All About Interviews

2026 Updates: Amy and Susan recorded this in COVID times - but much of the virtual interviewing practices remain! We no longer have the live chat option - but you can always drop in to the Center for Career Engagement for some quick interview prep, M-F 9-5. Also, that next episode we meant to record? Never got there...(it was COVID times!)

Amy and Susan provide insight and skills to help you prepare for your interview and land that internship or job. Whether it's your first interview or your tenth, there is something here for you.

Here are additional resources from the WashU's Center for Career Engagement, including the Big Interview resource mentioned in the podcast.

Transcript

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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hello everyone. This is Amber Brown and Ahmar Ursani.

We are both GPSi career coaches, and we're here to provide a few updates and a refresh on our existing podcast series.

So some of our episodes use our old community name, but we want to clarify that our new community name is Government Policy and Social Impact.

Or you can just say GPSi, see for short.

We want to highlight our updated career engagement model as well in this episode because it helps us contextualize the work we do.

So I'm going to give you a brief overview of the stages, and you can see more in the show notes.

So it starts with understanding yourself, which is super important for reflection and visioning possibilities,

preparing to the actual search and apply process.

And then finally when you're actually engaging in your opportunity.

So you may also hear in some of our older podcast episodes, a reference to what's called a live chat.

And we wanted to make sure you noted that it's no longer in existence, but instead we have a different resource,

which we have various in-person drop in hours that we had that are GPS specific throughout the week.

And there was also a time that you can meet our career peers. Um, available Monday through Friday for on demand support.

Additionally, we no longer use canvas. All the resources have migrated to our GPS website.

A link again will be provided in the show notes. And our last technology update is we want to discuss Career link.

It's now handshake. So in handshake it's our one stop shop for career related events job and um, job and internship postings.

You can schedule your appointments there and more. And to close, we want to state that our annual Career expo now has a GPS specific focus day,

where employers from our industry come to you to discuss career options.

This, along with our annual Changemaker Summit, which brings local nonprofits to campus, helps you see how you can make an impact on our world.

So thank you so much for listening to this. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to anyone on our team.

Hope you're having a good day. See you. Yeah. Thank you.

Welcome to the GPP podcast for budding politicos, policy wonks and advocates.

I'm Amy Heath Carpentier, and I'm Susan Craig.

As career counselors in Washington University's Career Center and co-directors of the Government and Policy Work Group.

We walk alongside burgeoning policy wonks, politicos and change agents as they chart their paths to change the world.

This podcast is for you if you're interested in hearing tips and techniques that will position you to find your place in the fast moving,

mission driven world of politics, policy, and advocacy.

So if you've listened to our previous episodes, and I hope you have, we did mention we were going to do an episode on LinkedIn and we will.

But we've gotten some questions about interviewing. It's just that time of year, and we decided we should focus our attention and efforts on that.

So today we're going to give you an overview of the interviewing process.

What to expect. Um, what sorts of things you might need to know in general.

And in our next episode in this series, we'll be talking about how to prepare more specifically,

and then thinking about what interviewing online looks like and some strategies for specific questions.

And also the follow up, because follow up is very important. Following up, we get so many questions about that this time of year.

It's hard. So just to to preface this whole discussion, let's remember that, you know,

we're going to talk about interviewing, but there's just no like rule book for what an interview looks like.

Every organization does things differently. And and it's not standardized.

So interviewers can ask whatever they want.

Well, they can ask whatever they want, but they can ask lots of different things and they can do it in lots of different ways.

So it's up to the employer how they're going to proceed. And it's always good to ask what that might look like.

So to get started, let's just say if you've gotten an interview invite.

Hooray! Right. Celebrate. It's amazing. And it means you've done something right.

It means that your your networking or your materials,

it struck a chord and so they wouldn't be interviewing you if they didn't think you could do the job.

So they've deemed you qualified, and now they want to see if you're willing to do the job.

Right, Amy? Exactly. So your goal now is to demonstrate that you're the same person as the person that is presented in the materials you submitted,

that you will do the position by showing your commitment to the work and to the organization's goals.

And also you want to show you a good fit for the job.

And to the extent that you can for the team, the personality of the group and that you've got great communication skills.

So there are some different types of interviews and they occur at different times in the recruiting process.

Most there will be a couple of different interviews along the way. But in our organization again will make those calls independently.

And oftentimes a post-grad position will have more phases, while an internship might just be a quick phone call.

So let's talk about all those different possibilities. So the first phase or interview.

And by phase we really mean sort of. The interview here is usually a screening interview.

A screening interview is typically conducted by a member of the human resources team in a larger organization,

or by the person who's coordinating the search process in a smaller one.

The questions are typically pretty standardized.

The interview is short, and the format is often over the phone or through the web, even if it's possible that you could be there in person.

Interviewers here again are looking for you to express your sincere interest in the organization and position,

and to demonstrate you're the same person as you appear in the application materials.

The next step might include one or more further interviews with multiple people over a day, or even over a couple of weeks.

These are held between you and the hiring committee members. They're more thorough, and they might dive more deeply into your experience.

There may be a final interview or conversation with,

like the person that you'd be working for or even the leader of the organization, And that would be the final round.

And in most cases, only three candidates are going to make it to that phase.

So just remember that the more individuals that are participating in the process, the closer you probably are to the final round.

Now let's talk a little bit about the questions that you can anticipate.

The first kind of question and the most common are called behavioral interview questions.

These questions ask you to tell a story of a time when you performed a particular skill or engaged in a task.

These are drawn from the internship or job description and are phrased like,

tell me about a time when you managed a project, wrote a blog post on a deadline, or organized an event.

These are opportunities for you to tell your stories.

The next type of question are they're kind of loosely called traditional interview questions, mainly because they're direct questions.

They ask you, you know, like what are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses? What are your plans for the future. They're a direct question.

Um, the trick with those, and we'll talk more about this in a future episode, is to try to change them into a behavioral interview.

Questions. Because the behavioral interview question is really constructed around,

if you've done something like this before successfully, you'll be able to do it again successfully for this organization.

So those types of questions are by far the most frequent right.

And the technical questions I think are are much more infrequent in our field.

And those are the kinds that might ask you to do some sort of maybe if it's if you're if you need to know some language,

they're going to ask you to speak the language, or they might ask you to do some coding or, um,

kind of walk the interview through a specific process that would reflect those sort of technical skills.

Um, and they're looking for how you approach problem solving or whether or not you have the technical skills that you've,

you've claimed to have on your resume. And then lastly, we get a lot of questions about case interviews.

And those are a thing. And they're really popular in, you know, business type organizations.

We do see a little bit of in the government and advocacy realm, but not a lot.

Um, but this is just when they ask you to, to walk through a specific case that they've given you and they ask for some sort of deliverable,

like perhaps a writing sample or again, a coding or a presentation, and then looking for again, like, how do you approach a task?

How do you perhaps negotiate with others? How do you operate under pressure?

Yeah. And they'll often tell you if this is part of the process,

they'll often tell you this ahead of time so that you can get your head around it a little bit and know that it's coming.

Yeah. This usually doesn't come out of nowhere. Um, they'll ask you for it, you know, in advance.

Uh, they might say to you, here's a editing sample.

Go do this. Go do this editing case, and you do that, and then you submit it, or they'll say, you know,

part of this position for this government relations position is to pull together an advocacy plan to move a particular legislative priority through,

um, through a process so you would know it's coming and you would want to lean into sort of the problem solving aspect to that.

I always think, you know, I think students tend to get kind of wrapped around the topic,

like they're asking me to do this subject matter that I'm not super smart on or,

or or that it just feels, uh, you know, that they don't know enough about the topic and it's really not what they're looking for.

Right. Because they can teach you the topic and you'll learn the topic. But they are looking for this, the problem solving approach.

How do you approach the problem? How do you structure an argument?

That's what they're looking for in those case studies. And sometimes they even start to kind of get a sense of you as a collaborator in those moments,

you know, are you able to articulate verbally how you'd go about this?

Because you're going to have to be able to do that in the future with a colleague or with a team.

And so, you know, rapport is important here as well.

So interviews can take place in all kinds of locations, though right now they are mainly over zoom or, um, Microsoft Teams or the phone.

Uh, in this field, the interviews are often online.

Uh, you may have in the past noted that friends, uh, are flying out for interviews with big companies,

and they're getting kind of wined and dined for those. That's less likely in this field for a number, for sure.

Again, they're just not going to put their money there.

Um, and that's why in a typical situation, in a typical year, we would say, you know, being in the location where you want to work,

whether that's DC, Boston or even, you know, at your hometown is really important to getting those interviews on time.

However, we're seeing obviously most interviews now, if not all are going to be online due to change until things change with the Covid restrictions.

So until then, you will probably want to spend some time on your interviewing skills online.

And we have a handout we'll link to in the show notes for that,

as well as follow up with some content shortly to help you prepare for online interviewing.

Yeah, I think it's really important to think about it, even though it's kind of happening in the atmosphere,

which we're all operating daily, it's still important to prepare for an interview on zoom or online.

You know, differently than you would just prepare for class or a meeting. Exactly.

You need to be you need to be ready to go. Yeah. And there are a few little tips and tricks to help with that.

So let's talk a little bit about, um, how to prepare.

Um, the first thing you should probably do is go back to the internship or job description, uh, and the materials that you submitted,

and make sure that you remember what it was that you said about the organization and why you want to work there.

I mean, it's certainly okay to reiterate those things that you've already said in the cover letter.

The people that you're talking to may not have read your cover letter or they, you know, if they did, they've read a bunch of them.

And so they're not going to necessarily remember all of them.

And it's an opportunity for them to put a face with with what they've read and identify with you personally.

And don't get worried about, you know, repeating examples,

because that actually lends to coherency between her interviews, between, you know, if you think about, you know, say,

Susan and I were interviewing someone, the if someone meets with me and tells a story,

and then someone meets with Susan and tells a story, and we get together and we're like, oh, the story about X was really good.

Susan would be like, oh yeah, that was a really good example, blah blah. So it creates coherency and and is helpful actually in the interview process.

Plus as an entry level candidate for the internship or job, they don't expect you to have,

you know, ten years of experiences to draw upon in your examples, so just keep that in mind.

Then the next thing you want to do is spend some more time researching the organization.

You've already done a little bit of that, but you want to do some more.

You want to come in looking prepared, looking like you know who you're talking to and that you're interested in contributing to their mission.

So, you know, take notes on, you know, why you want to work there, why you're a good fit for the position and reflect on that.

Take some time to really just, you know, go for a walk or, or journal about it,

but, you know, really take some time to reflect on it from a high level.

Why? Why are you the right person for their position in their organization?

And maybe dive a little deep into the organization's info online.

You know, maybe you didn't look at their strategic plan or you didn't look at their, you know, in-depth client base.

This is the time to go ahead and do that.

Um, you can also use this, uh, as a time and for reflection on the main question, the question you will almost always get.

No matter the field, no matter the stage, which is.

Tell me about yourself. Tell me about yourself. Yes, you need an answer to that question.

Number one, if nothing else, that's the question you need to be prepared for.

Exactly. You have to be prepared for that one.

And so the most important thing here is to realize they are not looking for a broad autobiographical statement in response to this question.

They cannot know. Start with your freshmen year of college and proceed right.

You know there. They can't know all of who you are.

So you need to tailor your answer to the information that's most relevant to the question before them today,

which is are you moving to the next stage, whatever that is.

And you need to they need to know that you're really genuinely interested in them.

It's almost like a thesis statement, the introduction to the argument you're making for yourself in the position.

It's a good way to think about it. Yeah, the answer can reflect the sort of thesis statement you wrote in the cover letter.

And if you go back to our cover letter episode, you'll hear that it's usually the first the last sentence of the first paragraph.

But it's also important not to over rehearse this answer, but rather know the top points you want to hit in response,

and then just practice a few times, talking that through so that you can hit those in the interview.

And that's also a good way to think about things as you move out of the interview.

If there's like the last question they were to ask you, is there anything we didn't get a chance to ask you about?

You know, this is a chance to reiterate something that you think needs emphasized or that you want to touch on, that you haven't had a chance to.

Based on that thesis statement? Yeah.

If you have a thesis statement, then you probably have, you know, maybe three main points that support your thesis statement.

So, you know, those are the things that you want to highlight. And if those three things haven't come up, get them in at the end.

Um, and that way, you know, that you've kind of, stuck to your talking points and you've and you've got a clear.

A clear message that you're trying to send. Finally, there's a couple of, you know,

we'll talk some more in the next episode about other ways to prepare and some strategies for how to anticipate questions.

But beyond that. Tell me about yourself. Question. Probably the next most important thing to be prepared for is questions that you have for them.

You really want to have something in your back pocket so that when they say,

do you have any questions for us, you have something that just demonstrates that you're prepared,

that you're curious, that you're interested, um, and that, you know, you you are interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you.

Exactly. So you have, you know, I don't know, three questions kind of ready.

I'm sure that will things will probably pop up through the course of the interview that you'll have questions about, but have some ready to go.

Um, just so that they can so that you can demonstrate all those things.

And then finally, you know,

perhaps one of the most important questions really is what are the next steps and when are you anticipating to move forward with those.

And that puts the that puts the, you know, the energy back in your box.

Like, you know, when you're you're supposed to here in two weeks and it's two weeks and two days and you've heard nothing.

Now you can reach out. Right. It gives you some, some background into that and allows you to do that.

And then also don't forget to follow up with the thank you.

And you know, in this environment, the physical mail thank you probably isn't going to get to them.

So a email I think it's fine. Would you agree Susan.

Yeah I mean I love the in-person like the actual physical thank you note.

But it's often difficult, especially if you're in a interview with more than one person.

And maybe you only coordinated with one of the three and then you don't know how to reach the other two.

So certainly an email is is fine, but if you have the opportunity to send a real piece of mail, um, consider it.

Yeah. Especially when we move out of, you know, all Covid interviewing.

I think it's it's always nice to actually get something physical.

Mhm. So a few resources will be in the show notes for moving forward.

But we want to highlight one in particular. And it's an online tool that we have through the Career Center called Big Interview which you can access

again through the show notes or going to the Career Center website and just typing in big interview.

Just remember I have a big interview tomorrow and it'll come up.

Use your woo still key. And what's nice about this is it has all different kinds of interview questions.

And you can customize them. You can do a standard group of them.

It's divided between the traditional and behavioral.

And then you record yourself so you can get a sense of what you're looking like on the screen, what your background and lighting looks like.

And also practice those questions. And if you get stuck on one, it's got some advice on what to do.

It's such a great resource. And I know students sometimes, you know, they kind of freak out when they get an interview.

They want to do kind of a mock interview with me or Amy. And the timing is usually is just not right, because it's just like,

we don't we're not available and you're having an interview tomorrow, but this big interview.

You can do this any time.

And and I think watching yourself answer those questions, you're probably going to be a harsher critic than me or Amy would be anyways.

And also, don't forget about the career peers you know, particularly for those of you searching for internships, the career peers are available.

You can just access the chat and they can pop into, um, you know, zoom with you for a couple of minutes.

They can't do a full interview, but they could help you with practicing a couple of answers and give you a sense of how you're doing.

Yeah. And they're available to tell me about yourself. Questions? Yeah, they can ask you that.

All important. Tell me about your self question. So you will see some future interviewing episodes coming up in the next couple of weeks.

But until then, keep working to improve the world.