Career Advice

Good news: You’ve got your application reviewed at your dream company. With your foot now in the door, the company wants to set up an in-person interview with you (yay!). You start preparing, making sure you know all the important things about a company, as well as common questions that come up in interviews. But some things – like knowing how much eye contact to make with an interviewer –can be a little harder to prepare for.

Informational interviews are the perfect way to get a better idea of a position or a company while simultaneously positioning yourself for any future job openings. The interview is mostly a chance for you to expand your knowledge and get a better feel of a job or industry, but the person you’re talking with will likely be taking stock of your professional potential, too.

Congrats! You’ve scored your first job offer out of college – now what? Even though it’s your first “real world” job, there’s still room for negotiation when it comes to salary, benefits, vacation days, and more.

You’re definitely not alone if the idea of networking makes you nervous. Striking the balance between formal and informal conversation, asking the right number of questions and sneaking in a humble brag is not always easy. But the major key to successful networking isn’t trying to follow a predetermined script or taking it too seriously. It should still be a normal conversation – just with a career focus.

Amber, 21, is a computer science major at Wellesley College and a summer 2018 intern at Qualtrics. She’s had an interest in technology since she was young, largely driven by her interest in gaming. Here, she explains how gaming drove her to start her career in tech, and what she’s learned along the way.

When I first started working at Roivant as a Development intern at the beginning of my last semester of college, I had no idea what to expect. I was told I’d be helping “cross-functionally” wherever people needed me. Between taking full-time classes, handling all my extracurricular activities, and trying to make the most out of my last semester at Duke University, I was worried I’d be overwhelmed by work or that I’d be given only small projects that would be of little value to the company. Fortunately, neither of these things happened, and I’ve learned so much from my few months here. My project leaders were flexible enough to accommodate my schedule as well as thoughtful enough to carefully pick my projects so that I’d get the most out of the 10-20 hours I could come into the office every week.

1) Everybody sells

What is a behavioral interview?