Interview Guide!

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Before the Interview

Get really familiar with the organization!

Interviewers really, really like it when they can tell that you’ve done your research, and you’d be surprised how much it helps to have a feel for the organization and its culture before you interview. You could try:
Look through their website, and really dig into the about us section. What do they do? How do they see themselves? What matters to them? What makes them different from everyone else?
Look them up on Google News and see if there are any stories about them
Find any info you can about the person who’ll be interviewing you, either on LinkedIn or the organization’s website.
If you’re interviewing at a consulting firm, get a sense of their client base.
You don’t need to take super thorough notes or memorize any of this — your goal is just to get a feel for what the organization is like and who they might want to hire.

Take a second look at the job description.

Pay particular attention to the requirements section. Job descriptions aren’t just candidate-facing: most of the time, employers use them to sort out what qualities they’re looking for during interviews. By getting really familiar with the JD, you’ll be able to figure out what to focus on during an interview.
The job description is also a preview of some questions you’ll be asked in the interview. If there is a list of qualifications (and there almost always is), you can feel pretty confident that the interviewer will want to know about your experience with those qualifications. If one of the qualifications is “Has substantial experience making fundraising calls,” the interviewer might ask “Have you ever made a fundraising call?” Or they might just say, “what kind of work have you done on campaigns?” looking to see if you talk about fundraising or not. Either way, you need to talk about the specific time in your past that you made fundraising calls. Remember, you don’t necessarily have to meet all of the qualifications, but for the qualifications you do meet, have concrete examples you can talk about.
To make sure you really get the job description, you might want to try three things:
Call up a friend and, without notes, in your own words, give them a thorough summary of what the job entails and what kind of candidate they’re looking for
Look at the list of job responsibilities and qualifications. For each one, write down a single, concrete example of a time when you demonstrated these.
Imagine that you got the job. What challenges would you anticipate? What new ideas would you bring to the table? In what parts of the role would you thrive? What would you find exciting? What kinds of experiences would prepare you to succeed?

Practice your answers!

Job interviews are really scary! That’s normal, and it makes sense. While you might have some interview jitters, you want to minimize them as much as possible. That way you’ll be as focused and clear as you can be. The best way of doing this is practice. This will both reduce jitters and improve your ability to answer tough questions. The biggest reason why people are bad at job interviews is that they don’t do them very often!
There are a lot of different ways you can practice interviews but here are some of our favorites:
Mock interview with a family member or close friend.
Mock interview with someone in your network.
Using your phone or computer camera, record yourself answering practice interview questions and review the video to give yourself feedback.
Write interview questions on index cards, shuffle them, and respond to them aloud on your own.
To practice your side of the interview, follow these steps:
Write down as many questions as you can think of (at least a dozen) that could reasonably be asked during the interview
Practice answering them out loud over and over and over again until it becomes routine. Don’t memorize a speech, but do make sure you’re comfortable with most questions that could be thrown your way.
Identify the questions that seem most challenging. Which ones would you least like to be asked? What answers are you not super confident about? Sit down and decide exactly how you’ll answer those questions. Practice over and over until you are confident. This works.
Think about the worst possible thing that could happen during a job interview. What are you dreading the most? What would it look like if everything went wrong? Then rehearse how you’d handle it if it happened. Rehearse your response over and over and over again
Try this out a few times, and you will do really well!

Some practice questions

You are highly likely to be asked:
Tell me about yourself
Candidates hate this question! It is so scary, but you are almost certainly going to be asked some version of it, and you should do some prep beforehand. One model is to come up with a succinct (~2 minute) answer in this format:
Present –– what’s your current role (this could be student!), what are you doing, have you accomplished anything recently that you’re proud of?
Past — any other previous experience that you’re proud of, or the reason why you want to work in the social change world in the first place — what motivates you to go out and do good in the world?
Future –– this is where you tie it all into your current role. Go back to the job description, and explain why this role aligns with what you’re hoping to do next and why you’d be a fit.
Why did you leave your last job?
If this is your first job out of college, this is an easy one! If not, make sure that you have a good, concise explanation that doesn’t disparage your former employer. A positive answer about growth is always better than even a polite dig at your old boss.
What interests you about this opening? (Or why do you want to work for us?)
This one is surprisingly important, and you should definitely do some thinking ahead of time. It’s really key that you come up with an answer that is specific to both the organization and the role that you're applying for. Make sure you hit on why the organization is appealing to you in a way that is meaningful enough to differentiate it from others in the space (why this consulting firm in particular over others?) AND why you’re interested in learning more about that role. This really matters!
Tell me about your experience at ___. (Fill in past job.)
Tell me about your strengths.
What experience do you have doing ____? (Fill in each of the major responsibilities of the job.)
Tell me about a time when... (Fill in with situations relevant to the position. For instance: Tell me about when you had to take initiative ... you had to deal with a difficult customer ... you had to respond to a crisis ... you had to give difficult feedback to an employee ... You get the idea.)
Most employers will ask you some kind of question like this! There’s no magic answer, but try to choose a single, specific story and share concrete details. Start with a problem / challenge, then move into what you did, and then end with outcomes.
What kind of salary are you looking for?
Nearly all of the employers we work with will share a salary range with you before the interview. If they ask what you’re looking for, you can either say that you’re comfortable with the range they offered, or share a range within that range (by saying something like “I’m targeting $55-60k”). You never have to share your current salary.

You might be asked:
What things are most important to you in a new position?
How does this position fit in with the career path you're taking?
How would the people around you describe you?
What has your biggest achievement been at ___? What results there that you produced are you most proud of?
What were your major goals last year? How did you settle on those? To what extent did you meet them?
If I spoke with your previous boss, what areas would he or she say you should work on improving in?
What are the first five things you would do if you got this position?

Prepare some questions!

At the end of the interview, the interviewer will almost certainly ask whether you have any questions for them. This is still an evaluative portion of the interview! They are going to expect you to come in ready with a few questions to ask. Because you know that they’re going to ask you for questions, you can save yourself the misery of having to improvise on the spot and come in with a few prepared.
You need to strike a balance between asking questions you actually want to know the answer to and ones that impress them, and give them a sense of who you are, what you’d value, and how you’d fit in there.
A lot of people make the mistake of swinging really far in one direction or the other. Remember that interviewers are usually pretty smart, and, at the very least do a lot of interviews. If you ask a question like “I’m an impressive, smart, driven leader –– will this workplace be a fit for me,” they will know that you are just trying to show off. On the other hand, something like “Am I actually going to have to come into the office at 9am, or can I get away with sleeping in?” might be a question you genuinely want to know the answer to, but it doesn’t paint you in the best light.
So, ask questions that communicate your values and that you genuinely want to know the answer to. Just like in the informational interviews, don’t ask ones that you could Google instead. Here are some examples, courtesy of Ask a Manager:
What are the biggest challenges the person in this position will face?
Can you describe a typical day or week in the position?
What would a successful first year in the position look like?
How will the success of the person in this position be measured?
How would you describe the culture here?
How would you describe your management style?
Thinking to the person who you've seen do this job best, what made their performance so outstanding?
Are there any reservations you have about my fit for the position that I could address? (This is a great way to give yourself the chance to tackle any doubts they might have about you—as well as for you to consider whether those doubts might be reasonable and point to a bad fit.)
When do you expect to make a hiring decision?
Thinking back to people who have been in this position previously, what differentiated the ones who were good from the ones who were really great?
These are all good generic questions, but smart, specific questions about the organization or the role that are rooted in your research are almost always better. Don’t stress out about this too much — just ask one or two informed questions that you’re genuinely curious about!
Then, you can ask what the interviewer’s next steps are and what their timeline is for getting back to you. This will calm you down a lot.


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