November 2, 2016, by Danny Bav

My grad job interview

I’ve just had a graduate job interview and it was very ‘different’ to say the least.
It began with a short presentation on a given topic followed by some questions focused on commercial awareness. I find it easy to ramble in interviews, so I had to ensure I stayed on topic throughout which was quite difficult at times. After the short presentation and question and answer period, I was asked a few questions to get to know me more deeply:

“What motivates you?”

“What makes you tick?”

“Where do you see yourself in 10 years time”

They came as a surprise as they were quite open ended, I wasn’t sure what direction to take them, but I answered truthfully and tried to back myself up with examples or things I have done.

Imagine yourself in a similar scenario though and somebody asks you these questions, just take five minutes to make a list, what does motivate you? Why do you do the things you do and what truly does make your brain ‘tick’. It’s quite a good exercise to self reflect on these things, because let’s face it, we always question others but when do we get the time to question yourself?

Okay, so you’ve written down what makes you tick, now what?

Now look at what you do now and map it to your motivations and see if they match up. If you’re motivated by learning languages, are you currently pushing yourself to use and practice your language? Perhaps you’re into psychology, what parts of the subject make you feel motivated, what are you excited to learn about?I feel this kind of self reflection task even for 5 or 10 minutes means you can learn a lot about yourself in a short space of time. Reflection helps you question things that you currently do and review their effectiveness, rather than just carrying on doing things the way you have always done them.

Anyways, I have no idea how well I did in the interview – I guess it’s just a waiting game now!

I also caught up with an old friend Mario in London who used to study at Nottingham and now studies at LSE for her masters. It’s amazing how different people’s lives pan out after not seeing each other for a year. We went for sushi and had a great catch up! It’s weird to think how easy it is to keep in touch with people with social media, but at the same time how artificial it can be and nothing beats a good 30 mins to an hour of a face to face conversation in real life. I wish Mario all the best for the future and hope we meet again soon (she’s so busy! ?)

Now I’m on the train back home, I think it’s been a successful day, I planned to do some work on the train back but I think it’s time to sleep and rest up!

Good luck to everyone out there applying to graduate schemes!

 

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