Interview Purpose: Prove Myself or Good Fit?

[Le Chat]

I have my first interview in a few weeks for a doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. There are 5 faculty POI's, and I'm uncertain if each POI takes on one or two students. This school and POI are an almost perfect fit for me in every way. 

During the interview process, should my focus be on proving myself as a competitive candidate, or showing how I am a good fit? I think it will be quite easy to show that I fit in very well, but since I lack certain aspects of competitiveness I am a little insecure.

My plan is to be prepared, be myself, and be as social as possible with everyone. I do bring a different background than many applicants that I hope works to my advantage.

TIA!

[fuzzylogician]

1 hour ago, abnumber5 said:

My plan is to be prepared, be myself, and be as social as possible with everyone. I do bring a different background than many applicants that I hope works to my advantage.

This sounds like a good plan. You don't need to worry too much about proving anything. They are interviewing you; that means they already consider you a strong candidate and a good fit. Just be yourself and be ready to talk about your research and background, and why Awesome U and Awesome Prof are a good fit. 

[hopefulPhD2017]

Great question @abnumber5 I have tried to go with the flow and listen as much as I talk, but I get incredibly self-conscious. I almost feel star struck. As they're talking about Amazing U and Amazing Prof, I am thinking, "Eek! This sounds amazing! I want to go right now! Oh Geez I hope I'm not screwing this up because it sounds amazing!" And so on the hamster wheel goes. So I end up saying, "Hmm that sounds interesting!" "Cool" etc and I feel dumb about that too. 

Any advice @fuzzylogician on what to say after Awesome Prof shares something about his work that doesn't sound childish, pandering, or inane? ?

[Extra Espresso]

27 minutes ago, hopefulPhD2017 said:

Any advice @fuzzylogician on what to say after Awesome Prof shares something about his work that doesn't sound childish, pandering, or inane? ?

I'm not @fuzzylogician, but one helpful thing you can do is read up on the professor's work ahead of time and think of some interesting questions you would want to ask! This way, if you freeze up in the moment because you're so excited about their work, you have pre-determined, intelligent questions to ask. Plus, then you get to learn even more about the things that make the professor awesome and have a better interaction with them.

Also, remember that they chose you to come on this interview. That means someone in a position to decide these things decided you are a good fit and they are interested in getting to know you better. So when you feel self-conscious, try to remember that they picked you to be here, and that means you already did something to impress them!

 

[Le Chat]

Thank you all so much, @Extra Espresso @hopefulPhD2017  @fuzzylogician (love the cat btw!) I feel a lot more confident after that perspective. I'm starting to look forward to my upcoming interview, I think it will be great.

Also, definitely prepping on the POI as much as possible. I am genuinely interested in their experience, they have a lot of it! 

Thanks again!

[fuzzylogician]

10 hours ago, hopefulPhD2017 said:

Any advice @fuzzylogician on what to say after Awesome Prof shares something about his work that doesn't sound childish, pandering, or inane? ?

If you're truly excited, I don't think there is anything wrong with "cool!". It's a little hard to give generic advice on this kind of thing because it really depends on the content of the research, but if you don't have a particularly contentful question, you might think about asking questions about whether they expect this kind of research to continue after you're there, if they're submitting a grant and if so if there is a role for student assistants and more generally if this is something you might get a chance to get involved with, what they expect the outcomes of the project to be (as in, what do you think you'll find?), something about learning technique X or how technique Y could help, how they first came up with the idea, what made them think that X approach is the best -- things like that. But I think it's totally fine to just say "that's really cool!".