Interview season for professional schools has begun!
Heads Up! With Thanksgiving, right around the corner, it is a terrific time to remind those of you who are (or will be) interviewing for professional schools, jobs and fellowships to send thank you notes. One of the standard steps of applying for opportunities, this type of professional correspondence is often overlooked by applicants. In many situations, a thank you note can be influential in moving you to the next stage in the process, or even obtaining an offer.
As you prepare for graduate, professional school or job interviews, you may be asked a question related to diversity. Interviewers are very interested in selecting candidates who are aware of and who will contribute to the diversity mission of their organization. Have you practiced how you will answer diversity-related questions? In Career Services, we have seen trainees range in their comfort level about addressing diversity topics. Some trainees have several experiences to answer these questions, that said—many others are unsure how to approach answering the question.
Behavior based interviewing is an effective tool used by many science industry recruiters and graduate/professional school admissions officers. They differ from technical or scientific interviews because they are designed to give a glimpse into how you will perform in the future on “soft skills” by having you reflect and talk aloud about behaviors that you have done in the past.
One of the current trends in the application process for industry positions is to use video interviewing. Currently, business, science, and technology companies are using video interviews as the first step in the interviewing process after a candidate applies for a position because it saves money and staff time for the firms to screen candidates prior to inviting them for face-to face interviews.
One of the most important criteria to consider during the job, graduate school, or Postdoc search is to learn about the culture of the place where you are applying. This means to gather information about the employee’s opinions of the work environment, the support and benefits that they receive, and the values that drive the organization. This is important because you will work and /or study in this environment for many years and you want to find a good fit for your interests and personal style. But how do you assess this when you are applying?