Giving yourself time to think during a job or internship interview

Dr. Joseph Barber

I have been meeting with several students over the last few days who have been getting ready for different types of job and internship interviews, and so it seems like a good time to revisit this blog post from the archives to share advice on how to deal with tricky interview questions.  

It is always a good idea to think in advance about the types of questions you might be asked in a job interview, and to come up with a plan to be able to answer them effectively. Some questions you know will come up (e.g., Tell me about yourself. Why do you want this position? What do you know about our company? Do you have any questions for us? Read this for more information), and it makes sense to prepare some good answers to these tailored for each interview. However, you cannot prepare for every question that interviewers can ask, and there are always going to be some questions that leave you momentarily speechless as your brain scrambles to understand the question and tries to piece together information to make an adequate answer.

Employer: “If you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be?”

Candidate’s brain: A fruit? A fruit? What do you mean a fruit? Why are they interested in fruit? Just pick one, surely it doesn’t matter. Wait, but what is the most confident and skilled fruit? Perhaps they are looking for a certain kind of fruit? Is a tomato actually a fruit? I hate fruit!

Candidate: “Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr……………, apple?”

And it is not just strange questions that can catch people off-guard. Many behavioural-based interview questions start off with the following phrase:

Give me a specific example of a time where you…[showed initiative, took a leadership role, thought quickly on your feet, etc.]

But what happens if you suddenly can’t think of a specific example? With a little time, chances are that you can find something from your past experiences that you can talk about, but how do you give yourself that time. There is nothing wrong with a bit of silence, and it is probably better to be silently thoughtful for a short time than to just say the first things that pops into your head in a rambling, nonsensical way. However, the longer the silence becomes without you saying anything, the more awkward the moment will become – especially if you are on a phone interview and the interviewers cannot see you thinking.

The following responses are not answers to tricky questions (I don’t know what kind of fruit you are), but they can hopefully buy you and your brain some time to come up with an appropriate answer.

That’s a very interesting question – let me think about the best way to answer this for you.
Yes, everyone knows that by “interesting” you actually mean “difficult”, but this response can be helpful to give you some breathing room before you attempt an answer.

So, you are looking for an example of [leadership experiences, team work, etc.]. Well, there are a couple of good ones I can talk about, but I think the one that is the most relevant is…
For many tricky questions, you can repeat the question you have been asked back to the employer in your own words (don’t just repeat the question word for word), and use this time to begin to construct your answer. In this case, by the time you get to the phrase “but I think the one that is most relevant is…” you should have something to say!

You know, I was actually thinking about this question the other day when I was looking at your website/talking with a colleague of mine who works on….
If it is appropriate to the question, a response like this not only buys you some time, but also shows that you have been proactively thinking about this issue or seeking out information – which might be something worth highlighting.

I’m not sure that I have an exact answer to your question, but I can share a related experience that I think gets close to what you are looking for.
It is never a good idea just to say “I don’t know” to any interview question. This approach gives you the opportunity to share something that is just about relevant. You can then finish up by trying to connect what you just talked about with what they are interested. For example, “I haven’t used Access to put together a relational database, but I did do something similar with Excel when I combined two key datasets while I was working as an intern analyst. From my understanding of Access, I could take a very similar approach with the data your organization has and put this together.” If you really don’t have an answer, you might use the “I don’t know, but here is how I would find out” approach instead. The complete strategy is 1) here is what I do know; 2) here is what information I am currently missing; and 3) these are the approaches I would take to get an answer.

Before I answer, can I ask if you’re interested in that issue from a [technical, policy, etc.] perspective or from your [customers’, clients’, students’] point of view? 
Sometimes, the hesitation in answering a question comes from an uncertainty about what the interviewer is actually asking. You want to maximize your chances in an interview by answering the questions that they are actually asking you, not the ones that you think they are asking you. This type of response helps to convey the idea that you are conscious of the variety of perspectives that might exist within an organization. Don’t sound in any way defensive, and make sure that you keep your tone light and positive.

I am wondering if you can just clarify what you mean by….
This is another approach to buying you time and ensuring that you understand the question.

I’ve never been asked that question before; I need a minute to think about it.
This is an honest response, but remember that the phrase “I need a minute” is just a generalization. A minute is a long time to sit in silence, so don’t actually take the whole minute!

Oh my goodness, is that a squirrel eating a banana?
This was a phrase uttered by my friend’s thesis advisor during a meeting where my friend was pouring out his heart about whether he should stay in graduate school or not. In his advisor’s defense, there was actually a squirrel eating a banana. So, this type of response is probably best left to situations where there are actually squirrels eating bananas or similar extreme occurrences. When I interviewed for my postdoc at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the interview room looked out at a gate where the Disney characters gathered before heading out into the park. While it was fairly shocking for me to see a giant Mickey and Pluto walk by every 15 minutes during the interview, this would not have been a good thing to point out to the person who saw this occurrence every day.

Schedule a mock interview at Career Services, and you will feel much more confident going into your next job or internship interview that you can answer the important question you know you will get, and even the hard to answer ones that every-now-and-again you just may get.

Don’t let success be seasonal – make time to celebrate it all year long!

The end of the calendar year often gives us all a little more time to reflect upon what has been happening over the last 12 months. They say that time flies when you are having fun, but in reality it seems to fly by whether fun is had or not. When it comes to self-reflection, it is important to approach this as optimistically as possible. Over the last 12 months, you have likely experienced challenges with your research, with your advisor, with you lab-mates, and with friends and family beyond Penn. These challenging experiences will be easy for you to recall as you think back, but it will be equally important to think about some of the challenges that you overcame too. They may connected to some of the same big ones listed above, but they may be small ones. Perhaps you finally got through to a challenging student in a class where you are a TA. Maybe you learned to use a new feature in a software package that makes it easier to do your research (even if the research itself isn’t giving you the results you hope for). And from a career perspective, you might have learnt about a new career path, made a new contact, or discovered some helpful career-management skills from a webinar or workshop.  

Academia tends to be an environment rich in critical feedback. Grant applications, article submissions, and even discussions with your advisor all give other people the opportunity to critique your research questions and methods, your findings, and more. All this “helpful” feedback can leave you feeling a little worn down after a while. It is always very refreshing to get some positive feedback and positive reinforcement from time-to-time. If you don’t get this from your advisor, then look for other opportunities to hear about what a great job you are doing. Outside of your teaching and research pursuits, look for opportunities to join student/postdoc run groups, and to get in involved in activities that can have tangible benefits to your personal and professional growth. These experiences can build your career readiness skills – sought by employers from diverse career fields – and give you the chance to use the broader range of skills that you have that don’t always get used in your research. 

The other place where you can get positive feedback is from you! Using the Peter Fiske model of professional development (the 80:10:10 rule), you should aim to spend 80% of your active work time (think 9am-5pm, rather than 8am-11pm) doing the best work you can with your research. For 10% of the time you should be focused on your own professional development. This can involve learning new skills, expanding your network, learning about new career options, becoming a better presenter, practicing negotiation, and so on. And the final 10% of the time should be spend telling people what a great job you are doing with all of this. Yes, this sounds strange, but it is always useful to be able to help people to see your value. So, if you get to spend some time with family over the break, don’t get bogged down trying to explain why your research is so complicated and why it is taking so long. Instead, tell people what you have succeeded in doing, and why this is important. Practice the process of helping people to see your achievements. You’ll be doing this in job interviews at some point, and so it is worth practicing this as early on as possible. In fact, you can start right now – write down five successes (big or small) that you have had over the last year, and then find an opportunity to tell different people about them. Hearing yourself talk about your successes is a great way of putting you in a more optimistic mind-set. 

Here are my five successes:

  1. I have successfully adjusted to my new role at Career Services that I started back in January, and I have been enjoying the new focus on strategic program planning, as this aligns nicely with my skills.
  2. I have met with several students who had been given my name by Penn alumni I had met with a couple of years ago. I appreciate that they remembered me, and I am glad that they felt that I had something useful to offer current students!
  3. I finally put art up on my walls in my office. I have plenty of animals featured, including cows, ducks, chickens, dolphins, and fish. Since I have a PhD in animal behaviour, this makes me feel quite at home!
  4. I borrowed the “vision board” approach my wife uses at her work to highlight upcoming goals. Rather than listing tasks, you list the outcome you hope to achieve. There have been several successes so far. I am currently looking at one vision that says “…book proposal submitted”, and I am confident this will happen before the end of the year!
  5. I presented on our PhD externship program at a conference in St. Louis, and successfully managed to squeeze a lot of content and far too many slides into a 5-minute presentation that actually came off rather well – if I do say so myself!

Career advice for PhD students/postdocs on the Carpe Careers blog

By Dr. Joseph Barber

Are you looking for career advice that is focused on PhD students and postdocs? Do you have questions about how to navigate through your PhD program or your postdoc appointment to set yourself up for career success? Here is a summary of some of the recent posts you can find from the Carpe Careers blog on the Inside Higher Ed website over the last few months with answers for you!

Do you want great abs and a job in career fields beyond faculty roles? Find out why looking for quick fixes and easy options isn’t always going to be your best strategy by reading “5 tips for flat abs and an industry job”. There are no shortcuts when it comes to training for a marathon, but you may find that the same approaches you use for your fitness training can be equally helpful in your job search – read “why you should job search like a runner” to find out how.

Exploring your own skills, interests, and values requires a fair amount of introspection…, but that doesn’t mean you have go through this self-assessment and exploration process all by yourself. Read “You’re not alone” to find resources and support to help you figure out what comes next from a career perspective.

If you are finding your dissertation all-consuming in terms of the amount of time you are spending on it, then heed the advice in “Don’t let your dissertation run your life” to make sure that you are not missing out on professional development opportunities that might be helpful in your future job search. It is perfectly natural, after completing a 70-80 hour a week postdoc, to find careers that offer a more reasonable work-life balance to be very attractive. Be careful how you bring this subject up in job interviews, though, because there can be a risk of miscommunication. Read “How to discuss work-life balance” to get some insights on how to navigate these conversations with employers. And if you really want research to be part of your “life” even if it isn’t part of your daily work, then read “Crafting a research practice after the PhD” to learn about ways to continue to do research outside of an academic setting.

Employers in a diverse range of career fields often talk about their desire to find candidates with “leadership experiences”. While focusing on independent research may not seem to offer many opportunities to demonstrate leadership, your research, and the many volunteer experiences you have outside of your research, can help you to market your leadership skills. Read “Making leadership and service count in the job search” to find out how. And if you are looking for ways to be a better leader in your academic settings, then the post “On gratitude and leadership” provides some helpful insights.

Being a successful leader requires an ability to thinking strategically, communicate effectively, and build relationships with different groups of stakeholders. My organizations are highlighting their desire to find candidates who can also demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The post “Getting up to speed on diversity” provides useful information on ways that graduate students can talk about this subject confidently and authentically.

There are new Carpe Careers posts added every Monday – make sure you visit www.insidehighered.com/career-advice/carpe-careers to get the relevant advice you need.

Advice for PhDs and Postdocs from Carpe Careers

By Dr. Joseph Barber

The Carpe Careers blog on the Inside Higher Ed website is written by PhD/postdoc career advisors from institutions across North America. The bite-sized advice offered is rich with steps you can take to make the most of your professional and career development. Here are just some highlights over the last few months:

  • Needed: Flexible Mentors in Science: Adriana Bankston provides advice for how research scientists can positively influence the personal and professional development of the trainees who work in their labs.
  • Immerse Yourself with Intention: Short, intense interactions with organizations where you might want to work can provide career insights, but how do you make the most of those experiences? Laura N. Schram shares four best practices.
  • Using Assessments for Career “Fit”: Stephanie K. Eberle outlines the misconceptions about assessments in career counseling and advises how to use them most effectively.
  • Your Ph.D. Experience Is Great Work Experience — Part 2: Attending to the impression you make in graduate school is a great investment in your long-term career, argues Briana Mohan.
  • Your Ph.D. Experience Is Great Work Experience — Part I: Contrary to popular and judgmental opinion, your doctoral experience is some of the best real-world working experience you can get, writes Briana Mohan.
  • Using Job Ads for Career Exploration: Reviewing advertisements of all sorts can help you identify appealing job types and sectors that you may never even have heard of, advises Derek Attig.
  • Seeking Grants: More than Money: Pursuing funding support as a graduate student or postdoc can help your career — and in more ways than one, writes Victoria McGovern.
  • The Menagerie of Potential Employers: It’s important to realize that employers see the world differently than you do and to understand their specific emotional states, advises Joseph Barber.
  • Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Mentor: Pallavi Eswara raises the most important ones — and also provides some answers.
  • Perfecting Your Panel Interview Game: Job interviews with groups of people are quite different than one-on-ones with individuals, and you never quite know what will happen. Saundra Loffredo gives some helpful advice.
  • Help Is Right at Hand: Never again after graduate school will you have access to so many free, high-quality career development services, writes Melissa Dalgleish, who advises how to make the most of what your campus offers.
  • Building Your Personal Brand: Just as corporations try to establish a memorable brand, Ph.D. students and postdocs seeking new opportunities should work to create a lasting impression, writes Gaia Vasiliver-Shamis.
  • Mastering the Art of Presenting: Being able to give an effective presentation is essential to your career success, writes Christine Kelly, who provides six pointers on how to do so.
  • Your Job Is Not You: How can you shift away from mind-sets that equate identity with academic work? And in doing so, can you relieve anxiety about exploring unfamiliar career pathways? Sarah Peterson provides some answers.
  • Why Career Self-Assessments Matter: Determining what your skills are, what you enjoy doing and what is important to you is fundamental to career development, writes Natalie Lundsteen.

Posts are published every Monday on the Carpe Careers blog, and so make the most of these career perspectives relevant to your career development, exploration, and job applications.

Experience the hiring process from the employer’s (emotional) perspective

Dr. Joseph Barber

In addition to working with graduate students and postdocs here at Penn on their career exploration and development, I also teach an Applied Animal Behavior and Welfare course at Hunter College of the City University of New York as an adjunct professor. Since job searching is a discrete set of human behaviors that can be defined and even measured, I find several topics discussed in my animal behavior course to be relevant when talking about career-related topics with students and postdocs.

One of my lectures in the course focuses on the question of whether other species experience emotional states and whether those states are similar to the ones that we experience. That is a very important question from an animal welfare perspective, because negative subjective emotional states (like fear, pain, frustration, boredom, loneliness) can be a potential source of suffering if they result directly from the way we house or manage these animals in captivity.

There are no easy answers to these questions, because emotions by their very nature are subjective and may well be distinct to the individuals experiencing them. I assume that other human beings feel emotional states in a similar way that I do, but it is almost impossible to show that in any objective fashion. We cannot measure the experiences that we feel, even if we can measure changes in blood flow or nerves firing in parts of the brain. What we are left with, then, are some general questions we must ponder. Here are two examples.

  • Do other species have the same range of emotional states that we do, and do they have some that we don’t experience?
  • How can we try to perceive the environment from the perspectives of those other species when they see, smell, hear and experience the world in such different ways from us?

I bring up the issue of differing perspectives because, in many cases, those types of questions are also important when thinking about employers — and especially hiring managers and recruiters. Yes, I know that they are humans, too (although with the more common use of applicant tracking software, the first entity that looks at your materials could well be a robot of sorts). Hiring managers should experience the world in the same way that you do. But their environment and experiences are very different from yours, and those factors can play a significant role in their emotional and behavioral responses. In any job application and interview process, it’s important to figure out how employers perceive their environment and how they respond to the application materials you send them in these environments. So, let’s look at the questions I listed above from a job perspective.

Do employers have the same range of emotional states that you do, and do they have some that you don’t experience?

In general terms, the same things that would annoy you will annoy employers. If they ask for a résumé and you send them a 10-page CV instead, they will find that annoying. If they ask for a cover letter and writing sample and you don’t send one, then that, too, will cause irritation. I don’t think there are studies that look at this, but I feel sure that chronic irritation will inhibit open-mindedness about your potential as a candidate. Even if employers have become desensitized to people not sending them what they ask for and in the right format, it may not change their behavioral response, which is probably going to be to shift your application to the “no” pile.

But while hiring managers don’t have unique emotional states, they will generally not feel the same levels of insecurity or worry in the job-search process that some job candidates may. After all, they are not the ones being judged. For that reason, you should not let negative emotions sneak into your application materials or your interview answers, as they will be easy for hiring managers to spot. That can happen quite subtly, with an innocent-enough sounding “Although I don’t have all the experience you are asking for, I do have …” statement in a cover letter.

Don’t dwell on the negatives. Find a more optimistic tone. One easy way to do that is simply to remove the first part of the sentence I used as an example above and start with what you can do and will offer that will make you a valuable candidate. You may only ever have 70 percent of what a job ad is asking for in terms of skills and experiences, but that can be enough — especially if you can demonstrate the potential you can bring.

How can you try to perceive the environment from the perspectives of employers when they see, smell, hear and experience the world in such different ways from you?

The first thing to realize is that employers do see the world differently than you do. Your priorities might be to find a job for some of the following reasons: to have enough money to eat and stay warm, to get good health insurance, to be able to work with an interesting group of colleagues, to continue being paid to do the research you love doing, to start on your professional career path, and so on. We all have our own reasons. Employers have their own reasons, too, and they aren’t likely to overlap with many of yours. The main reason they hire someone usually boils down to the fact that they need someone to get a job done effectively, whether that is teaching courses, working with clients, developing new protein-sequencing pathways or managing programs. They don’t care what you will spend your salary on, but they do care about whether you are going to be a worthwhile investment and good to work with.

In other words, they will be more interested in what you can do for them and less interested in what having the job does for you. When asked the question “Why do you want this position?” in an interview, your answer should put less priority on what you might get out of it and more on what you can offer them.

Focus on their needs first, and it will become obvious to them that you want the job because: a) you have the abilities to do it, and b) something from your past experiences has shown you doing something similar, doing it effectively and enjoying doing it.

A common mistake is to spend too much time telling an employer how excited you are by the possibility of working for such an impressive organization as they obviously are. That is information they already have. They want to hear about what you can bring to the role.

Your academic experiences are always going to be important in describing what you as a Ph.D. can bring, but you will need to talk about those experiences in active terms. Avoid comments like, “My academic experiences have given me …” which involves actions happening to you. Instead, consider something like, “I actively sought out opportunities to study X subject with X professor so that I could connect X concept with X reality, and I have used this knowledge in X situation to help me X …” — where the concepts and realities you mention are relevant to the job and the outcome highlights how effective your knowledge and skills truly are. Employers are looking for patterns: if you have used a skill successfully in the past, then you will be likely to do so again in the future. You need to find a way to show them how effective you have been — and that will always be more interesting than just telling them that you can be effective.

Hiring managers are keyed into the abilities, experiences and knowledge that will help them build capacity within their organizations. They are aware of the challenges that they face every day and are looking for the skills they know will be helpful in overcoming these challenges. If you do not know what those challenges are or what skills are helpful, then you may not be highlighting the most relevant experiences from your past.

So how do you see the world from the employer’s perspective? The easiest way is to read the job advertisement really, really carefully. That is where employers list what they need to get done and the types of skills they believe are necessary to do so. And to really see the world from an employer’s perspective, you also have to be able to use their language to describe your experiences. A great question to ask people whom you are meeting for informational interviews is “What are the skills you use on a daily basis that help you to succeed in your role?” That will give you insight into the way the world looks from the employer’s perspective.

And coming back to the idea of emotional states: when you make it easy for employers to see how your experiences qualify you as an excellent candidate do the job they need done (and most people applying for any job won’t do that), then you will make them happy. It is probable that happy employers will more likely see you as a preferred candidate.

So, yes, employers do have emotions, and you will need to make sure that you give some thought to how you can keep their subjective states as positive as possible.