60 Seconds and You're Hired!, Revised Edition by Ryan Robin

Author:Ryan, Robin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Questions for College Students and New Grads

It used to be that most new graduates had little or no related work experience when they interviewed for their first professional job. Today, a new grad can be anywhere from twenty-two to fifty years old, some having notable experience behind them. The average student earning an advanced college degree is now in his thirties, and quite a few are over forty. Sometimes, you may have a high GPA but are ineffective in marketing yourself and thus find landing the right job more difficult than you anticipated.

Preparation can help relieve some of the anxiety and allow you to effectively communicate the skills you do have. When you prepare for the interview, make sure your answers draw from both academic and work experience. Many new graduates have had only service jobs—working in a fast-food restaurant or retail store. Don’t underestimate this experience! You still needed to show up and use teamwork and communication skills to keep the job. You also learned customer-service skills and how to work under pressure. For employers hiring new grads, dependability is a big concern, so use your previous jobs—whatever they were—to illustrate your reliability. Be sure to examine all work experience and activities for evidence of leadership or business skills, organizational abilities, time-management skills, research, analysis, teamwork, planning, and computer and writing abilities.

To prepare for the interview, talk to people who hold the job you want. Ask them about the skills most important to their job. Then develop your 5 Point Agenda and 60 Second Sell after you have researched and understood the necessary job duties and skills.

Practice answering questions with full and complete responses that get your point across in 60 seconds or less. Here are some questions you need to be able to effectively answer.

102. “You have no real world experience with what this job requires. If presented with an assignment/project with real world demands and deadlines, how will you meet these needs?”

This is the time when you need to bring up specific school projects and assignments that dealt with problems in a similar way. The employer is questioning how you think and handle things. You might say, “I would take the whole assignment or project and work on it in smaller, more manageable portions. I would create a timeline for each part, which would allow me to complete the assignment within the required timeframe. I would also touch base frequently with my boss to ensure I was getting the work done correctly.”

103. “What led you to choose your field of study or major?”

“Liberal arts has taught me to think out problems and research and analyze data. I’ve found sociology to be interesting with its broad-based analysis of society’s behavior patterns. My classes required eight to nine books per course so I’ve developed excellent time-management skills for tackling a heavy workload. I am a great researcher as well as a good communicator with strong writing skills. I did term papers on numerous subjects all four years, which fine-tuned

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