Editor’s Note: Previously in this Career Talk series, our experts on doctoral-career counseling have offered advice on building a CV, designing a résumé, writing cover letters, getting the most of out job fairs, and other topics.
While faculty job interviews tend to follow the same structure, industry interviews can be idiosyncratic. If you’re a graduate student or new Ph.D. on the job market, you need to know what to expect from both types of interviews, given that the latest federal survey showed that nearly half of new doctoral recipients find jobs in industry.
As experts on graduate career counseling, we’ve been offering advice on the tandem job search — applying for both faculty and industry openings — because it’s increasingly the norm. And plenty of Ph.D.s are forgoing a faculty search and only applying for industry openings. We already offered advice on “Résumé Dos and Don’ts for Ph.D.s.” This month we turn to the next stage of an industry search: the job interview.
Who Will Interview You?
The interview process for tenure-track jobs is less predictable than it used to be but still follows the same basic format: It’s a two-stage process (the initial interview and the campus visit), and you will mostly be interacting with members of your potential academic department. Things are much less predictable in industry. Interviewing for such openings might be a two-stage process, three-stage, or more. It might be condensed into a few days or drawn out over months. You might be interviewed first by someone from human resources before talking with your potential boss. You may or may not meet your future colleagues.
Before we delve into the process itself, let’s talk about the people you may encounter along the way.
Human resources. In faculty hiring, a department search committee handles most decisions, and the role of campus HR tends to be fairly limited. In industry, however, HR may review all the résumés, select candidates, and screen them via a 20-minute telephone or Zoom conversation. Keep in mind: HR professionals tend to be generalists, not specialists; they will know a fair amount about the work that the company or organization does, but they may not have a deep understanding of the position itself. They often focus on compliance and on making sure that the organization is following all relevant hiring rules and laws. HR reps are the folks you are most likely to encounter at campus career fairs and info sessions.
The hiring manager. This role is similar to that of a search-committee chair in faculty hiring. Often (but not always!), the hiring manager for an industry job is your future supervisor, and so has a deep understanding of the actual work you would be doing. Sometimes the hiring manager screens résumés, selects candidates, and conducts the initial interview — especially at small organizations with little or no HR office. At large companies that do a lot of hiring, you might not meet the hiring manager until later in the process.
It’s important to understand the distinction between the HR rep and the hiring manager because it affects the kinds of questions you should ask. With HR, ask about company culture, clarify vague details in the job description, and inquire about the interview process itself. With the hiring manager, ask more detailed questions about the job duties, the supervision, the skills required, and the definition of success in the role.
Recruiters. You may hear that word and think, “This person will get me a job.” Not quite. Large companies sometimes employ recruiters in their HR office; their job is to source candidates for a range of positions. But “recruiter” also refers to outside consultants hired to identify potential candidates for a position. Third-party recruiters generally fall into two camps:
- Some recruiters are paid on a retainer basis to conduct high-level leadership searches. They manage the search process from beginning to end and are paid whether or not the search is successful.
- Contingency recruiters are paid by the employer only when a candidate they have sourced is hired for the position. In some labor sectors, recruiters are an important part of the hiring process. If they think you’re a strong candidate, a recruiter may help you to edit your résumé and offer insights into the hiring process.
If recruiters seek you out via LinkedIn and other online spaces, great. See what they have to say. Legitimate recruiters will never ask you to pay them a fee. Remember: However much the recruiter helps you, that person works for the employer, not for you. Finding a job is still your responsibility, not theirs.
The Industry Interview Process
You don’t have to go it alone. Career services at your university can help with your industry search — by conducting mock interviews, evaluating your answers, or even fine-tuning your Zoom setup for online interviews. Don’t hesitate to make an appointment with a campus career counselor to help ease your nerves before an industry interview.
Bear in mind throughout the industry hiring process that you are interviewing your prospective employer just as much as it’s interviewing you. Trust your gut instincts. If something seems like a red flag, talk about it afterward with a trusted mentor. Pay attention to how prospective bosses and colleagues treat you — and one another — during interviews.
Early (screening) interviews. This short conversation will determine if you move on to the next phase. Screening interviews usually last 20 minutes or less, so you will want to keep your answers fairly succinct.
Most early interviews take the form of a quick chat with a human being. However, more and more companies are handling this initial stage via video-recording platforms, like HireVue. Candidates will very likely see AI interviews grow in use as well. We recommend you practice by using the same format as the interview. If you have questions — for example: Does the video-recording platform allow for multiple takes? — ask the HR contact. Read the software’s website carefully for tips. Again, your campus career center might be able to help: Ask if the staff have experience with the relevant technologies.
Among the questions you might be asked in a screening interview:
- “Tell me about yourself.” Here’s your chance to offer a short professional biography. Most likely the interviewer has your résumé in hand and can see the basics of your career experience. Your goal should be to connect the work that you’ve done in your Ph.D. program with what you’re hoping to do for the organization. You can also explain how the employer’s mission connects to your values.
- “Why are you interested in this job?” You need a job, obviously, but that’s not a good answer for this question. Think ahead of time about how you might answer this. What intrigues you about this position, in particular? How does it connect with your background?
- “Do you have experience in X?” Be sure to go through the job description before the call and reacquaint yourself with the requirements. If they ask about a specific requirement that you can’t fulfill, you should talk about any related experience you do have, and emphasize your ability to pick up new skills quickly (this tends to be a Ph.D. superpower).
- “What are your salary expectations?” This question may not come up, and if it doesn’t, we advise you not to raise it at this stage. Sometimes, however, the interviewer will mention the position’s salary range to see if it meets your expectations. This is to save everyone time: If the company’s budgeted range is wildly out of sync with what you’re looking for, there’s no point in moving forward. Don’t assume you will be able to hike the salary by dazzling them later on in the interview process.
The main event. Once you’ve made it past the initial screening, the next phase is a bit more nebulous. Most companies will have you meet with the hiring manager as well as with your future supervisor (if that person is not the hiring manager), your manager’s manager (sometimes known as your “skip level”), and your prospective colleagues.
The tenor of industry interviews can vary wildly: Some will feel quite formal, others laid-back and chummy. Whatever the vibe, they’re all job interviews, so take them equally seriously. Expect to be asked about your skills, experience, and work style, but the questions will be more specifically framed than in the screening interview. Most industry interviews feature two categories of evaluation: The first assesses your skills in a particular domain (known as a “skills-based interview”) and the second gauges your general fit for the position (sometimes called the “behavioral” part of the interview). Here’s what to expect for each.
Demonstrate your skills. As a Ph.D. moving into industry, you should do some research on whether employers in your new career path are heavily into skills assessment in hiring. It’s already pervasive for positions in tech and consulting but is becoming more common in other fields, too — in part, because testing a candidate’s skills helps mitigate implicit bias in hiring.
What does that mean in practice? Besides answering questions about your training, you may also have to show what you can do. You may be asked to:
- Take an online assessment of specific job-related skills such as programming or editing. The test might be followed by an interview to explain your process and thinking.
- Create and deliver a presentation based on a data set or scenario that was given to you by the organization.
- Do an online interview in which you and your interviewer interact via a shared screen while you demonstrate your approach to a skills-based problem.
- Answer, online or in person, a set of industry-specific questions.
- Brainstorm solutions and recommendations on a hypothetical business dilemma you are given during the interview. This is the well-known “case interview” method.
Candidates often approach those assessments with trepidation. Take comfort in knowing that, if you’ve made it to this stage, you’ve already shown you have skills of interest to this employer. That said, now is not the time to wing it. Nothing can replace practice and preparation here. Here’s how:
- Fortunately, many companies have made the testing part of the hiring process more transparent and accessible. Some good examples include Roblox’s hiring assessment, Google’s interview prep guide, and the Boston Consulting Group’s careers page.
- You can find general interview advice on employer websites, too, and use a tool like Glassdoor to gauge how organizations source talent.
- For tips on case interviews, read Marc P. Cosentino’s well-known book, Case in Point.
- For tech interviews, there’s Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s Cracking the Coding Interview as well as useful online resources (some of which charge fees) such as Interview Cake and Pramp.
- For insights on interview format, make time to attend the career fairs and employer info sessions on your campus this fall. Asking employers about their hiring process is an excellent opener if you’re unsure what to talk about.
- Perhaps you’re not looking for tech, finance, or consulting roles and are instead wondering what a skills-based assessment looks like for a position in a government agency or a nonprofit foundation. Websites such as Parker Dewey and Forage allow students to do job simulations or micro-internships. Although geared toward undergraduates, they can be a great way to become conversant with your target industry. We’ve known graduate students who’ve found them to be very helpful.
One warning about the skills-based piece of an industry interview: There are unscrupulous companies that use these assessments to steal work from job candidates. Proceed with caution if a company asks you to do unpaid work — as part of a job interview — that will take you more than four hours. Even if it’s not outright stealing your intellectual property, that company is unlikely to become more considerate of your time once you’re hired.
Do you “fit” the position and the employer? Behavioral interview questions are about “soft” skills — how you will operate on the job. Many workplaces are far more collaborative than some parts of academe, where achievement tends to be individual. Industry employers want to know if you are someone who can manage workplace relationships, deal with conflict, and get things done. To that end, you will be asked hypothetical and/or descriptive questions. For example:
- “How would you handle conflict with a colleague?” (hypothetical) or “Tell me about a time you’ve had a conflict with a colleague” (descriptive).
- “How would you manage a project that spans three different departments?” or “Tell me about a time you had to manage a project that involved more than one part of an organization.”
- “How would you manage your time if you were working on four projects at once?” or “Tell me about a time you had to manage your time while working on multiple projects.”
Here’s a good source of 33 common soft-skills questions you might be asked in an industry interview, along with suggested answers. You do not need to prepare distinct answers to each of those 33 questions. We suggest coming up with five to six stories about your work history and using them to respond to different types of questions.
What to ask your interviewers. You need a ready list of questions for potential employers. Not asking any will make you look unengaged in the process or uninterested in the position. That said, if four people at a company are interviewing you separately, you don’t need to draft unique questions for each of them. It is OK to repeat a question so long as it’s about something that makes sense to ask multiple people. Some sample questions:
- What do you enjoy about working at this company?
- What are some challenges the company/organization is facing? How does it seem to be dealing with them?
- How would you describe the company’s culture?
- What do you think success looks like in this role?
- What distinguishes someone who is great in this role from someone who is merely adequate in it?
- (For a manager) How would you describe your managerial style? What will supervision for this role look like?
People often wonder when to ask about salary and benefits. We recommend waiting at least until you’ve procured an interview with the hiring manager. We also suggest asking for a range rather than a particular number. If the range is very wide (more than a $30,000 difference between the lowest and highest salary), ask for a sense of where this job will fall within that range. Salary bands are often quite a bit broader than the actual range the company has in mind for a specific position.
It has become more common in the past 10 years for companies to be upfront about compensation. Indeed, some states and cities now require that information to be posted in a job ad. Other employers, however, remain reluctant to discuss it until they’ve offered you a job. That might be because the company knows it’s underpaying you, relative to the going rate, or that could simply be “how things are done” there.
After the interview. It’s customary to send a thank-you note. Just one is fine. Send it to the hiring manager and ask that person to convey your gratitude to the other interviewers. Keep it short. If there is some matter from the interview that you wanted to clarify, do so (briefly). Be sure to express your interest in the job, say that you appreciate their time, and that you look forward to speaking soon.
Then you wait. Unfortunately, industry isn’t much better than academe when it comes to notifying people who didn’t get the job. It’s very likely to take longer than they told you it would. You can check in with the hiring manager or HR representative — but only once. If they told you that you’d hear in a week, wait two. If they told you you’d hear in two weeks, wait three. Express your continued interest in the job and ask if there is an updated timeline on a hiring decision. If you have another offer on the table, email the hiring manager about it. That may light a fire under the company.
Beyond checking in once, however, there isn’t much else you can do. Keep sending out applications to have other irons in the fire. And who knows? You might still get an offer long after you expected one. And if not, consider it a good sign that you got close to being hired, and move on. If you keep making it to the interview stage but not beyond, however, check in with campus career services. It may be that doing some practice interviews can help to strengthen your performance and get you from interview to job offer.
