47: Zoom Interview Days

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today I am going to be talking to you about zoom interview days. This is a hot topic for those of you that applied to graduate programs, especially PhD programs in the fall. It's also of interest if you're still applying to Master's programs at this time, because it may come up to you in the coming months. For those of you that applied for PhD programs, don't be surprised if you start to hear from them any time between now and end of February, with possible invitations for interview days, for open houses. Of course everything is going to be online. It's going to be virtual. But these things are happening.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The first thing I want to tell you is if you did apply to grad programs, and you haven't heard anything, please don't freak out. That is the first thing that I can sense from my students, when they hear from their peers that other folks are getting invited to interviews and they haven't heard a peep. Or maybe they've started to hear from some programs, and it's hasn't been so great news. They'll start to get nervous and think oh no. I'm going to get rejected everywhere. That's not the case.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Just to give you a little bit more information about what's going on on their end. Some programs will be doing interviews, but some don't. So one thing to keep in mind is not all programs will conduct zoom interviews. Some programs, leave it up to the faculty to conduct interviews. That means faculty members are the ones that decide if they want to interview students or not, based on the students that they're interested in taking on that year. That means they're working on their own individual timelines, which means that some folks from their department may be sending out emails, interviewing people. Some folks maybe you're not quite there yet in their timeline. They haven't fully reviewed everything, and they're not emailing people for interviews yet. Timelines can vary even within departments and within programs. Then sometimes some folks interview a large group of people. Some folks interview no one. Some folks interview only candidates that they're uncertain about, and they just want to make sure that who they perceive this person to be on paper matches with who they are in person, or on the screen. Some programs will do one round of interviews, and some programs will do two rounds of interviews, like an initial, short 15 to 30 minute interview and maybe a longer interview for the second round. Sometimes they invite you to a zoom open house, and it's unclear whether or not they're going to interview you. But you know for sure you're going to be attending multiple events for a series of days. And some will invite you for a zoom interview day or days. That can range from anywhere from one day to, I've seen it span four days. So a lot can happen, and I try to give you an idea of some of the types of scenarios that are going on. Not to make you nervous, but just so you know what's going on. Again, if you haven't heard anything, don't freak out quite yet.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

But let's say you did apply, and you have started to hear from maybe one, two, three programs who are interviewing you. What should you expect? It really varies across the board, but expect to have an individual, one on one interview, with one or more professors. Sometimes it's one. It's the person, the main person you think or you would like to have as your advisor. Sometimes it's a couple of people and these are potential professors who might serve on your committee when you're writing a dissertation one day. I've seen people interview with up to six, maybe even eight. Like in some fields, everybody interviews you and they're six, back to back half hour interviews. That can be difficult. You don't have to be an expert on everybody's work, but you should familiarize yourself with the work of the individuals who you mentioned in your essays and your statement of purpose.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So be prepared for one or more interviews with faculty. If you've been invited, and they haven't told you who you're interviewing with, it's completely okay to ask them. If it's a staff person, if it's a graduate advisor who's emailed you the information, or if it's perhaps the chair of a department who sent you the invite for the interview, it's okay to ask. You know, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm greatly looking forward to it. I just wanted to ask if I will find out in advance who will be interviewing me. Thank you so much for your time. That's all. You can just send a quick email asking them for the names of who will be interviewing you. Odds are, it's probably going to be the folks that you mentioned in your application. And sometimes it may be a couple of people who you didn't mention. Maybe it doesn't seem like a strong fit, but they could potentially be committee members on your dissertation. So individual interviews are a thing.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Something else I'm starting to see more of our group interviews. I don't recall hearing about group interviews as much in years past, but last year and this year, it's really become a thing. What do group interviews look like? I've seen or I've heard of two types of group interviews. The first one is a seminar style interview. Rather than them asking you multiple questions the way you would in a traditional interview, it's more of a seminar style where they send you a reading in advance. You come prepared with notes, observations, and you essentially participate in a seminar discussion along with other prospective candidates. This is tricky, because not only are you preparing notes and trying to participate, but you want to be conscientious of how much time you take up, how much space you take up. You want to make sure you participate, but you also don't want to take too much space. You want to make sure you're not the only one that's speaking. You also want to make sure that you're listening, that you're listening attentively to what others are saying. You're responding to them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

It's hard because there's only so much prep you can do. You really do have to be actively listening to participate, because what they're trying to see is how will you interact with the other people. Potentially all of you might get in, and if you all get in, you're all going to be part of the same cohort. They want to know what that cohort is going to look and feel like. Especially if we continue with these zoom seminars. It's not like you're going to necessarily go back to in person seminars right away. Odds are, in the fall if you do get in, you're probably going to have a seminar over zoom. They want to see, what's that going to be like? How are you going to interact with the rest of the people in your cohort? That's one type of group interview.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Another type of group interview, I've heard of- it's essentially you giving a presentation of your work to a group of other prospective candidates, and seeing how well you do with your public speaking, articulating the work, how familiar you are with your work, how comfortable you feel talking about it, and how you gauge questions from others. It's a group interview in the sense that you're essentially giving an elevator pitch or a condensed version of your research. It could be one minute, three minutes, five minutes, and you're taking questions from other prospective candidates. This is also tricky, in the sense that your audience is also your competition. Hopefully, the rest of the prospective candidates don't grill you too much. Hopefully, they can be empathetic of your situation, because they too will be put on the spot. They too will have to present alongside you. Those are some of the group interviews I have heard about thus far. I would say they're generally not as common as the individual interviews. You can more than likely assume that if you're going to get interviewed, it's going to be an individual interviews.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, what else goes on in zoom interview days? Because remember, I mentioned it could be a half day, it could be just one interview with one professor for half an hour to an hour. Or it could be four days- what do you do in four days? Well, usually those will be broken up into half days or shorter sessions. But these are some of the other events that go on during zoom interview days. You may have a meet and greet with professors and that department. You may have an info session with staff, or some also faculty from the department where they're answering your general questions about the program. Sometimes info sessions come before the interview day, so you know what to expect of the interview day. Sometimes they happen during the interview days.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

What else do they do? They may have what would have been, their attempt at having a happy hour. If you would have done this in person, you would have had a chance to have dinner and maybe go out for drinks with the grad students. In this case, you can't really do that. So they're doing zoom social hours with grad students. It's your time to get to know them, ask them questions. I've heard of programs doing virtual campus tours. I have also heard of programs pairing you with other grad students. Again, if this were in person, there's a good likelihood that you would have been paired with the grad student to stay with to save money on lodging, because apartments only have so much funding to fly you there. So a lot of times they'll have you stay with the grad student, and then that grad student would be the one who would give you a tour, who would walk you to the location of the interview. That's the person you'd get to know very well and be able to ask them more detailed questions. I've seen folks getting paired with grad student buddies, one or more of them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

These are just some of the general types of events that go on during zoom interview days. The thing that makes it the most nerve wracking is figuring out how to prepare, and how to answer questions that they may have, especially with my students. Most of the population that I work with tend to be first generation students and first generation students tend to struggle with impostor syndrome. I know that's true for me as well. I've long struggled with that issue. When it comes to impostor syndrome and interviews, it can be really nerve racking because you're thinking, oh my goodness. How can I prep for the multitude of questions that they could ask me? I'm not an expert. How am I supposed to cram all this information on all these professors that are going to interview me. They're going to figure me out. They're going to grill me. They're going to test me. They're going to realize I know nothing about the field, that they made a mistake and they're going to rescind their offer. They're just going to change their mind if they admit met me. That's not true. They don't expect you to know everything about their work. They do expect you to have some familiarity with the field. They do expect you to have some sense of comfort level with talking about the research that you've done. But again, you're not expected to be an expert, because if you were an expert, then why would you need to be getting a PhD? That's what you're there for.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So what are some of the questions that they could potentially ask you? I know that I've recorded an episode on prospective interview questions before. I didn't get to go back and check my log to see which episode that was, but I know that I have done an episode on interview questions. But I do want to go back to mentioning some common questions only because I think it continues to be important. Let me actually pull up, I have a list of several interview questions that come up over and over again, if I can find it. Yes. Okay. Here it is. Be prepared to answer questions about research, your research in particular. Be prepared to answer questions related to you in a professional setting. You know, the typical questions that job interviews will ask you like, tell me about yourself. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How do you work under pressure? How do you deal with conflict? What is your working style?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Even though they're questions that you could presumably get at a job interview, they're also questions that they may ask you at a PhD interview days, because they're trying to get to know you. They're trying to get to know your personality. Are you a team player? Are you going to be a difficult person to work with? They may ask you slightly personal questions like, what do you do in your free time? Or they might ask you, hey. I see you have a gap on your application. Why is your GPA so low? They won't ask in that exact way. They won't be as frank, but they may say, oh. I noticed you struggled during this quarter, during the semester. What happened? They might ask you, can you picture yourself living here? Let's say you're a California student, and you're applying to Ohio State. A lot of folks in California don't want to move out of California and out of state schools, East Coast schools, a lot of them know this. They know this about how notorious Californians are, we don't want to move away. I mean, it's kind of true. Even look at me. I went to UCLA for 10 years. Now I've been UC Santa Barbara for four years, going on- I guess this is my fifth year. Yeah, we don't want to run away from where it's sunny year round. But yeah, you're trying to convince them that yes, you can imagine yourself living there. Yes, you can imagine yourself shoveling snow. That's not necessarily how you would answer that question, but don't be surprised if they ask you. Can you picture yourself living here?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

There are trick questions too, or questions that might throw you off. One question that has thrown off my students recently is the question of funding. Someone was asked, oh. How do you plan to fund your graduate education? I think the student was thrown off because they thought wait, hold up. I applied to PhD programs. I was told that there's a good chance I would get fully funded. Why are they asking me to fund my graduate education? I think the way that you can get around answering this question without really being thrown off is telling them, I plan to apply to extramural funding opportunities. I plan to apply to external fellowships. However, I also hope that my application is competitive enough that I would be considered for departmental and university wide fellowships. It's saying you are looking to get funding from them, but you're also not completely relying on them. You're also going to apply to these other forms of funding, like the NSF - National Science Foundation graduate fellowship that they have, or the Ford fellowship, the pre doctoral fellowship. There are others. There are several others, but those are the two that come to mind. Yeah, that's one of them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Another trick question that comes up is sometimes they'll ask you, where else have you applied? Or where else are you interviewing? Or are you interviewing elsewhere and if so, with whom? Or they might ask you, what are your top programs? Or how would you rank the other programs that you applid to? Or where do we fit in your ranking? It's a trick question. What you should do is you shouldn't answer it. You don't want to directly answer it. A fine answer to say is that you don't necessarily have a ranking per se, because you're trying to get as much information as possible on each program. Or you still need to get more information on each program by interviewing prospective advisors and graduate students there. You could say that each program has its own strengths, and that you really need to take everything into consideration before being able to rank them. Or you could also just flat out say that you don't feel comfortable ranking them, but that the program that you're interviewing for, that it's one that you're especially interested in because of XY and Z, or that it's a strong program for you, or a good fit for you because of XY and Z.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

With any question that they ask you, any question, the more you can stress, the fit of that program, how it's a good fit for you or how you are a good fit for them, the more you're gonna convince them that you're a strong candidate. Remember to always express your enthusiasm, and to show that you've done your homework, that you know the program very well, that you essentially are perfect for them, or they're perfect for you. Those are some of the trick questions.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Now, in terms of other commonly asked questions. Be prepared to talk about your research. Be prepared to talk about your previous experience. They may ask you about skills that you have gained, experiences that you've had that have prepared you for a PhD program. They'll ask you, tell me more about why you decided to apply to our program, or what makes you a good fit. So always, always stress fit. What else? They may ask you about major trends in the field. I do think you should have an answer for this, because even if they don't specifically ask you oh, tell me about what you see, or the trends in the field of whatever discipline you're in. Even if they don't ask you that, it's always a good conversation starter. If you're having a conversation during that meet and greet with faculty, you can bring that up. You've prepared that answer, and if no one has asked you that question, go ahead and bring it up and say, oh. I have made some observations about this, and I can see that the field is going towards having these types of conversations or developing this type of research. It's a great thing to kind of have in your pocket as a conversation starter.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

They might randomly ask you about readings that you're currently doing. They might ask you, what's the last book that you read? What's the last article you read? Or what are you currently reading? I remember I was asked this question when I got interviewed. This was such a long time ago. I thankfully only had three interviews, so I only had three faculty who interviewed me. One of them asked me, what's the last book that you read? And it was so hard for me to think about the last book that I read, which was embarrassing as an English major. I was so thrown off, I think because at that time, I was so focused on reading academic articles. So when they asked me, what's the last book that you read, I couldn't think of a book. I could think of an article, but I couldn't think of a book. So that's what I did. I just said, oh, you know, a book isn't coming to mind but this is the last article I read.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

That's another tip I want to give you is, if you're struggling to answer a question, always redirect it to something that you do feel comfortable talking about. Just like I was like, oh, I can't think of a book. Instead of just freezing or saying, oh, I'm sorry. I can't answer that question. I can't think of a book. I just went straight to what I did know. I was like, you know what, I can't think of a book necessarily at this time. But this is the last article I read, or just this morning, I was reading about this. That's fine. They just want to know that you're engaged.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I mentioned earlier to be prepared if they ask you, how do you work under pressure? How do you deal with conflict? These types of questions, it's always great to have specific examples. Again, you're always wanting to show not tell. Don't say you're hardworking. Don't say you're resilient. Don't say you are a great team worker. Prove it by giving them an example of a scenario where something happened and you proved whatever it is that you're trying to tell them. They might ask you about your strengths and your weaknesses. For this, always, always reframe your weaknesses as a strength or tell us how you're actively working on your weaknesses so that they're no longer weaknesses. They may even ask you tell us about a time that you've failed. That can be a tricky question, because it's hard to talk about those things. But again- or even if they'll say oh. We noticed that your GRE score is low, or that your GPA is not the most competitive. Those are things that are uncomfortable to talk about. But always, always, always, when you are answering that question, you want to let them know that either there was something going on that you overcame, or that you're actively working on improving whatever it is that affected you. Because they just want to make sure you're not just gonna fail out of that program. That you know, an experiment is gonna fail and then you're gonna give up and you gotta leave Or that you're going to struggle with your academics, and then you're going to not pass the class and again, leave. They want to make sure that, you're an investment to them, you know, in terms of their time and their funding. They want to make sure that you're going to see it through, that you're actually going to complete the program.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Anything else? I have several questions, but I don't want to go through all of them because then this podcast episode is gonna be never ending. It's going to last at least two hours. I do have a few more questions though that I want to tell you, with regard to what you should ask them. As nerve wracking as it is, you have to remember that you are also interviewing them. They are interviewing you because they're interested in you. Believe it or not, you do have a say, and you do have some power. Especially when you get to the point where hopefully, you'll get an offer letter, perhaps more than one offer letter. If you've got more than one acceptance, you're in the position where you can negotiate. You can negotiate for more funding, and it's good for them to know that you're a competitive candidate and that you're interviewing them. How do you show that? By asking them questions.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

With faculty, it's good, especially if they're the folks that you are really interested in, to familiarize yourself with their work. Ask them a few questions about their current research or where they're taking their future research. You can ask them about their mentoring style. You can ask them about what the culture is like in that department. You can ask them what type of funding is typically available to grad students. You can ask them about how long students take to graduate, or what types of jobs they get after graduating, because you're committing for five, six, maybe even eight, sometimes ten, depending on certain graduate programs. You're committing a long amount of time to this, and this is going to have long term implications for you in terms of where you're going to go with your career. You want to make sure that the folks that are graduating there are doing things that you can envision yourself doing. You want to make sure that they're graduating on time, that they're not keeping their students for too long, and not giving them enough funding and causing the students to not be able to graduate on time. You are entitled to ask those questions.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then remember, you should not only ask questions to the faculty that you're meeting with, you should also ask grad students questions. Grad students are great because they tend to be so open and honest and forthcoming, and they'll tell you the honest truth, the ugly truth, the good, the bad. I think this is something that students don't do enough when they're applying to grad programs is reaching out to grad students too. What do you ask grad students? Ask them if they're working with the person that you want to work with as their advisor, ask them what is it like working with this advisor? How are students paired with advisors? Do the students pick, do the faculty pick? What's that process like? At what point is an advisor solidified? Sometimes it's right away, you know who it is. Sometimes it's not until your second or third year that you decide who your advisor is. You can ask them what are seminars like, or what is coursework like.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

What are expectations of you in terms of reading, writing, lab hours? You can ask them, just like you can ask faculty, ask the grad students, how long does it typically take for students to graduate? It might be a red flag if what the grad students are saying doesn't quite match up with what the faculty are saying. You can ask them about what it's like living there in that community. Are they happy with choosing to go to that program? What's healthcare like there? What's housing like there? What's the cost of living there? Is it affordable, relative to the grad student stipend that they're getting? You can ask them about teaching commitments. Are they expected to teach every quarter, every term, every semester or only a few years? You can ask them about the relationship between the department, the program, even the university relative to the surrounding community. Ask them about resources for grad students. Is there a grad student union, are there grad orgs, are there affinity groups? How do you build community there? Again, there's a lot more questions you can ask grad students. They're the ones that are going through what you will go through, so definitely use them as a resource and ask them questions.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I feel like I've said a lot about interview days. One last thing with regard to zoom interview days, and I think this is something that sometimes we get so caught up with the content and figuring out our answers to questions that we forget to check our tech. Before going through an interview day, go ahead, and have a friend check the tech with you. So get on zoom with a friend. Check your lighting, make sure that you can clearly see your face. You don't want to be in a dark setting. Make sure there are no distracting things in your background. Business casual is completely fine. You don't necessarily have to wear a blazer if you don't want to. Cardigan, shirt, nice top, anything like that is fine. Just don't wear your PJs. That's what I would say. You can wear your PJ buttons but not what you're showing on camera. What else? Check your sound. I already said the lighting.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Try your best to look at the camera as much as possible. I know that's not always easy, because some of us have the camera on our computers at weird angles or weird places. I have one computer where the cameras is at the top part of the computer and in the middle, so it's really easy to make eye contact with it. Then I have another laptop where the cameras on the bottom left side of the computer, which makes it really awkward. Even when I type, you can see me typing. It's just an awkward placement for the camera. You want to be mindful of that. Stack up some books, do whatever you want to do so that you have a good angle and so that you can, for the most part, keep as close of an eye contact as possible with the camera.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Definitely bring notes, so have notes available to you. You can have them on post its, you can have them kind of propped up on a wall or wherever you can easily see them. You might even want to take notes as you're going through the interviews. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can always ask in advance. Is it okay if I take notes as you ask me questions, so I answer every single part of your question. They might say yes, they might say no. But note taking is not a bad thing. And yeah, you've checked your tech.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I think I covered everything that I want to say about interview days. Just trying to see if there's anything else that has come up that may be useful for you about Zoom, Zoom interview days. No, I think that's everything. Yeah, if you get nervous, if you're not sure whether or not to say anything, it's okay. I had a student tell me, do I introduce myself right away? Do I say something? I just told her you know what, it's okay to wait. Wait for them to give you instructions. So if you log on early and no one's saying anything, go ahead and wait. They're probably going to wait for everybody to show up and then someone will make the introduction.. You don't have to say hi. You don't have have to do anything. At the very least, just have your camera on, keep your mic muted until they ask you to get started. Good luck everyone. If you do have an interview, I wish you the best of luck. If you don't, don't freak out. There's still time. If there's anything else you want to hear from me, shoot me an email, send me a DM on Instagram. I am recording episodes about a week ahead of time, so I'm still taking episode requests. All right, I'll talk to you all later.