Friday, July 30, 2010

After applying: prepare to be interviewed

Not all internship programs interview applicants, and they may only interview the applicants they're interested in, but being prepared for an interview can help you be successful if you get the opportunity.

Internship interviews may be in person, but often they'll be over the phone, so that applicants aren't forced to travel. And phone interviews have one major advantage: you can use notes. You should treat a phone interview like an open book test, and if there's any information you don't want to forget to cover, make sure you have it on hand to look at during the interview.

A good way of preparing for an interview that you can do on your own is answering interview questions before the interview. You can find plenty of practice interview questions through an online search. While you may finding very generic job interview questions, these can still be asked in an interview for an internship, and several were asked when I did my interviews. Using these questions, you can practice answering, and even write out answers to these questions. If you practice this way, you won't be left surprised by a generic interview question, and won't have to waste time trying to come up with an answer on the fly.

Another option for preparing for an interview is to actually practice interviewing. Some schools offer a service that will let you hold a practice interview with trained faculty, and there are businesses out there that offer the same thing. This may be more time consuming, and more costly, but if you're someone who had great difficulty interviewing, or becomes very anxious, you might benefit from this type of practice.

Being prepared for an interview can help you be more successful during one if that's what's required by the program(s) you apply to. Don't be afraid to use notes during a phone interview!

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