I’ve recently been helping my brother prepare for university admissions interviews. It’s interesting watching “mini-me” going through the same steps and making the same mistakes I made. Except I didn’t have a wiser older brother to point things out.
Where does my wisdom come from anyway? Co-op interviews? It’s not like the university is trying to hire you. And yet, somehow the advice is all the same.
Set a concrete finish line. Especially the first time, interview preparation can feel like an infinite task. And that is true, but thinking of it this way gets in the way of getting it done. At some point, you need to get on with life. Maybe that’s after some number of practice questions. Maybe you’re preparing in the shower and need to finish before the hot water runs out. Or maybe it’s when your mentor says you’re ready.
Practice good storytelling. In business lingo you might hear this get called the STAR method, but that’s prescriptive. Learning the STAR method is a good way to start, but you should eventually be comfortable enough to depart from the format when you feel like it.
Record yourself talking and then watch it back. You might catch mannerisms that you don’t realize you have. Things to look out for include word choice, speed, eye contact, and what you’re doing with your hands.
You know everything about yourself, but they don’t need to. If you (like me) feel the need to include every detail, practice suppressing that urge. It can improve the flow, and often the details don’t help your case at all. (Of course, there’s a balance here. Twisting the story by omission is just as unethical.)
Always speak with an audience in mind. Put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes. What do they want? If you think they could have concerns about the rest of your application, you might want to address it in your answers.
Come prepared with questions to ask in return. You can do much better than the default (“day in the life”) question. Assume that you will be silently judged if you ask something that can be answered by doing basic research. That is, coming up with meaningful questions automatically forces you to do a good amount of research ahead of the interview. Thus, it is useful to prepare questions even if you know you will not get to ask anything.
Be grateful. Even if you think it’s a waste of time, your interviewers are presenting you with an opportunity. Act happy to be there.
Sitting here, looking back over that list, I think it reads like a bunch of common sense.
But there was a time when it was not so common to me.
If you’re a sweaty Grade 12 student reading mathNEWS, or a first-year student gearing up for your first Hunger Games WaterlooWorks main applications, or a seasoned industry veteran caught in the massive post-holiday layoff at [insert company here], I hope you find something here as useful as my brother did.
And of course,
Remember that luck is a factor. Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t go well. Good luck!