Get Ready to Talk About Yourself
Trained interviewers will ask you a lot ofquestions about your past behavior, hoping to elicit specific examples from you. So you need to prepare a pool of 10 to 20 examples from your past that illustrate your talents, your ethics, and your ability to solve problems. The ideal examples are short vignettes in which you are the hero, in which you demonstrate leadership, or mediate disputes, or advance a team project, or pursue virtue when faced with an ethical temptation, and so on. Examples from student activities and in-class experiences are okay, but be ready to deliver specific stories,not generalities.
Prepare examples in advance in categories like these:
Tell me about a time when you had to organize a team, and how you did it, and how it worked out
•Give me an example of a time when you had to work with someone who didn't carry his or her weight, and how you dealt with the situation.
•Tell me about a time when you witnessed a colleague or fellow student cheating or stealing.
•Tell me about a time when you had to complete an assignment but didn't have the resources, either time
or money or reference materials or whatever, and how the project turned out.
•Is there a time in the past when you didn't get along with a boss or a professor? Can you tell me about that?
•Give me an example ofa major challenge that you faced, and how you went about addressing the problem, and how it turned out.
•Think of the greatest disappointment you've faced as a student. Can you tell me about that?
•When in the past have you had to solve interpersonal differences
How to Get Any Job with Any Major by Donald Asher
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