Nano, by Saad

That is all the not-obvious advice I have to offer in this post of my Job Hunt series.  Really.

What else would you like to know?  Join the conversation by leaving a comment.

So why should you stand during the phone interview?  Energy.  When you are up, you are free to move about your room and your speech will flow better than if you were bottled up sitting in a chair.  You might even use a headset so your hands are free to gesture (even though no one else can see you) because, again, it aids your flow.  There’s more on the topic here.

I won’t belabor the next point because an endless amount has been written about interview preparation, but this is what I did that seemed to work well.  Using two sheets of paper…

Sheet 1: Bulleted outline of talking points for my background, my scientific experiences, and my future research plans.  I had ideas but also specific wording noted down that I had practiced enunciating to ensure that it was an expression of my true self and not just nice-sounding ideas.  Often, you can write something down that sounds really cool but just isn’t you. Saying it aloud and hearing it just be an ill fit is a good way to screen out these thoughts.

Sheet 2: An idea map of different aspects of the job itself, along with questions whose answers would fill in the blank spots of the map.  I kept my pen handy during the phone conversation to fill these in as the relevant info was provided.

What techniques have you used in a successful job (or grad school) interview?

I will put this series of posts in the category “Job Hunt” so they can be pulled up easily using the list of category links to the right.