This is the third post of the series How to Get a Job with your Humanities Degree. Here are Part I and Part II.
In this post I would like to talk about some common interview questions and the ways in which your experience in grad school has prepared you for them. You can master any interview if you spend some time preparing for it by researching questions that interviewers commonly ask and thinking of interesting ways in which you could answer those questions that would both reflect the experiences on your resume and provide compelling stories about you to the interviewer. After doing that, practice giving your answers by doing a mock interview with a friend or at least by saying your answers out loud the way you would prepare for a presentation or a talk you’re so used to doing in grad school.
I chose the questions below because you would get a version of them at almost every interview you attend regarding of the position you’re applying to. I also believe that I’ve mastered answering them over time relying entirely on my experience in grad school.
Why do you want this job?
I think that this question offers a neat opportunity for you to reflect on your switch from academia to a career outside of it. It is also a great opportunity for you to reveal interesting facts about yourself to your potential employer, such as where you see yourself working and what kinds of things you would appreciate about the position you’re applying to.
For instance, you could stress the number of years you spent in higher education and describe the kinds of experience you had as the result: doing your own research, presenting to audiences, teaching and tutoring, organizing conferences, etc. I know you have many things to talk about and at least one of those past experiences is in line with the job you’re interviewing for. So, highlight it as the thing you enjoyed the most and show how being hired for this position is the natural progression from your time in academia. For instance, while interviewing for a sales job I described how much I enjoyed teaching and tutoring students one-on-one. I stressed how the time spent with people where I presented information to them could naturally translate into my ability to be a good sales person. I mentioned that I saw a sales job as a position where I would get the opportunity to educate potential customers about the product I was representing and show them how and why it might be useful for them. And since I already had several years of experience educating people, the hiring manager felt that I was a good fit for the company.
What are your greatest professional strengths?
This is another excellent question that offers you the opportunity to educate your interviewers about your past. Many people have no idea what getting a Master’s degree or a PhD might entail. Explain it to them. Talk about writing a dissertation (or a major research project), teaching, traveling to professional conferences, organizing student events, living in a foreign country, mastering a new language, all while keeping up with your family responsibilities, and so on. Just explaining how many things you’ve had on your plate and highlighting how well you did managing them will allow your interviewers find out so much more about you.
Another great way of answering the question is picking one of the things you’ve accomplished in grad school that is in line with the position you’re interviewing for and really telling a great story about how you shined. For instance, interviewing for a student recruitment position where one of my roles would have been helping with the orientation event for that institution, I spoke about my experience organizing academic conferences while in grad school.
How do you deal with pressure at work or stressful situations?
This is one more question that allows you to say more about what going to graduate school entails. Talk about how many things you’ve had to deal with at any one time: research and writing your own project, teaching, grading, holding office hours, writing research grants, going to your own seminars, etc. Paint a detailed picture of what your days looked like. Mention how the deadlines worked and how you had to manage your own work as a student as well as your responsibilities as a teacher. Then give details about concrete ways in which you dealt with it all. Did you make spreadsheets with detailed to do lists and timelines? Did you put timers on to ensure you don’t spend too much time on each essay you grade? Did you check your e-mail at a certain time during the day? Give concrete examples of how you managed your time and anticipated the stressful periods in your semester. Those are significant skills and they will matter to others.
Tell us about the time when you faced a challenge or conflict at work and how you dealt with it.
Okay, let’s dig back to many times you had a student you were teaching become frustrated with his or her grade or the course material. Think back to one of those experiences and tell a compelling story. Tell the interviewers what happened and how you went about dealing with the situation and turning the student around.
Tell us about a time you had to create training materials and supervise or participate in training of other staff.
To be honest, this is not a very common question, nor is it a question I performed well on in interviews. I include it here because I have completely blanked out when I was asked this. After the interview, however, my partner reminded me about how teaching experience could be described as preparing “training” material and having your class follow along with you until they get it. Bingo! You’ve trained people in the past. Think of all the lecture notes you’ve created and the exercises you had to make up to help your students grasp the material you were delivering. This is an extremely valuable skill to describe if asked about.
I am going to end this post here. For more helpful interview prep resources, check out this article and also this one. Also feel free to reach out to me if you would like me to send you my own interview prep list I’ve been putting together based on the questions I have been asked in interviews.
