Today, I just wanted to go through a basic list of “Dos” and “Dont’s” for the interview.  A lot of this material has been implied in what I’ve written over the past week; but still, I wanted to get it all in one place:

• Do: Be friendly. Smile, make eye contact, laugh. By being friendly you will relax the interviewers and yourself, and create an easygoing atmosphere in which it will be easier to share information about yourself
• Don’t: Overdo it. Don’t try to hard to make the interviewers like you by telling jokes, flirting, or being overly familiar. These tactics will make the interviewers uncomfortable.
• Do: Be Honest. Interviewers are good at what they do, and they can usually sense when you are being disingenuous. Remember, you may not be right for a program – the interview can help you know.
• Don’t: Be plain. Yes, tell the truth. But tell it with some style. Think about how to tell your story in a way that sounds impressive. Don’t make things up, but do make sure you make the truth sound good.
• Do: Be Talkative. The interviewers want to hear what you have to say. They don’t want to hear one-word answers to questions. Be sure to elaborate on your answers and share as much information as possible.
• Don’t: Talk forever. Tell the interviewers everything that is relevant to the question, but do not talk forever. Interviewers are working on a tight schedule.
• Do: Ask Questions. Asking questions about the program shows your interest and also demonstrates that you have thought about what it would mean to participate.
• Don’t: Think that your questions “don’t count.” If you ask a question that shows you are totally ignorant of the program (or unsuitable for it), interviewers WILL TAKE NOTE.
• Do: Relax. The interview is not the most important thing in your life. It may not even be the most important thing in your application. So relax. You’ll do better anyway.
• Don’t: Relax about basic professionalism. Don’t be late. Don’t dress casually. Don’t slouch in your chair. Don’t use casual forms of speech or conversation. “Relax” does not mean “You can forget about politeness.”
• Do: Know what you want and why you want it!!! The basic question behind every interview question is “What do you want and why?” You should think about this for a long time before you go to the interview.
• Don’t: Be insistent and inflexible. Knowing what you want doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible about other possibilities. Candidates who are insistent and inflexible raise a red flag for interviewers.

Today we’re going to talk briefly about how to prepare for an interview.  The reason we’re going to talk briefly is that there is not too much that you can do to prepare yourself for the interview process.  In fact, one of the dangers of preparing at all is that you might overprepare. So let’s start there, discussing the hazards of overpreparation.

Overpreparation is what happens when you envision a set of questions which you’ll likely be asked, and then construct, ahead of time, an actual answer for each question.  A candidate who is overprepared will tend to avoid the actual questions and instead provide the answer he or she has prepared – even if that answer goes with another question!!!  This candidate will provide very beautiful, literate answers – but they won’t be to the questions asked.  And that, obviously, is bad.

So, when we say “prepare,” the most important thing to remember is that we don’t mean for you to craft response ahead of time.

What, then, is good preparation?

There are two steps I think you could take that would be helpful:

First, review your application.  Read your essays, read your recommendations.  Many of the questions you will be asked will have their point of origin in your application, so the more informed you are about it, the better.

Second, spend some time reflecting on the reasons behind your decision to apply to the program.  Try to get behind your reasons to the premises that underlie them.  For example, you may have applied to KAEF because you wanted a top-notch education, but why did you want that?  Why is that education important to you, particularly in the field which you chose?  The answers to these questions may seem obvious to you at first glance, but if you spend some time thinking about it, I believe you will see that there is a complicated web of reasons behind your decision to apply for KAEF (or, in fact, almost any decision you make).  That, ultimately, is what we as interviewers are interested in – not only about why you want to become a KAEF fellow, but also about why you want to study at a particular institution, in a particular field; about why you want to pursue a particular career; about why you hold a particular opinion.

This kind of preparation is easy.  Think of an idea  or an opinion that is likely to come up in the interview.  Then ask yourself why you have that idea or that opinion.  You will come up with more ideas and more opinions.  Ask yourself why you hold those ideas.  You will get more ideas – and ask yourself why you hold those, and so on and so forth, for as long as you can.  (You may want to enlist the help of a 4 or 5 year-old in this process.  They are very good at always asking the question, “Why?”)

This mental exercise will prepare you for the kind of self-justification we will ask of you in the interview itself.

Yes, as promised, today I am going to unveil for everyone the CORRECT ANSWERS TO THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS. I have to say I’m very excited about it.

So, without any additional fanfare, here we go – the correct answers to the KAEF interview questions:

There are no correct answers.

No, really.

There are incorrect answers, certainly, but I very rarely hear them.  An example of an incorrect answer would be something that disqualifies a candidate based on the program criteria.  For example, one of our criteria is that our candidates are “habitual residents of Kosovo.”  So this following (hypothetical) exchange would represent an incorrect answer:

Q: Here in your application you list two addresses – one here in Prishtina, and one in Tirana.  Could you explain that?

A: Ah, yes, well, I live and work in Tirana, but I have a legal address here in Prishtina for tax reasons.

INCORRECT.

So there are “incorrect” answers in this limited sense.  However, I have to tell you, these answers are extremely rare. In my three years of KAEF interviews I have not heard a single “incorrect” answer, for a very good reason:  most candidates who were strictly ineligible have already been eliminated from the competition by the time of the interviews.

So we’re left with my original assertion that there is no such thing as a “correct” (or “incorrect”) answer. This is the honest truth.  Let me explain a little.

When we ask a question – say, something like, “What would you say are the three main problems facing the economy of Kosova today?” – we may have our own opinions regarding those questions, BUT – and this is a big “but” – we absolutely do not bring those opinions to bear in evaluating your answers. If I, Nathan Truitt, think that one of the problems facing Kosova’s economy is the lack of strong laws on intellectual property, and you don’t list that as one of your answers, you in no way are penalized for that.

In other words, we do not evaluate the claims you make in the interview according to their truth value. So how do we evaluate your ideas?

We evaluate your ideas based upon the reasons you provide in advancing them. We are interested in the process by which you arrive at your opinions. Are you simply repeating the opinions of others verbatim?  Are you, on the other hand, constructing your ideas without taking other people’s opinions into account?  Or are you creating a synthesis between the received wisdom and your own experience?

So what you say is significantly less important than your reasons for saying it. The “what” is not important; the “why” is paramount.  You can say something that I profoundly disagree with – you can even advance an idea that I think is silly and false – but if you can explain why you came to believe it, I will evaluate your answer more positively than an answer in which you said something I agreed with, but were unable to explain why.

Why do we evaluate answers in this way?

Because this is the talent that will be required of you in graduate school – the ability to look beyond the simple content of a statement (“America is a great country”) to the premises and criteria upon which that statement is based (“What constitutes greatness?  To what extent has America met the criteria of greatness as a nation?  Is it even possible to label an abstract concept like a nation as possessing greatness as an intrinsic quality, apart from its actions?”)

If you can show us this talent in your answers, then regardless of the content your answers represent, we will evaluate you positively.

I hope this is clear.  As always, feel free to ask questions in the “Comments” section of the blog!

Tomorrow we will talk about preparing for the interview.  See you then!

In a later post we’ll talk about preparing for the interview.  One of the things that would be very helpful in preparing would be to know what questions the interviewers were going to ask.  Well, I’m going to tell you.  Or at least I’m going to tell you how you can figure that out.

First, let me talk a little about the types of questions we’ll ask and where those questions come from.  We’ll basically ask two distinct types of questions:  (1) program related questions, which address your readiness and aptitude for KAEF in a broad sense; and (2) field specific questions, which will probe your knowledge and ideas in the subject area for which you are applying.  The first set of questions have to do with your fit with the KAEF program, and the second with your readiness to enter specific graduate institutions in the U.S.

For both sets of questions, the interviewers have what we refer to as a question bank. This is a list of questions that tend to elicit useful answers from participants. Note that they are not required questions.  In many cases, interviewers will ask only one or two questions from the question bank, and will then restrict themselves to follow up questions.

In addition, since the interviewers will have reviewed you application prior to the interview, they may have specific questions about something on your resume, something you wrote on your essay, etc.

Now, let me tell you right now, so as not to prolong any anticipation – I can not actually tell you any of the questions that are in the question bank.  But what I can do is tell you the process by which we arrive at those questions.  From there, you should be able to have a good understanding of the kind of questions we’ll be asking. I’ll do this through a hypothetical example.

So, let’s say that I was administering a program that gave individuals grants in order for them to clean up the parks in my (imaginary) city of Nateopolis.  I want to make sure that the money I give in grants is used effectively, and in deciding what grants to give I might think about the following criteria:

1. Grants must actually address the problem – namely, that our parks are unclean.
2. Grants must be realistic - they must be able to do what they say they will do.
3. Grants must be flexible - able to imagine problems and solutions to those problems
4. Grantees – the people that get the grant – must demonstrate some kind of record of having succeeded in the past in a project that has some bearing on their current proposal.

If I were to have interviews with the various people who applied for a grant, I would then be able to generate a list of questions to investigate each of these criteria.  For example, to explore whether a grant proposal met criteria one (whether it addressed the problem), I might ask:

• How does this grant accomplish the goal of the program – namely, cleaning up the parks?
• Why do you need this grant in order to accomplish your goal?  Why couldn’t you clean up the parks without this grant?

Simple, right?  For criteria two (whether a grant is realistic), I might ask:

• What are the challenges you will face in cleaning up the parks, and how might you address those challenges?

For criteria three (flexibility), I might ask:

• What are your expectations of how this project will proceed?  What if those expectations are not met?  How will you react?

For criteria four (record of past performance), I might ask:

• Please give me an example of how you’ve administered a grant in the past?  What lessons did you learn from that experience?
• What experiences in your past make you confident in your ability to succeed with your grant?

You get the idea.  So, in order to anticipate the kind of questions you’ll be asked in the KAEF interview, here’s what you do:  go back to www.kaef-online.org, and read as much as you can about the program, its goals, its history, etc.  Then ask yourself, given that KAEF values candidates who show a, b and c, what kind of questions would they ask in order to see whether I have those qualities?  If we valued physical height in our candidates, for example, you could expect us to ask something like, “How do you plan to increase your height before, during, and after the KAEF program?”

Now, in this way you can anticipate the program related questions.  Field-specific questions, on the other hand, can’t be extrapolated in this way.  That’s OK – it’s actually easier to anticipate field-specific questions.  Basically, when we ask you these kind of questions, we’re going to be looking for two things:

1. Your knowledge of your field.
2. Your ability to apply that knowledge to specific issues and circumstances.

For example, if you were applying in Elizabethan Literature, we might ask:

1. What would you say are the main themes Shakespeare attempts to address in his great tragedies – Othello, Lear, Hamlet and MacBeth?
2. How are these themes relevant to today’s cultural situation, if at all?

If you know about English Literature, these questions will be easy to answer.  In fact, you probably won’t need to prepare for them at all, since you already know enough about your field!

Using the above guidance, I hope that you’ll be able to paint a pretty good picture of the kind of questions we might ask during your interview.  Remember, if you have any specific questions, PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS FOR THIS POST, and I will answer them.

One final important note:  in the above post I’ve talked about anticipating the kinds of questions you might get.  This is a good activity to engage in, and should be part of your preparation.  As you’re riding on the bus, laying in bed, brushing your teeth, or whatever, it would be a great idea to imagine how you might answer these types of questions.  However, it will not be very useful to try to literally anticipate EVERY SINGLE QUESTION we might ask.  For one thing, the question bank is very big and the chances of you guessing all of the questions that might be in it are very, very small.  For another thing, I can guarantee you we will ask at least one question that you will not expect – and the majority of our questions will actually be in response to something you yourself say.  For this reason, it’s better to think about the broad types of questions and subjects you might encounter, rather than trying to guess the specific questions themselves.

Today’s topic is the so-called “superficialities” of the interview – by which I mean things like how you dress, whether you are punctual, etc.  A lot of information you can find on the web about interviewing consists of advice about what to do and what not to do in an interview setting.  A good deal of that advice revolves around the issue of how your present yourself nonverbally. And the basic premise of much of this advise seems to be that if you do not take the utmost care to sculpt and manage your appearance and bearing, then somehow the interviewers won’t take you seriously (or, worse, will be offended!)

This is overstating it, I think.  Let me be honest:  as an interviewer, I don’t consciously care about any of that – about what you wear, whether you’re on time, how straight you sit in your chair, whether you make eye contact, the volume of your voice, and so on.  On a conscious level, I am interested in one thing and one thing only:  are you a qualified candidate for the program?

However, it is almost certainly the case that at some subconscious level I – along with every human – am affected by those very same aspects of the interview that I consciously try not to care about.  If someone came into the interview wearing dirty jeans, for example, I would tell myself that this did not matter; but I think that I would probably treat the candidate’s answers with less seriousness, without realizing that I was doing so. This is just human nature.

So what can we take away from this?  when we talk about strategies for having a successful interview, you do not need to stress about every little detail (is my shirt properly ironed?  Am I sitting up straight enough?  AM I making enough eye contact?  Too much eye contact?).  In fact, thinking about things in this way will probably have a negative impact, because you’ll be so worried about these “superficialities” that you will distract yourself from the substance of your answers.

Instead, before your interview, simply look at yourself in the mirror, and (I know this sounds a little strange) practice talking about yourself and your application.  Then, after you’ve done this, just ask yourself, “Do I look like I might be a graduate student at aU.S. university?”  If the answer is “yes,” you don’t need to worry any more about it.  If the answer is “no” – and it almost certainly won’t be – you might want to spend a small amount of time thinking about the following:

• Clothes - are you dressed professionally?  This doesn’t mean you need to be dressed formally (suit and tie, for example).  It means you need to be dressed in a way that shows that you take yourself and the interview process seriously.
• Posture - does the way that you are standing / sitting project confidence?
• Eye contact – are you maintaining eye contact with the questioner?  (Of course, in this case, the questioner is yourself, which will be weird, but still, try practicing eye contact)
• Fidgeting - are you making strange, repetitive motions with your hands or with other parts of your body?  Many people, when nervous, develop distracting hand motions.  If you’re doing something like this, the best way to avoid it is simply to fold your hands together and keep them in your lap.

So, bottom line – don’t worry too much about this.  As long as you take very basic, common sense steps in regards to the way your present yourself, the “superficialities” aren’t going to matter one way or the other.  A better use of your time is to focus on preparing for the substance of the interview, and it is to that topic that we will turn next week, starting Monday.

Before we begin to talk about the format of the KAEF interview (or other interviews), or the individual strategies you might employ to have a successful interview, we might want to take a big step back from the process and ask a simple question:  why does KAEF include interviews as part of its selection process in the first place?  Another way to put this would be to ask, what is it specifically about an interview that provides useful information about a candidate’s preparedness, desire and ability to enter a Master’s level program in the United States?

After all, conducting interviews in Prishtina is not inexpensive.  KAEF has to fly four interviewers to and from Kosova and house and feed them for several days.  That’s an expensive proposition.  Why wouldn’t KAEF look at other, more cost-effective methods of evaluating semi-finalists?  For example, we could ask all semi-finalists to write another essay.  Or we could interview semi-finalists over the phone.  Or we could have them take personality tests.  There are literally hundreds of mechanisms we could use that would cost significantly less than the mechanism we do use:  personal, face-to-face interviews.  What this should tell you is that there is some information which a face-to-face interview provides – and which other evaluation mechanisms do not provide – that is so important to the evaluation process that it justifies the added expense.

What might that information be?  There are several aspects of a face-to-face interview that are unique, each of which provides a special glimpse of a candidate.  Keep these aspects of the interview in mind during your preparation:

1. Interviews are face-to-face. The interview is the only chance the program has to interact with a candidate in a one-on-one setting.  In an interview, we can see a number of things that we could not hope to see in an essay:  how fluid is the candidate’s English?  How confident is the candidate?  How personable?  How does the candidate carry him/her self?  Does the candidate demonstrate a basic commitment to professionalism (in, for example, their dress and sense of punctuality)?
2. Interviews offer the chance to engage in a dialogue. In an interview we get to ask a candidate questions and follow up after they give their answers.  This distinguishes the interview from other evaluation mechanisms, like tests or essays, in which a candidate’s statements and assertions can not be questioned or investigated (you can’t ask an essay, “What did you mean by that?”)  What this means is that an interview allows us to probe a candidate’s views in greater depth – to get at the reasoning behind their views.
3. Interviews allow the candidate to ask the program questions: Up until this stage, the formal evaluation mechanisms have all involved the candidate supplying information to the program.  This will also take place in the interview, but the interview is unique in that it gives a candidate an opportunity to ask the program questions.
4. Interviews can be a collaborative process between the candidate and the interviewers. I mentioned this in yesterday’s post, but it bears repeating:  an interview, unlike a standardized test, is not an obstacle that you have to get over.  It’s a chance to discuss your application.  Sometimes, working together, we will change your application in the interview. For example, a number of times I have been in an interview where, in the middle of the interview, the candidate decided, based on the conversation, that they would like to change the field of study on their application.  Other times candidates have suggested specific universities they’d like to attend.  And as I shared yesterday, there was even an instance when someone decided in the interview that the program wasn’t for them.  My point here is that you should not treat an interview like you treat a test or an essay – it’s not strictly a chance to prove how fantastic you are.  Rather, it’s a chance to explore your strengths, your weaknesses, your interests, and your aspirations, and determine – along with the interviewers – whether KAEF is the right step for your future at this point. In my experience, the person who comes into the interview with no doubts or questions whatsoever about the program usually (not always) is not the strongest candidate.  On the other hand, the person who has the confidence and the curiosity to express and explore his or her limitations (as well as strengths), and is genuinely looking for guidance about how to progress, in addition to showing off his or her talents, tends to be a strong candidate. Bottom line:  an interview is a conversation, so don’t be afraid to engage in one.
5. Interviews offer KAEF staff the chance to get necessary information that was not included in the original application. The online application is designed to provide us with as complete a picture of an applicant as possible.  However, quite often an applicant will focus on certain themes of their application while neglecting others (note that this is not necessarily a bad thing).  In this case, KAEF staff often need to follow up with candidates.  So don’t be surprised if some of the interview is spent covering fairly mundane details of your life.  We just want to make sure we have the correct information.
6. Interviews give us a chance to get up-to-the-date information. A lot can happen in the month between the application deadline and the interview.  We want to know if you’ve changed your job, received an award, started volunteering with a non-profit, changed your telephone number, etc.

I sense a question:  “Aren’t you neglecting to mention one purpose of the interview?  Namely, to give  candidates scores on how they did?”

The answer is yes and no.  Yes, it is true, we do give candidates a score based on their interview.  However, it is NOT (NOT NOT NOT NOT) the case that the person who performed the best in the interview necessarily gets the best score, and vice versa.  Quite often, a candidate who performs very well in terms of answering questions, looking confident, etc. may not score well because, as I said above, the point of the interview is not to be a good interviewer.  The point of the interview is to discover whether or not a candidate will be a good graduate student on the KAEF program. For example, a candidate might give a series of great, fantastic answers about all the interesting things they learned in undergraduate school – but the program they are applying to might require a large amount of work experience.  In this case, despite the excellence of their interview, we would have confirmed that they were not a good fit for KAEF (NOTE:  I can’t stress enough that this is merely a hypothetical example).

So now I sense another question – “If, as you say, there’s no way to ‘beat’ the interview – if the goal of the interview is not to convince the interviewers I’m the best, but rather to explore whether the program is a good fit for me – then what possible advice can you give me that will help in the interview?  Why should I bother reading parts 2 through 8 of your interview advice?”

That’s a very good question.  The answer is this:  while it is true that there is no “secret weapon” for interviewing well (“When they ask X, you say Y. . .”), it is nonetheless the case that you want to be clear and persuasive about the strengths (and weaknesses) of your own candidacy.  And while there is a chance that, even if you are clear and persuasive, you still might not “fit” the program, it is certainly the case that a candidate who is not clear and persuasive will not seem to fit any program at all.  So in the next seven installments of “Interviewing Tips,” I’ll talk about ways in which you can clearly, logically, coherently and persuasively participate in the conversation that an interview represents.

Later this month I, along with several colleagues, will be traveling to Prishtina in order to interview KAEF semi-finalists.  This will be my third interview trip for KAEF, and over the years, as I’ve talked to fellows and to semi-finalists who were not selected, I’ve noticed that a number of people have similar questions about the interview process.

As I mentioned in a previous post on interviews, the interview process can be daunting.  One thing that makes it daunting is the fact that candidates often have an inaccurate picture of what an interview is, what function it serves, and how it is “scored” within the broader framework of the application.

It doesn’t help anyone – not the program, and certainly not the candidate – when an interview goes poorly.  A poor interview doesn’t give us, the interview team, a good sense of who a candidate is.  As a result, it’s hard to determine if that candidate is a good fit for the program.  A lot of people seem to think of an interview as a battle between themselves and the interview team, in which they are responding to challenges the interview team presents.  Nothing could be farther from the case.  An interview is much more a collaborative process, in which the interviewers and the candidate work together to answer some basic questions about the candidate and their application.

In short, we want candidates to do well in the interviews.  So in order to reduce the stress of the interview process, and hopefully increase the resulting quality of the interviews, I’m going to do something a little unconventional:  I’m going to tell each and every one of the KAEF semifinalists (and the broader public as well) how to ace their interview.

I’ll be doing this in a series of posts over the next seven or eight days, exclusively here on the KAEF blog.

Now, a few caveats:

First, I am just one member of the KAEF interviewing team.  The others on the team will have their own feelings about what constitutes a “good” interview, and I do not propose to speak on their behalf.  What I am offering is simply my own opinions about how to interview well.  However, I should also point out that, over the last four or five years, I have conducted well over a thousand interviews for a variety of programs.  So I would like to think that my opinions are informed.

Second – and this is a very important caveat – following all of the advice I am going to give you does not mean that you will be selected as a finalist for KAEF. There are two reasons for this:

1. All of the other candidates might also be implementing the same interviewing strategies, and may do so very effectively.
2. More importantly, remember what I said above – a good interview is one in which the candidate and the interviewers work together to answer questions about the candidate’s application.  In some cases, the answer may be that the candidate is not a good fit for the program, or that the program is not a good fit for the candidate.  In other words, sometimes a good interview – even a great interview – will result in someone not becoming a finalist.  Sometimes, for example, during the course of the interview the candidates and the interviewers – again, working together – might discover that the candidate’s academic interests would lend themselves more profitably to another program or different direction.  You shouldn’t think of the interview merely as a competition – it’s also an opportunity to find out if KAEF is really something you want to do.  We have had interviews where, at the end, a candidate has said, “You know what?  Now that I’ve had the chance to speak with you about the KAEF fellowship, I just don’t think it matches my goals at this point.”  Contrary to what you might think, that was a very successful interview!

So, if you follow my advice and don’t get accepted, please don’t write me to say, “Hey, Nate, I followed all you interview advice and still didn’t get accepted to KAEF.  I demand an explanation!”

My series on interviewing will start tomorrow and will continue for seven days.  Below is the basic schedule:

• Wednesday the 14th: The purpose of the interview.
• Thursday the 15th: The format of the interview.
• Friday the 16th: The superficial aspects of the interview (punctuality, formality, etc.)
• Monday the 20th: What questions will we ask?
• Tuesday the 21st: What are the correct answers to the questions?  YES, I am going to tell you all the correct answers . . . sort of!
• Wednesday the 22nd: Preparing effectively for the interview.
• Thursday the 23rd: Basic Dos and Dont’s of the interview
• Friday the 24th: The #1 secret to great interviews.

One final point:  though the information I will provide is specific to the KAEF interview process, 95% of it will apply to any interview you go through.  So please feel free to share this information with friends who are preparing for an interview in another context (say, for a job).  I don’t pretend to be a genius of interviews, or to know all of the secrets to interviewing well, but as I said above – I have done over a thousand interviews in the recent past, and I can give you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

FINALLY, and VERY IMPORTANTLY, if you have specific questions, please post them as a comment to the blog.  I will read them and I WILL ANSWER THEM.

OK, see you tomorrow, then, when we will talk about the purpose of an interview.

Chances are that all of us will have to go through an interview process someday. KAEF semifinalists are required to have an interview; interviews are a regular part of university admissions in the U.S.; interviews are a common screening process employers use to recruit the best possible employee.

And regardless of how advanced our interviewing skills are, there’s always room for improvement. No one interviews perfectly. For that reason, I thought I’d include two links to good summation of interviewing tips. The first deals with what not to do in an interview. The first “mistake” this article lists is, in my opinion, the most frequent:

Not being able to answer the question “What do you know about this company?” might just end your quest for employment, at least with this employer. Background information including company history, locations, divisions, and a mission statement are available in an “About Us” section on most company web sites.

The same goes for universities. You need to know why you are applying to a certain program. If you can’t answer that question, the rest of the interview won’t matter.

The second link is to a web page focused on how to interview. Everything listed here is common sense, but it’s worth reading anyway, just to keep these simple tips at the front of your mind. An example of something we all know about but often fail to pay much attention to: punctuality.

Being late does not impress interviewers, and creates the impression that you would arrive late to work. So try to get to the interview on time, or even a few minutes early. This will give you a chance to do a last minute check on your appearance in the restroom, and to fill out any paperwork.

Both of these sites – and many others on the internet – tend to focus on job interviews, but for those of you interviewing for entrance into an academic program or institution (such as KAEF), the advice still applies.

Finally, something on the lighter side: interviews can be intimidating. But no matter how bad they get, you can be glad you’ll never have to undergo an interview like this: