Interview Research and Preparation

This course should be taken by anyone involved in the processs of applying for job interviews! It's both useful and pleasant to take.

I work for a big company, in France, in the field of science & technology R&D, and my lab recently opened a position for which we started receiving applicants a few weeks ago. As a member of the team the position is opened to work with, I've been involved in the interview process. I was just amazed to see how unprepared the applicants were : they made mistake after mistake. Since we also have trainees and Ph.D students in the lab, who'll soon have to search for their first job, I had a look at the MOOC offer in the field of "preparing for job interviews", in order to see what advice I could provide for them to get prepared for this key step in building their career.

I registered to this MOOC, from University of Maryland - College Park, as an auditor and started browsing through their videos and accompanying documents. I just got caught in right away, despite the fact that I couldn't participate (neither submit nor evaluate) in assignments: one needs to be pay for that, and I had no real interest in doing so, for now, although I truly think it's worth the cost if one is in the position of preparing for job interviews.

I realised that, if the job applicants we interviewed in my lab had taken this remarkable course prior to their interviews, this would have saved them so many basic mistakes. If you never had the opportunity to reflect on what a job interview process is, and are applying for interviews, just give it a try: I bet you'll benefit from this experience a lot... and it might simply change your life! This course is the first of a series of 5 from a specialization. I already audited the first 2 courses, and I'm just eager to see the next two come on stage (the last is a capstone project I'll skip for now.)