Career Blog: Interviews
You’re in your interview outfit, you have extra copies of your resume and a list of your references. And maybe, just maybe, you’re hoping that your reputation at McMaster will give you an edge in your interview.
There’s good news and bad news: the good news is that the hard work you’ve done will, indeed, benefit you during the recruitment process for your next job. It will give you success stories that you can share in your resume, cover letter and interview responses. It will help your references to give insight into your strengths. It will help you come across as the well-informed, skilled person you are.
The bad news is that, while your experience can do all of these things, your reputation cannot. A common stumbling block for internal candidates – at McMaster and elsewhere – is that they rely too heavily on their reputations. As a result, where other candidates will provide details of their accomplishments and will demonstrate that they’ve researched their desired role and the unit or department it’s part of, internal candidates are sometimes stymied by being too modest, and by doing too little research into the role they’re applying to and the office they hope to work in.
It’s easy enough to buck this trend, though! Use the job description to give you a basic understanding of the role. If the posting includes any “For Department Use Only” sections, then you know that the selection committee saw fit to add material to the basic job description. Research the office that the role is housed in, and the division or faculty it reports to. What are the priorities of that area? Research can happen through people, too. Are there individuals who would be willing to share insights into the goals of the role, or of the unit or department? What does a search on McMaster’s Daily News turn up?
That will help you understand the goals of your future role and office. In terms of making sure your modesty doesn’t work against you, remember that the interview (and resume and cover letter) is a chance to share data. In a report, you would never claim anything without including data to back it up. Describing the details of your accomplishments (“I coordinated a 3-day event, involving another institution and 80 participants under budget”) gives the data to back up your claims (“I’m organized and resourceful”). If you’re struggling to come up with evidence, start with the fit/gap review.
Career Planning