 Hi everyone, welcome to this session called Interviewing PrEP 101, How to Achieve Interview Success, and this session is going to build on all of the other career presentations that we've had this this past few weeks, in particular by Alex, who, you know, and myself, who we've covered things like the skills, interests, and the values, and how to write a resume, and these kinds of topics. And Alex has told me that she touched on the method that we will be talking about today. So she hinted at this, so we'll be kind of just building on each other's work. So welcome everyone, my name is Daniel Moglin. I work at UC Davis Health, and I serve PhDs and postdocs in helping them and supporting them in their career and professional development. I completed my PhD in linguistics in March of 2017, and I really just love the grad student population, and I love supporting them, and I just really wanted to have an impact and have that like really direct impact on people, and so I found myself in the world of like career and professional development, and I've been doing this for about four and a half years now, and it's just been a really good, it's been a wonderful fit for me, and I'm really happy to be here to present on the topic of interviewing. So if everyone wants to like just say hi in the chat box, and you can say, some people did this already, but just say like hi from, you can say where you're from or what university you're affiliated with. You're also welcome to click on the three little dots and click rename if you want to add your pronouns or your location as well, because part of what we're doing here is, and Rachel and I were talking about this right before, and is that we are building connections and network by all being here. We are all over the country and the world, and the whole conference and workshop that workshops that we've been attending is really just the beginning, so I really want to encourage everyone to stay in touch with people, because we will all be entering the work world together. We might be colleagues, we might be hiring each other, and so the more that we can stay in touch, the better. So I'm seeing folks from Arizona, oh is another UC Davis? Oh Bay Area, cool. Hi Kayla, Long Beach, St. Louis, Connecticut, Boston, Florida, Kansas, New York, Canada, and Arbor, Oregon, San Francisco, Washington. All right, cool. Welcome everyone. Good to see you all. So the basic structure of today's workshop is that I'm going to present some materials. It's meant to be interactive, so feel free to put questions in the chat box, or it would be helpful if you click the raise hand button that way your your your name will pop up. Rachel, if I miss a question in the chat box or a raised hand, just give me a nudge. Happy to address questions, because ultimately this presentation, it's not for me, it's for you, and so I have things that I think will be helpful for you, but I also want to make sure we cover topics that are important to you as well. So with that, I'm going to share my screen and we'll go ahead and get started. I'll make sure you all have my email address. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn too. I'm totally happy to continue the conversation. All right, so just to start off, as we kind of settle in, I would I invite you to think about the job interviews that you've had in your life. What did it feel like to, you know, get the email saying, hey, we want to interview you, or what was it like to prepare for the interview? What was it like to actually go to the interview? What was what was happening in your, you know, emotional and physical body? How did the interview go? What do you think you did well? What would you want to improve on? So just kind of start bringing that in, reflecting on the job interviews you've had. And I want to also bring in, how do you measure a successful interview? And for this question, I invite, if anyone wants to type in the chat box, what do you, how do you, how do you measure a successful interview? You're welcome, welcome to type that in. We'll be talking about that. And also another question I want to bring in just early on is which interview questions are you most concerned about? And if there's any of those that come up, go ahead and just type those in the chat box now or anytime during this presentation, because those are the questions that we really want to focus on, right? The so-called easy questions or the questions that you feel comfortable with. Yeah, you can prepare for them great, but it sees ones that you're like, oh, if they ask this question, I really, I really need to have a prepared answer. Those are the ones that I really want to focus on, because those are the questions that you don't want to be caught off guard, right? And there's this kind of element of the interview where like some questions seem like they're being asked just to catch you off guard. So how do you kind of prepare for these kind of questions that you, you know, that you, if you encounter them in an interview, you kind of want to have a prepared response. You don't want to like think about an answer on the spot. All right, so I see some chats coming in. So yeah, so a successful interview, not cringing afterwards. Yeah, I'm wondering why I said what I said. A successful interview when I get the job. Yeah, I want to like, I want to dig into that definition a little bit, because there's definitely external factors, right? It's not just, it's not just, you know, if you get the job or not, but that is definitely a, it could be a measure of success, usually by getting the jobs, but also a great way to learn about yourself and what you're expecting from the position. Go to the next round. I never feel successful. Yeah, so something to think about there. Fun. If there's some element of like maybe light-heartedness or ease or something. Cool. These are great. Yeah, biggest weakness. Yeah, we will cover that one for sure as a question to be concerned about. Feeling confident. How did you reinvent the wheel and get everyone on board type questions? Okay, I'm curious to hear more about that. How did you deal with the difficult co-workers or anything around conflict? Yeah, these are great. Just even the self-introduction question. Wow, you have 10 minutes. I've never heard, I've never heard someone be given 10 minutes to tell me about yourself. That's, that would be a lot of time to just be on the spot. Narrating the story. So yeah, we'll be talking about how to structure our stories when we respond to interview questions. Yeah, tell me about a time you couldn't meet a deadline. All right, these are great. Wonderful. Let's keep all of these in our minds. So I just want to start by saying, you know, when I think of a successful interview, it's like, yeah, if you get a job, it's easy to be like, that was successful. But just to provide a little more nuanced definition there, or at least what it means to me, is, you know, at least for me, it's very much a feeling. It's like, when I walk away from the interview, I ask myself, do I have any regrets, right? Is there anything that I would have wanted to do differently? And the other one that I ask myself is, did I say everything that I wanted to say? And when we do interview prep, we're basically preparing for what are the stories that we want to share in the interview. We don't know what questions are going to ask, but we know what we want to share. We know, so I know that if I don't talk about this particular experience in the interview, I'm going to have some sort of regret, you know? And I kind of, I aired toward the side of this kind of definition because you can only control what you can control. There's so many other factors. So what can you control in measuring success in terms of what you have control over, versus what you don't have control over? All right, so let's dive in here. First things first, don't judge your performance or your self-worth on a job offer. There's just too many variables. So basically, a reminder is, let's say you're submitting a bunch of resumes, and let's say you're not getting any interviews, right? Then, you know, that's the point where we have to look at your resume and your cover letter and talk about, all right, are you showing that you're a good fit? Maybe you're applying for jobs that are asking for way too much experience, more than you have. But let's look at some of these other factors. But if you are getting interviews, then that shows me that your resume and cover letter are conveying what they need to convey, that you're applying for jobs that you're well suited for. So let's say you're getting interviews but not jobs. All right, then we need to talk more about what's happening at the interview stage. And, you know, I've just heard, I've been working with folks for, you know, almost five years now, and I've heard so many stories. And it's just the reality, right? When by the time you get to the interview stage, they are interviewing people who have met all of the requirements that they're looking for in the job. As such, and they have to pick one, right? So it could be that you are just as qualified and just as great as everyone else, but they have to pick one person, right? So that is out of your control to a certain extent. And I've also heard many stories, and I have a story myself around this, where you go to an interview, you don't get the job, and then they email you and say, yeah, you didn't get the job, but we really liked you and, you know, we want to keep you in mind for further, for future positions. I know people who have then, you know, applied again, got in another interview and now are working at that company. So not getting a job is not the end of the conversation. You also are, you know, they know you now. This happened to me. I applied for a graduate writing specialist position at UCSB, Santa Barbara, and I was a finalist, and they really liked me, but they chose someone else. And then about a couple weeks later, they emailed me and they said, hey, we have another opening and it was for a, I think a graduate student program director or assistant director position. And they said, we would love for you to apply for this position. And let me tell you, when someone says, we would love for you to apply for this position, that is a great invitation. I ended up not applying because at that time, I just got my, I got my career position at Davis. And I, yeah, my family and I were not ready to up and move at that point. We had a infant and we were just getting established in Davis. Anyways, the point is that, you know, even not getting a job interview is not necessarily unsuccessful, right? How can you continue to leverage that is something to think about. All right, this is something that I went to this, this was maybe a year, a couple years ago, and I went to a career panel and it was with hiring managers. And this was someone who was in a hiring manager position. And the question was to the panelists, what's the one, like what's the main thing you're looking for when you're interviewing, when you're interviewing people? So my ears, my ears perked up, right? A hiring manager, like what is the one thing you're looking for? And this particular answer surprised me and in some ways shocked me. So I'm going to share it with you and I'm sharing it as one person's response from a couple years ago. It's not like it's supposed to be necessarily generalizable, although I think it's, I think it's some, it's some chewy, chewy food for thought. So her response was likability. And when she said that, my, you know, my, my, my, my jaw was a gape. I was like, what? How, yeah, like how could you, yeah, what does that even mean? Like, isn't likability so subjective? So when you hear this, I welcome, I welcome thoughts on this in the chat box, if you want to add your perspective. But what do you think about when, you know, I'm thinking, well, wait, a hiring manager, aren't you looking for skills? And, you know, you want someone who could do the job? Like, what's this like likability? Like, okay, how do you, yeah, how do you measure that? Like, what does that mean? Isn't that subjective? So, yeah, open. I'm open to hearing your thoughts in the chat box, or if you do want to chime in, you're welcome to as well. Just raise your hand and let me know. Doesn't sound fair. I've heard this too. I think they have to judge whether many people will find someone likable. If they like you, they'll look for reasons to hire. If not, they'll discount every reason. Yeah. It's super subjective. How about you click with others? Yeah. Thank you. This is great. Yeah. What does that mean for people of color? You know, like, likability, you know, if we have an inherent bias toward people who look like us, and what does that mean? You know, like in terms of, yeah, like fairness seems unfair. I'm disheartened by that. Yeah. That's what, well, that's why my job was a gape. I was like, what? How, like, what? How is that even possible? Okay. I heard that before. Yeah. Yeah, and disability too, right? So, likeability is something that is, yeah, there's inherent bias there. It seems problematic. Cool. Thanks, y'all. So, the reason why I'm kind of putting this out there is because there is a subjective quality in nature to interviewing. Interviewing is an inexact science. How can you talk, have a conversation with someone for an hour, and then decide if they're going to be the best person to work at your company for the next, you know, five or 10 years? You know, it's really, it's really just kind of this microcosm snapshot with inherent biases. I think what I interpreted this, this answer to mean, at least touch on, is that when they, when someone is hiring you on a team, you know, just straight up, like, I see and I work with my colleagues more than I see my family, or maybe just as much, you know. So, it's like, you spend a lot of time with your work colleagues. And I think what this person was touching on was, yeah, like, they want to create a, you know, a positive, whatever, work environment or something. And so, and also just, you know, this is also at the interview stage. So, this is all, this is after they've checked your resume, they've checked your skills. And so now they're actually meeting you. And it's just a reminder that behind every single company in job position is a human. And humans are human, right? And humans, you know, there's something about, you know, if like, you vibe with someone or something, whatever that means, like, you're maybe more likely to choose them for the job. Again, this is just one hiring manager, you know, from a career panel, but I thought it was at least like, it brought up a lot for me. And that's why I kind of share it, because there's something here that's like, it feels like it goes beyond just answering the interview questions. Does that make sense? So, I'm just bringing this up just to kind of like, help you think about your audience, right? Part of interviewing is, you know, you're interviewing for a particular person or group of people. All right, so let's dig in here. This is just kind of a little bit of nuts and bolts here. So, types of interviews. Initially, you'll probably start with like an HR interview or a phone screen. So, that's basically someone from HR who's not in your specialized field, really just looking over your resume and making sure you check all the boxes for the job. And this is a gatekeeper, right? It's a gatekeeper. It's usually a 30-minute, 20-30-minute appointment. And they're just checking to make sure you actually have the skills that you, you know, that you say you have. More and more, I don't know if anyone has experience with this. I don't have direct, like, I haven't done this personally, but more and more, they're doing just straight-up recorded interview on the computer. Like, it's just you and your computer. The question will pop up. You will have, you know, two minutes to answer it. You record your answer and you submit it. So, you're not even interviewing with a person, which, you know, I think has some drawbacks. And then you might get a site visit, site visit, you know, once upon a time. So, now it's more like, you know, still, you're still at home just on Zoom all day, half-day or full day. It could be a series of interviews. So, it could be like 30 minutes with each, you know, with lots of different people. It might include some sort of job talk or presentation. Really pay attention, right? Pay attention to what they say. Is the interview going to be 45 minutes, or is it going to be four hours? Who are you talking to? You know, you can even ask, like, hey, you know, how can I prepare for this? Is there anything you want me to prepare? Because there might be a talk or presentation. So, really do that kind of legwork and figure out what is this interview going to look like. There might be a panel interview. This is where it's you and maybe, four or five people, you know, four or three people or something, more than one person. And they just kind of go in order and just ask you questions. These are often pretty standardized, as in they have, they ask the exact same questions to every candidate, and they do that to try to maintain, you know, fairness. And oftentimes in these kinds of interviews, there's no, there's no feedback or response. After you answer your question, they will say thank you, and move on to the next question. And they'll be taking notes, and then they'll probably be scoring you afterwards. On this note, anytime you all have a chance to be on a hiring committee, I so, so, so recommend it. You will get these opportunities, even as, you know, students, to be able to respond to so recommended. You will get these opportunities, even as, you know, students to be like, hey, we're hiring. I had this opportunity when I was a grad student, we were hiring a couple of faculty members in my department, and they want grad student input, you know, they want undergrad student input. Anytime you can kind of be on that side of the coin too, it's really helpful because you get to see, just get to be more familiar with the interview process. There might be a test or an assessment. So depending on what you are going into, there might be a, you know, some sort of case study, a technical interview, or a coding challenge. These are all different kinds of interviews. Oh, awesome. Whitman says, our school board is hiring new treasurer, and we were doing a panel, panel interviews just last night. Yeah, so great. Yeah, anytime you can kind of, and also there's opportunities. I know at, you know, at Davis when we hire, you know, a higher position like, you know, a vice chancellor or something, the community is invited to sit on the, on the interview. And so go to those two. Just anytime you can kind of like see how other people interview, just get more familiar with the types of questions that are asked. It's gonna be super helpful because the best way to practice for an interview is to have an interview because it's high stakes. It makes you really think about what you need to do. You do the interview. So you learn about kind of what questions are asked. And then you reflect on like, oh, that was some parts were good, some parts were hard, and you do that reflection. Andy says, I had a curiosity when, when any of us has gone to interview, do they usually tell you the type of interview? Yeah, it's so my last one was a panel interview is initially to me, I see three people instead of one. Yeah. And you're always so Andy, you're always welcome when you get an offer for an interview to inquire, if they don't tell you, you can inquire like, because you want to know, like, you want to know who's going to be there. Yeah. Like, so you can look them up and you can actually do that research. So if it's vague, I would really recommend inquiring and say, Hey, what kind of, you know, what kind of interviews is going to be, who's going to be there? I'm just trying to prepare. So I want to know what I can do to prepare. But in my experience, it's, they, it's, I mean, mostly I've seen interviews that kind of roughly outline what to expect. You'll have two hours. It'll be this kind of interview, such and such. So all right, pro tip. When you apply for a job, always, always, always save the job description as a PDF. After the job posting expires, it's oftentimes removed. And so two weeks later, and let's say you have a job interview and the job postings removed, you don't have any record of what job you applied for. So really save your, save your job posting as a PDF, because the best way to prepare for an interview is to go back to the job posting. Okay. And you go point by point, point by point and turn every single thing that it says, you know, in terms of a qualification or a skill that's necessary, you just turn that into a question. So must be familiar with discourse analysis. Turn it into a question. What, what's your experience with discourse analysis? And then figure out your answer with that, you know what I mean? Whatever job you're applying for, look at what it's requiring and be able to speak to each part, each point in that job posting. Because that's, that's pretty much the majority of the information that we have is the job posting. So make sure you save that and really, really understand as best as you can what the job is. Look at the company, the institution, their website, their mission, look at the language that they use, right? Is it more formal or less formal? Is it, you know, I mean, just, just kind of pay attention to, you know, any, any kind of, is it more business, business-like or, yeah, just kind of pay attention to what kind of words they use, which I know all of you do anyway. That's kind of built into our brains. Look at the people, look them up on LinkedIn, look them up, get some sort of, just get some familiarity with who you might be talking to. Ideally, you have already done your networking. So let's say you're applying at Duolingo, Duolingo, and you've already talked to someone from Duolingo because you met them here at this conference. Go ahead and reach out to them again and say, hey, remember me? Now I'm applying for a job at Duolingo, and I'm really excited. I'd love to check in with you about how I can prep for it. And depending on, you know, obviously if they're on the hiring committee, then they probably won't be able to help you prep. But yeah, cool, Charlotte. Yeah, every time Duolingo posts a job, y'all, I'm just like, that job seems so cool. So I'm always, I'm always eyeing the Duolingo jobs. It seems like a really, I have a friend who works there too, so I'm like, I'm, seems like a really cool company. And do a mock interview, which we will be doing today. So a mock interview is basically you phone a friend, phone someone here, you know, that you've met here, and just say, hey, I have a job interview coming up. Could we meet for 20 minutes and just you ask me questions and I'm just going to answer them and just going to try to, you know, just, just get that, get the interview prep going. All right, types of interview questions. This is not exhaustive, but definitely some that you will see. The first question is pretty much always tell me about yourself. And it's so common, it's shortened to TMAY. In this question, I really recommend you kind of string together past, present and future and try to do it in about, you know, 60 to 60 to 90 seconds. But basically, where have you been? Where are you now? And where are you going? And really thread it so that it's all in alignment with whatever job you're applying for, right? So you, so tell me about yourself is not tell me about your dog or tell me about your vacation. I mean, it sounds general, but it's no, it's tell me about yourself in the context of this particular job, right? Behavioral questions we'll be focusing on today. These are questions that sound, these are questions that require some sort of narrative story. So these are questions that sound like, tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a colleague or describe a time when you worked collaboratively in a team. These are very common questions. So common that you will find them in pretty much every interview you do. So we'll talk a lot about those. The weakness and the strength question, this one already came up as a question of concern. We can absolutely workshop this question. I will tell you what my strategy is or what the prevailing strategy is, particularly about weakness. So for weakness, again, it's an interview, not a deposition, alright? So weakness is not, you know, tell me your deepest, darkest secret that you won't tell anyone and it's, you know, reveal it to us. So basically, the way I like to reframe this question is, what is something that you're working on? So it might be a weakness, but it's something that you're actively working on. I'll give you an example of a bad response. And then I'll give you an example of one of my responses, and not that my response is like the gold star, but just like to give you an example of how to tackle this. So I worked with someone, I'm sorry I'm laughing, but I worked with someone who he said, when they asked him this question, he said, his weakness is that he has a quick temper. And maybe for reasons that are self-evident, I found that that was a problematic answer, right? Even if that's true, not something that you want to tell the people who are considering hiring you. Alright, so let's get that out of the way. One of my go-to responses, which is quite true for me, is that one of my weaknesses, or I don't even know if I'd call it a weakness, right? But one of how I would respond to this is that I'm generally conflict avoidant, but over the years I've grown and I understand the value. Like when there is a conflict, it's better to actually approach it head-on and try to understand the other person's position, because then you can actually come together and have a better result. So that's something that I'm working on. So it's something that, so that's like an example of like, oh because, and then I often will say, because I value harmony, I value peace in the workplace. So that's kind of where it's coming from, right? But I understand that conflict in any sort of workplace or any sort of work environment can happen. And make it short, you don't need to dwell on your weakness, you don't need to, I like to say on a scale of one to ten, where maybe ten is your greatest weakness, don't choose a ten. Choose a, choose a five or a six, maybe a seven. But don't choose, don't choose a weakness that is directly related to the job you're applying for. So if I was applying for a conflict mediation position, I would not say my weakness is conflict. You know what I mean? So pay attention to what you're applying for. Choose something that's more, you know, lateral or periphery. And it's something that you're working on. And don't dwell on this question. Answer it and move on. You don't need to dwell on this. Most of the questions will be about your fit and qualifications. There are some of these questions that are, I call and put you on the spot questions. These are questions that are by definition you can't prepare for. And that's the whole point. I'm going to give you an example of this on the next slide. You can expect technical questions or case studies, depending on if you're going into certain fields. And the interview will pretty much always end with questions for them. Always come with two to three questions that you want to ask them. That's an important part of this too. Any questions? I have an example of the put you on the spot question. And this happened in a job interview almost three years ago now. And it was for a startup in Santa Monica. I was invited for the onsite interview. And it was for a position that was like a recruiter, talent acquisition kind of position. And here's the question. Oh, and this was with the CEO of the company. You know, a small company. But the CEO, I sat down with the CEO I think for an hour and a half. And this was the question he asked me. All right. I'm giving you a brick. You have two minutes to tell me everything you can do with this brick. Ready? Go. And he literally took out a piece of paper and was like doing tally marks for every response I gave. How many of you think I prepared for this question? Hopefully no one. How many of you think of this question when you prepare for an interview? Probably no one. So what is the point of this question? I welcome your chats. Why? Uncomfortable. Out of left field that question. Bizarre. Are you supposed to ask what needs to be accomplished? Well, you go to the final ones first. Here's a buddy. How does this person, yeah, go under pressure, do under pressure, respond under pressure, flexibility on their feet. Yeah, they're creative thinking. Okay, cool. I think you're getting it. You're getting it. The point is, the whole point of the question is that you can't prepare for it. That's the whole point, right? So how do you think on your feet? Some of it, some you might call this, you know, ideation, which is a part of design thinking. And literally it was not the quality of my, is ideation, because it was not the quality of my responses. It was the quantity. He was doing tally marks. He wasn't, he wasn't recording my responses. He was recording how many responses. So I just, I just dug in. I said, you could throw it. You could sell it. You could trade it. You could use it as a doorstop. You could put it on your head. You could, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter. It didn't matter what the responses were. He was just looking for quantity. I'm showing you this because I don't want you to get thrown off in an interview. Part of the interview process is you do not know what they're going to ask. So how do you prepare for that? All right, I'm going to show you how to prepare for the behavioral questions. Is everyone still with me? Are we good? So the behavioral questions all right. See some thumbs up. Cool. The general advice here, which I will follow, is to respond with STAR. Behavioral questions, remember, are the ones that sound like, describe a time when you innovated a new program or project or something. So you have to tell a story. STAR means situation, task, action, result. I put the T in parentheses. And this is Harkening. Alex mentioned this in her workshops previously as well, the STAR method. So I'm glad we're getting to cover it. I put the T in parentheses because I oftentimes just wrap the T in with the S. So situation, task is basically like, what's the setup? The action crucially is what did you do? Not what other people did, right? What was your action? And then finally, what was the result or outcome? Something tangible. Okay. Is this, if this is new for folks? Let me, yeah, I'm going to give you some resources about this so you can look more into it in just a second. But I know for some, this might be a new concept. But situation, action, result. I'm going to give you an example. So one of my go-to, STAR or STAR responses, STAR sounds a little bit like, you know, better than SAR, like a SAR response sounds like a little bit, I don't know. Harkening back to SARs or something. Here's mine. My situation, action, result. So the idea with all interview prep is that you're not like reading a script. You are, you know, it's a natural conversation. But this is something that I absolutely know. So this is how I measure, partly measure my success. I know that in my, in my interview, I absolutely want to, yeah, thanks, Jody. Yeah, absolutely. Your team is also your actions. Yeah. But talk about it as, as what you've done as well, right? That's the focus. Yeah, totally. So situation. So during my PhD program, I served as a graduate writing fellow for three years. And I worked in a team of five graduate students and three professors. And we provide, we provided support for graduate student writers and also postdoc writers. Okay, that's the situation. What did I do, right? So we each had to implement a campus-wide project. I created the writing partner program, which placed students into writing groups. So this was kind of my contribution. And then result. In the first year, over a hundred graduate students signed up for the program. And the program still exists today. And that is still true. And I, this program was created like, it must have been eight, eight years ago now, maybe. And so this program became institutionalized. And so now it continues on every year, which is pretty cool. All right. So that's my SAR example. And notice that I, then at the bottom, I kind of put some tags. Like, I could kind of shape this example for, if they asked me a question about leadership, I could probably shape it for that. If they asked about teamwork, I would focus more on the fact that I was on a team. If they wanted to ask about innovation or program development, this is the one I would, this is the, this is the example I would give. So notice that instead of starting with what the question is, I'm actually starting with what my experiences are, right? Because I know that if I don't talk about these certain experiences, I'm going to feel regret. And I'm going to not feel successful in my interview. I'm going to minimize real quick just to give you a couple of links that I do want you to pull up. And they're both from the Muse, which, you know, I think is a pretty good career website. Let me open up the chat box real quick. And the first one is behavioral questions. And we're going to use these for our, I want you to pull up these because we're going to have these in our mock interview. We're going to be using the behavioral questions. And then the next one is the star method or the star method. This one, I would say, go ahead and just kind of keep open for future, future reading, because we don't have time to go through all of that in this moment, but just a good, good overview of the star method or star method. All right, so we got those up. All right. So what we're going to do is we're going to be moving into our mock interview here. And for those of you who are watching this on the recording, I invite you to play along because this is the interactive part. And this is really the key takeaway here. This is the key takeaway to this whole workshop. And so we're going to spend, let's do like five minutes. I really want to give you some time here. And it doesn't have to be a quiet, this doesn't have to be a quiet space. You're welcome to ask me questions and stuff, but we're going to have five minutes to think about these. And if you want to just think about them in your head, that's fine. If you want to write some things down, that's fine too. Here's what we're doing. Try to think about three SAR examples. So what are the seminal experiences that you have that if you go into a job interview, you absolutely know you want to talk about and kind of form them into a situation, action, result. And you can just do this in your head if you like. We're going to be workshopping this in the mock interview. So think of the SAR example first and then add some tags. So add some themes or tags. So this would be a SAR example that would work for communication or collaboration or conflict resolution or whatever your tags might be. And you can use that Muse article. If you look at the Muse article, you'll see that there are, let me just show it real quick here. You'll see that there's categories here. The first five questions are about teamwork. So you want to make sure you probably have some sort of example that shows you can work on a team if that's relevant to jobs you're applying for. Client facing skills. So these are questions like, tell me about a time when you made sure a customer was pleased with your service. So depending on what kind of job you're applying for, that might be relevant. Ability to adapt. So adaptability might be another theme or time management skills, communication skills, motivation, and values. So you can use those as kind of sample tags or you can make your own. But start thinking of some of these SAR examples. And there's a couple chats I'm going to check out. Even if you're in the library, you can still think about your SAR examples because this is really the true takeaway here. This is the interview prep that I'm talking about. So five minutes on the clock. Have a look at that muse article, look at the different types of behavioral questions. Think about your, these are the experiences that if you do not talk about in the interview, you will feel regret. You will feel, ah, I missed that opportunity. That's what these are. Anything more than five years ago that sounds about right. You know, I don't think there's any, there's no official rule here. There's no like, oh, if you say anything more than five years ago than it, you know, whatever counts against you. I would say generally speaking, you know, depending on where you are in your career too, right? Five years is a really long time if you're just coming out of your undergraduate. And five years is really a short time if you're 20, 30 years into your career. So it's definitely depends on where you are. So no, no generalized rule. Generally speaking, I've heard on the resume, you know, you want to keep things, you know, less than 10 years old, anything more than 10 years feels, you know, a little bit on the, on the older side. Um, but you know, basically the way you want to think about it, like so for folks who are grad students, um, you know, you want to be focusing on your, what you're doing in your grad program. Rather than if you want to talk about undergrad stuff as a, as a graduate student and you're applying for a job, it has to be, so it has to be really relevant. So my two criteria is, is it relevant and is it recent? So if it's not recent, it better be relevant. You know what I mean? So relevant and recent are two criteria to think about for this. But basically, you know, what you did in the undergrad is what got you into grad school and what you did in grad school is what's going to get you the job. So only talk about grad school or for folks coming out of undergrad, only talk about high school if it's really supremely relevant. Otherwise, you know, what you did in high school helped you get into college and college is what's going to help you get the job. So no, no, no hard and fast rule here, but yeah, be strategic. Is it relevant? Is it recent? You slowly give a star story that's non-work. Yeah, absolutely. That is definitely part of your experience. And so I would even say that that would be, that would be wonderful, right? Because then you're giving, you're really shedding context on really who you are. I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak the question for folks who are watching the recording here. So because I think it's a really good question. Is it ever useful to give a star story that's from a non-work context, like an international student who has to be adaptable? Can stuff like that be mentioned? So yes, this is your, you know, I would keep it probably giving a star example about, you know, your family might be a little too personal, right? But like work, volunteer experience, anything on campus, you know, things, certain things about your identity can be really valuable too. I'm not necessarily saying avoid family at all costs, but you know, just be, just be aware of how personal you're, you're getting here. For people watching this on the recording, let me, let me outline what we're going to do first. And then I'm going to copy and paste the, these into the chat box for folks so they can have them available. But basically, we are going to do a mock interview. So create a formal interview space. We're going to mostly have groups of three. So just pay attention if you have one of those people who cannot verbally participate, that they will just be in the room with you. And just kind of listening on, and that will be helpful for them as well. Formal interview space means no feedback, no immediate feedback. Okay, so we're going to do a role play here. And if I'm the interviewer, I'm going to ask a question, and then the interviewee will answer. And then as the interviewer, I will say thank you. Next question, not giving you any feedback, because that's what it's like in the real deal. You don't get any feedback right away. You can do feedback. After, afterwards you can talk about it, but not, not during the role play. And then you will be practicing these questions using your star examples. This is, I literally gave you five minutes to prep. I do not expect all star answers here, but try them out and then talk about it. See what, see what happens, see what you like, see what you didn't like, see what you want to change. And then wait until the end of the role play to give some feedback. Here is the interview schedule. If you would like to give some context, you as the interviewee can say I'm going to, I'm applying for, you know, such and such position at Duolingo, if you want, you don't have to, but that might help give some context. If you have a job in mind, if you don't, no worries. When I do this workshop, I usually do it as part of a series. So we've already, we've already found a job posting and we use that job posting as the interview, as the job we're interviewing for, but no worries. Or you could just say kind of vaguely what kinds of jobs you are interested in or, or yeah, you talked to someone at Verilog a couple of days ago and you might be interested in that position. I don't know. Anyways, the first question is why are you interested in this position or tell me about yourself. And then you have three questions. Behavioral question one, behavioral question two and behavioral question three. Or if you want to sneak in here, the strength, what is your greatest strength and greatest weakness question? You can do that. Two, the whole point, y'all is that as, as the interviewee, you don't know what you're going to be asked. That's the whole point. You got to listen to the question and respond as best you can. So for the behavioral questions, I invite you to look up, pull up that Muse article and choose some from there. If that's helpful, those are some standard ones. I'm going to put this interview schedule into the chat box so that you, let me see. Yes, I can post it again. No worries. Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. I would have missed that otherwise. Here is the article that I'm, that you can pull up. Okay. And so here's the interview questions. We have about 25 ish minutes. So what I would recommend, if you have a group of three, most people will be in a group of three. And what I recommend is, you know, maybe five to seven minutes, you know, per person. And you can do like, basically like two people are interviewing one person. So you can kind of switch off asking questions. And then give a, you know, then a few minutes of feedback or something. If that feels too pressed for time, you can take out one of the behavioral questions and just do tell me about yourself, behavioral question one, and then behavioral question two, for the strength and weakness question. So just pay, pay attention to timing. Make sure everyone has some time, but you'll have maybe seven or eight minutes per person, including some time for feedback. Okay. And make sure you introduce yourselves and say hi as well. All right, y'all. We're going to, any questions before we open up the breakout rooms? Okay. You'll be in a room with either, it's either going to be groups of two or three. So just plan your time accordingly. And you'll have about 25 minutes and we'll call you back at the end. All right. If we're ready to go, let's, we'll stop the recording and we'll send you off.