Mock Interview

I truly enjoyed the mock interview experience and thought it went very well overall. When I was preparing for this interview, I told myself I was going to treat this experience as if it were the real thing because I knew it would be very beneficial for me. As I was looking over resources to prepare for this interview, I learned so much that I had never really thought of before. I was scrolling through questions and reading about the best way to answer them and a lot of things caught me by surprise. I realized that several of the answers I had prepared were considered cliche answers and I was completely unaware because I thought I was providing genuine answers to the questions asked. For example, the question of, "tell me about yourself" was something I took as, truly tell me about you. Therefore, my answers were tailored toward my hobbies, values, morals, etc. However, during my preparation I realized how important it is to adjust your answer, to that question, and relate it back to your career. Something that went differently than expected was the fact that when I was preparing, I practiced all of these questions, but it in the back of my mind, I just knew they were going to ask me a question that I was unprepared for. However, that was not the case which made me feel as though all of my preparation payed off.

During this process, I learned so much about providing answers that make you memorable and ways you can incorporate aspects of your academic career such as research projects, presentations, fieldwork experiences, etc. into the interview process. With that being said, there were some things I thought went really well and there were some things I thought I could improve on. I believe I gave very thoughtful answers and tried to build rapport with the interviewer. I did get asked the question I referenced earlier, and remembering what I had learned, I thought I answered it well with a mixture of both what I have done in my academic career that would relate back to the position I was applying for, while also letting her know a little about what I enjoy. I think it is important to let the interviewer know about your personality to ensure you will fit in with the personalities already at their facility. One of the things I could improve on would be the fact that I rambled some when answering the questions. As I was answering, I kept thinking of other things that I could say that would be a good way to answer the question and ended up somewhat talking in circles. I also, said the word "important" too many times. In the future, I need to work on having more concise but appropriate answers and finding synonyms for common words used in an interview and trying to broaden my vocabulary a little more in that regard. 

All in all, I thought this was a great experience and learned so much from this process. My interviewer gave us feedback on the one topic that everyone is scared to talk about, salary. Her advice was great and made a lot of sense as to when to bring it up and how to bring it up. I think the mock interviews should continue and I loved that it was with someone who we were not familiar with, because it made the experience that much more authentic.