Graduate Students – Page 4

Are you a first-gen grad student? We’ve got a new workshop on informational interviews for you!

Helen Pho, Associate Director

One of the most exciting collaborative projects that I’m working on this semester is creating a new video- and discussion-based workshop on informational interviewing for graduate students and postdocs. This means writing scripts of fictional informational interviews gone painfully wrong with my colleagues, working with actors who can perform the scenes, and collaborating with students and colleagues who can film and edit the videos, which has been and will continue to be a lot of fun leading up to our workshops in April!
Throughout college, I found the processes of networking in general and conducting information interviews in particular to be somewhat mysterious. As a first-gen student, I knew that networking was important but didn’t have any frame of reference. My parents didn’t work in offices, so growing up, I never saw them model what networking as a professional looks like. Additionally, informational interview meetings are generally private, one-on-one conversations between two people. Unless you’re already in the hot seat, you really can’t be a fly on the wall during someone else’s informational interview to observe how to do one well—or to observe what not to do!

When I work with graduate students and postdocs who are seeking internships and jobs, I often speak with them about why it is crucial to do informational interviews with professionals in the career fields they’d like to be in, brainstorm questions that students can ask during the actual conversation, and explain the whole process step-by-step from crafting an introductory email to staying in touch with the professional after the informational interview is over. With this new workshop, you’ll be able to get up close and personal with the do’s and don’ts of informational interviews and actually be a fly on the wall! By having students watch and talk about a filmed informational interview gone awry and another one gone well, with pauses in between scenes to discuss the good and the bad, we hope that you’ll learn to make the best first impression, ask the right questions, and come away with helpful information and a valuable professional contact as you venture off on your own to do informational interviews.

As a sneak peek into our workshops, here is a do and a don’t of international interviews that we’ll watch and discuss in details:

•Do: Be curious and prepare a good list of questions: Being the student to request an informational interview with someone who’s more senior, sometimes it can feel uncomfortable to come to a meeting ready to drive the conversation with a list of questions. You may feel reluctant to do so for any number of reasons, but remember that professionals who agreed to meet with you are eager to help you as much as they can. Think about the goals you have for meeting. Are you interested in learning about how they prepared for their career? Do you want to learn about the employers they’ve worked with? Are you hoping to find out how they transitioned from academia to industry? Your goals can help frame the questions you devise, so you can get the most out of your informational interview, and the professional contact can be as helpful as possible.

•Don’t: Stumble on the “Tell me about yourself” question: One of the common mistakes that graduate students make when they introduce themselves is to simply state that they’re a graduate student and then provide a 5 minute detailed explanation of their research. While discussing your research is a good idea, keep it short and talk about it in a way that someone who doesn’t share your expertise can understand why your research is important. It’s also helpful to relate the skills you’ve used in your graduate work and any prior work experiences to how you might apply them in a future career in the professional contact’s field or industry. By establishing common interests and shared connections, you’ll make a good first impression and begin to build a relationship with the professional at the outset of your conversation.

Come to one of our two interactive workshops (info below) to learn more about the other do’s and don’ts of informational interviews. You will laugh, you will cringe, you might even laugh-cry, but it’s sure to get you thinking about how you can present the best version of yourself in these important networking conversations!

•The first workshop (open to all graduate students and postdocs as part of the Job Search Series) will take place on Thursday, April 5 from 12-1:30pm in the McNeil Building, conference room 97. Please “Join the Event” on Handshake for updates and reminders for the program: https://app.joinhandshake.com/events/112840

•The second workshop (tailored specifically for first-gen grad students as part of our Generation First series, although all graduate students and postdocs are welcome) will take place on Thursday, April 12 from 3-4:30pm in McNeil Building, conference room 97. Please “Join the Event” on Handshake for updates and reminders for the programs: https://app.joinhandshake.com/events/112841

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.

A Few Handshake Updates and Reminders

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been successfully using Handshake for almost six months. We’ve had over 10,000 students and alumni activate their accounts, approved over 7,600 employers to use the system, and had over 12,000 jobs and internships posted for Penn students and alumni. (In case you are curious, the top job functions have been education/teaching, finance, data & analytics, business development, and research – but there are lots of others!)

We hope the Handshake system has been working well for you! As a reminder, we wanted to post a few ways that you can optimize the system over the winter break to make it even more effective!

Complete your profile! If you haven’t already done so, take a few minutes to add details to your profile about your work experience, activities, educational background, and skills. You can even upload your resume so you don’t have to start from scratch. Once your profile looks great, you can make your profile public to employers so that they can find you for positions for which you might be a strong candidate. (If you have already finalized your plans and are not currently seeking, you can make your profile private so that you are not contacted.) As a new feature, you can also make your profile public to other Penn students and check out profiles from classmates who have opted to share theirs. Handshake can be a powerful networking tool.
Fill out the Career Interests section completely! The more Handshake knows about your career interests, the more effective it will be at populating your homepage with opportunities that are a good fit for you. Be sure to indicate what type of opportunities interest you (job, internship, networking, volunteering, etc.), the industries and job functions of interest to you, and where you want to live. Also, take a few minutes to indicate which CareerMail Communications you would like to receive. These are industry based e-newsletters sent out by the Career Services staff on a regular basis. It is one of the primary communication channels we are using this year, so don’t miss out on it.
Take a look at the Resources tab to find other career related resources available to you as a Penn student.
RSVP for events! (We will have lots more events listed in the spring once we get our room assignments from facilities!)
Schedule an appointment with a Career Advisor through the on-line scheduling system.
Download the mobile app, so you can do all of these things on the go! (Note that currently a mobile app is only available for the iPhone – an Android app is in the works- but even without the app Handshake’s website is mobile ready.)

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:

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.
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!
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!
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!
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!

Calling All Humanities and Social Science PhDs!

Helen Pho, Associate Director

Looking back at my time in a doctoral program in History at the University of Texas, I recall having conversations with my peers about what you could do with a PhD in History if you didn’t become a professor. It’s like the question I pondered when I was in college about what I could do with a history major, but instead of writing a 50-page senior essay, I’m now writing a multi-year dissertation that seemed to have no end in sight!

Although many of us were working toward the goal of achieving a tenure-track job, there were also some of us who wondered: What else can you do with a PhD in the humanities? How can you translate the skills of researching and writing a dissertation into a rewarding and meaningful job? How do you find jobs that would value a PhD in the humanities? How do you even begin to think about your priorities when it comes to world of work outside of academia?

Beginning this week, ImaginePhD–a new, intuitive, and beautifully-designed career exploration and planning tool created specifically for PhDs in the humanities and social sciences–is available and free to all users to help grad students, postdocs, and PhD alums get at those questions. Created by the Graduate Career Consortium, ImaginePhD offers students the opportunity to reflect and understand their own skills, values, and interests, explore 15 different “job families” (such as advocacy, consulting, and entrepreneurship) through stories and articles, and create a concrete plan to outline specific goals for completing your doctoral program and pursuing your career goals. To learn more about how you can take advantage of ImaginePhD whether you’ve completed your PhD or you’re at the beginning, middle, or near the end of your PhD program, check out this blog post from Carpe Careers.

While ImaginePhD was not around for me to use as a graduate student (I did manage to find my way out of my dissertation and into interesting, challenging, and fulfilling roles after I defended through networking and learning about careers widely), as a graduate and postdoc career adviser, I’m looking forward to chatting about what ImaginePhD can do for you as your explore and pursue your future careers! Visit imaginephd.com to create an account and get started today!