At the Penn State Career Fair, all of my experiences have been fairly mixed. When I first starting going in my sophomore year of school, I found that many internships were not looking for people as young as I was, so going and speaking to the company representatives was more just practice for the next career fairs, where I hoped to be taken a little more seriously.
After receiving no interview invitations for my first few rounds of waiting in line to shake someone’s hand, I decided to get more involved to be a more serious candidate for these positions. I had just finished my first year of undergraduate research as a Junior in Chemical Engineering when I had my first serious interview.
I queued up for the Johnson and Johnson line, and prepared my resume. I tried to gather up a summary of my experience so I wouldn’t have to think on the fly because I get very nervous in interview situations. When I finally spoke with the representative, I gave my speech just as I had planned it, and he seemed impressed. He held out a paper that had position listings, including one asking for someone qualified in exactly the lab experience I had just earned.
Amazed at the incredible coincidence, we spoke for a while longer before he asked me for my availability for an interview the next day. We agreed on a time, and shook hands as I walked away. That first encounter was exactly the confidence boost I needed to get through the rest of the career fair that proved as good practice for getting my interview skills up. When I walked into the interview room, I felt much more prepared than the day before. I demolished the onslaught of technical questions, but I felt I could have improved during the behavioral portion.
Preparing for behavioral interviews are difficult, even with things like the STAR method, which I studied briefly the night before my interview. I’ve always been taught to be modest, so suddenly talking about all the great things I’ve done sounds like insecure bragging, as even writing this sentence does. However, I weaved a stories to answer questions about working with people I can’t stand, running an event, and dealing with change. If you can talk about yourself using specific examples, you’ll be golden.
Something many people don’t think about is to ask the interviewer a question, so I made sure to ask a few basic ones, like “How long have you been working for your company?”, “What is your favorite part of the job?”, and “What is the office community like?”. These questions not only help you gauge how you might feel at a position, they also serve to make the interviewer imagine you as a part of the company. The last question is an especially important question for me now, because I really value having a working environment where I can feel like I really do belong to part of a community.
Even if you don’t find a miraculous coincidence, you can always build your skill set and try again. Each time you go out to meet the recruiters, you can feel more confident that the last time.
Mousumi Saha says
I really liked that the majority of this post was a specific event that happened to you. Tying in this experience with advice on how to better an individuals’ chances at obtaining a job and being more confident was very smart. Did you techniques work for the job interview? Are there any other experiences you’ve had other than career fairs here at Penn State that you can reflect on?