2021 HBCU Careers Magazine

HBCU Careers Magazine

showing up an hour early! Treat everyone you interact with the same, you never know who has the ear of the hiring manager (plus it’s a good habit to not be rude to people).

Behavioral Interviewing: Most companies use this format. I think of behavioral interviewing as storytelling. They’ll ask you things like, “tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult person?” “Have you ever missed a deadline, what happened?” “What’s the best project you’ve ever worked on?” Employers ask these questions to get a feel for the kind of employee you’ll be since they don’t have any experience working with you. I recommend having several “stories” that can be used to answer a variety of questions. These are situations from your experience that you’re comfortable talking about and can go into detail. After Interviewing Take a deep breath, you’ve finished the interview! What now? Try to get contact information from everyone you interviewed with. This will allow you to send custom thank you notes to your interviewers. If you’re unable to do this, send your notes to the recruiter or person you’ve been working with and ask them to share with the interviewers. Wait at least a week to follow up as they may be interviewing other candidates. Most companies will have you do at least one more interview but it’s not totally uncommon to get an offer after just one interview.

Make sure that you get lots of practice in and interviewing will be a breeze!

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