did something interested
- Crafting your stories
- Highlight your advantage
- Have a beginning/middle/end
- Vary the setting
- How you impacted the outcome
- How you turned a negative into a positive
- Some high school experiences are okay (like big moments) but try to have more recent examples
- Practice telling your stories
- To a friend, to yourself in the mirror, use a video
- Create a cheat sheet to study and for your interview if you draw a blank
- STAR Method to respond to interview questions
- Formula for responding to behavioral interview questions – talking about yourself in action
- “Tell me about a time when…” or “Give me an example of…”
- Situation/Task
- Describe the situation/task
- Be specific
- Action
- Results Achieved
- What happened, what did you accomplish, what did you learn, what changed
- For narrative questions: create an elevator pitch
- The “Performance” of interviewing
- AVOID THESE ANSWERS
- I’m a people person
- I love working with people
- I want to help people
- I’m hardworking
- I’m dedicated
- I don’t quit
- I’m passionate
- I’m organized
- ^ great things to say about yourself, but DESCRIBE how you’re hardworking/dedicated, how you work with people, etc.
- Go deep
- Don’t just report on your first bad grade, instead talk about your transformation into college
- Apply reflection
- Be yourself
- Conduct a practice interview
- Interviewing the interviewer
- What do you need to know to make a school decision
- Ask thoughtful questions and make them go deep
- Ex:
- How does your program define success
- What differentiates you from others
- How would you describe the culture of the program
- What initiatives are you working on for the future
- Who are your most successful alumni
- Interviews are similar to auditions or performances
- Practice feeling uncomfortable
- Improv comedy exercises can help with flexibility and agility in delivering question responses
- Flex your imagination
- Take any object and demonstrate using it in a way that it’s not intended to be used
- Harness the power of pretend
- Talk about something that you don’t know anything about but practice being convincing
- Yes…and…
- Practice keeping a conversation going by using yes…and -accept and build from what is said by others
- Your mission:
- Build content for interview
- Practice the delivery
- Consider the pro tips
- Flex your imagination
- AVOID THESE ANSWERS