Interview Preparation

Introduction

Without a lot of exposure, it can be challenging to nail industry interviews.

Not because you're not smart enough, but because you've been preparing for the wrong exam. You walk in ready to deliver a 45-minute research presentation when they really just want to know if you can solve some specific problems from Day 1 and not be weird at happy hour.

During your studies, your work was always taken to have value by everyone else in the field. Now you need to convince a hiring manager that your research on medieval text analysis makes you perfect for their data science team.

Industry interviewers aren't as impressed by your past as much as they are curious about your potential. They want to know: Can you translate your analytical mind into solutions their customers care about? Will you fit the culture? Can you communicate without making everyone's eyes glaze over? Widening the research landscape is great, but can you be depended on to execute specific functions?

The good news? With just a bit of practice and a mindset shift, you can easily shift over to the workforce, and signal to hiring managers that you’re ready to do so. In this section, we’re going to:

• Research interesting companies to be fully prepared
• Practice interviewing to hone our skills
• Debrief and make sure every interview is a growth exercise

Exercise: Interview Mastery System

1. Pre-Interview Intelligence Operation Looking at a company beforehand goes a long way in showing hiring managers that you’re not just throwing applications to the wind and letting them land where they may, but that you genuinely would like to contribute to a company (and even if the wind thing is true, we all gotta play the game and pretend it’s not).

To stay on top of organization, create a Research Dashboard for each target company using a spreadsheet with these categories:

1. Company Information (mission, values, recent news)
2. Position Details (key responsibilities, required skills)
3. Why I’m Great For This Role
4. Interviewer Background (when available)
5. Potential Interview Questions

To research a company quickly, you can use this prompt (best if paired with your CV):

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I am a PhD graduate interviewing for [specific position] at [company name]. Please help me prepare by: 1. Summarizing the company's core business and recent strategic initiatives 2. Identifying likely technical and behavioral questions based on the role 3. Suggesting 3-5 intelligent questions I could ask that demonstrate my understanding of their business challenges 4. Recommending specific examples from my academic experience that would resonate with this employer Here is the job description: [paste job description]
2. Interview Translation Protocol One of the best things about LLM’s is that they never get tired. You can run practice interviews until your fingers fall off, and give them a ton of relevant context to ask the best questions. Practice with different LLMs using a prompt like this, or with human partners, until responses feel natural but concise.

Interview Tip: Before interviewing in real life, prepare a few accomplishment stories using the STAR+R framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result, Relevance to the position), ensuring each demonstrates transferable skills. These are meant to answer the “tell us about a time you…” type of questions.

3. Interview Tracking System Be sure to track the interviews you completed, so you remember where you’ve applied and what happened during the interview. Here are some criteria to focus on:
• Interview Details (company, position, date, format)
• Interviewer Names and Roles
• Questions Asked
• Self-Assessment (what went well, areas for improvement)
• Follow-up Strategy (timing, method, key points to address)

If you want to use each interview as a way to improve your abilities, you can break down the interview with an LLM, by using the following prompt:

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I just completed an interview for [position] at [company]. Let me share what happened: Questions I was asked: [list questions] Areas where I felt confident: [your assessment] Areas where I struggled: [your assessment] Based on this information: 1. What does this suggest about the company's priorities for this role? 2. What specific elements should I address in my follow-up communication? 3. If offered another interview, what areas should I strengthen? 4. Draft a brief, professional thank-you email that reinforces my fit and addresses any weaknesses from the interview.

All the database suggestions here work well together as different pages in the same Excel document, making it all very easy to keep track of a Master Interview Document.