The interview is one of the most important parts of an interview. It allows organizations to get to know a little bit about their applicants regarding the job being applied for. It allows them to figure out who exactly is the best fit for the job. The process of selecting that person can be more or less complicated depending on the position; the amount of responsibility and the type of work. I personally haven’t experienced too many job interviews yet. I have interviewed for a fair amount of restaurant jobs and other minimum wage jobs like that to pay the bills. However, I’ve only interviewed for a couple internships so far. I haven’t participated in a very competitive interview yet, but I have experienced a more selective hiring process.
One internship I interviewed for was a 10-week business internship. This interview was a little different than the others I have been a part of. The others were very straight forward and my resume spoke for itself. This time, I did not have very much real past experience regarding the characteristics of the internship. It was just an internship, offered at the career fair. It was being offered to multiple people in multiple different locations. It did not seem to be the most competitive. It was a broad internship and didn’t exactly cover one specific area of business. It offered experience in a few different areas and a mentor. However, there is a project that all the interns work on, and that is the main part of the job. Most of the questions pertained to that project.
It was a structured interview, but it was done in an unstructured way. After learning a little about me, the questions became related to what we talked about and my experiences. That being said, there were specific things she was looking for. I was asked a lot of behavioral questions. I had worked on a couple projects in high school and college that were similar to the one in the internship. I was asked about those specific experienced. My role and what happened. I was asked about conflicts that may have occurred, and how I responded. I was also asked about other work or extracurricular experiences in relation to the job. Things like my customer service abilities, and my ability to talk to and approach strangers. This process allowed the interviewer and the company to learn about me regarding specific attributes. During the internship, they measure your performance and may offer a job opportunity afterward. This shows that criterion-related, predictive validity is used to select who to hire. This internship ended up being terminated for that season for unknown reasons, however, I think it was a good experience to take part in the interview.
