What mattered in that interview — Horizon Magazine 2017
The only shortcut to nailing that interview
A minimum of four agonizing years in a typical Asian university and the least a student can ask for is a decent job. Is asking for a return on investment for the time and money spent on education a bit too much?
Unfortunately the situation is not so one-dimensional. If you believe that graduating from a prestigious university will guarantee you a high paying job, then you are highly mistaken. Despite the indexes ranking the universities according to the job security of their fresh graduates, no university is foolish enough to claim that its students are guaranteed to wear the white-collar fresh out of college.
A university cannot magically turn you into the type of person you want to become, and this is important because it really sets the reality into perspective. You are what you make yourself to be. Baseline is, an employer always wants to hire the person who can get the job done. And yes, sometimes that means hiring the time-tested students from that “big” university, however that doesn’t necessarily drop your chances of winning that job.
Fact, in certain circumstances a well attuned resume from a mediocre university would out shine a glorified but non-acclimatized resume from a larger university. Being in an environment of imperfect systems, opportunities come abundant. I believe that in a conventional or old-school environment, you have a greater chance on making an impact, that is, if you know how.
These four years can either be slow and painful like the passing of a kidney stone or it could be the best chance that you have to change yourself and your immediate surroundings.
In the current “dog eat dog world” filled with a saturated job market, every woman and man is ready to do anything to make their résumé more competitive and distinct from others
*Insert clichéd resume fact stating how much time an employer spends on each CV*. The résumé is a short summary of who you are and how you have used the only independent variable in your life, time.
Being in my third year, for me to get that job, it is absolute necessary that I exploit all possible avenues to build my résumé. This includes nailing a worthy internship in my third year; which is easier said than done.
However I was lucky to earn the first two competitive internships that came to interview students from the university. Having gone through the process successfully, it’s not rare to be approached by students asking me how
to nail those interviews. Unfortunately, I am not a miracle worker. An interview is a personal experience. And telling people how to trick the interviewer into believing that you are the right person is something I strongly disagree with.
Being approached by people who in retrospect were asking me the hack I, for all the right reasons, have created a guide on what really mattered in that interview room and what made me make that cut. Take this example as one of the methods to nailing an interview.
Level 1: The GPA
I want all of you to imagine the following list as a pyramid. Each level of the pyramid is progress to obtain the full shape of the pyramid. However, missing out on any of the levels will make your pyramid fail to materialize thus reduces your chances of success.
The GPA sits at the bottom of the pyramid because it is simply the base of your career. Most companies having an internship program will judge you first based on your institutional standards and so accordingly hold GPA cutoffs. Which is why the first thing that you have to do is to earn a sufficient GPA to gain that fighting chance. This is usually a 2.7 cGPA for most companies, a 3.0 cGPA for research based companies and a 3.2 to 3.5 cGPA for the most demanding companies.
It’s simple, to wrestle in the heavyweight division, you have to meet the weight class. Similarly your cGPA is your division. For me an ideal cGPA would be above 3.20, while a decent cGPA would be anything above a 2.70.
Remember this, students who have exceptionally high GPAs are usually judged differently than those who have lower GPAs. This puts you on a somewhat equal standing.
Level 2: Your Skills
If you find yourself in the lower GPA brackets, then all is not lost. Once you feel that you have stabilized your GPA after the first few semesters, you should shift your attention to improving other attributes.
When you are born, before you even understand who you are and in what reality you live in, you are taught important skills to make you an able-bodied person. You learn walking and talking, recognizing simple patterns, using utensils and today how to unlock the iPad.
As such the next thing that will get your interviewers interested in you are the skills that you have honed over the years. And this will be pretty clear throughout the interview as you prove your soft skills via your way of communicating, negotiating and people management , and your hardskills via your résumé, certifications and relevant examples of the range of projects that you would have worked in.
Level 3: Volunteering
Surprisingly as much as volunteering seems like something that I would just add in the résumé to fi ll empty white space, it is one of the best work experiences that you can add in your résumé at the undergraduate level. An employer most certainly does not want a privileged snob to be working in his office. The office is a dynamic workplace inhabited by humans. The employer will be glad to know that you have contributed to community with your work and effort , and even though there is no proof of how well you executed your volunteering project , those questions will be again reflected upon in your interview.
Level 4: Self Awareness
Knowing who you are can be very powerful . And often, this is where a distinction is created between the candidates as the pool starts thinning out exponentially. If you do not have any serious answer as of yet for the question of who you are, then it’s about time you do some soul-searching. There is nothing emotional , romantic or mystique about this question. It’s a serious question that sets the premises for the immediate future of any candidate.
Knowing yourself is a life long journey, but by now you should be doing everything to gain a greater understanding of the world you are a part of . Recognizing your strengths , your weaknesses and what you can offer is great for an interviewer who wants to know you better. Further more it will also help you better gauge which opportunities to go after as knowing yourself can help you better understand environments where you can thrive.
Up until your early teens , you were always told what to do and what to learn but as you grow up, you become independent enough to steer your own life course.
Level 5: Philosophy On Life
I would ideally put philosophy on the top of the pyramid, but keeping in view the interviewer’s perspective, it only makes sense that this reaches only level The reason philosophy makes the cut only is because spoken words do not show the true abilities of a person. Your philosophy will give you an outlook on how to approach a problem and solve it. But there is no definitive proof that you can actually do it .
Still philosophy is really important as it adds flavor to your personality and starts distinguishing you from others . For example, I consider myself a problem solver who looks at the essence of objects and tries to induce harmony in the design and usefulness of the solutions.
Level 6: Projects
Projects are by far are most important thing that will matter to the interviewer. Nothing gets the message across than your hands-on experiences . People are led to believe that they need to be holding leading positions in a project to make it interview worthy. However that is not true. There are three types of people who exist in the world, a leader , a team player and a circumstantial person.
When being part of a project, you can hold any one of these three positions since a project always involves a form of a team dynamic . This is why the value of a project is the greatest . The process includes from working with or leading people who are trying to meet a common goal through persistence and resilience . No project is without its hardships and if you have any project that is worthy of mentioning then you should probably put it in your arsenal.
ACADEMIC
The most common projects that one can mention are academic projects that are assigned to you by your instructor . Remember that 16 page humanities assignment from that forgotten semester? Well if you had taken that seriously you can add it to your resume (considering you can answer any question about it) . Any assignment that you are given, if taken seriously, can add tremendous value to your resume . The marks may seem insignificant but by its arbitrary value in an interview, it is priceless.
Always remember that when opportunities appear, make sure you avail them. If your luck is running dry then get in touch with your professors and ask if there are any technical projects that you can do .
PERSONAL
Personal projects are the ones that gave me the most confidence to sit in that interview. In my arsenal I had 5 personal projects that I had successfully completed , each with its own set of unique challenges and learning value that I used as an example to answer any question that came at my way. These projects revolved around coming up with an idea, building the concept, convincing people, winning support , facing failures, staying resilient, changing strategies, finding success, and creating sustainability through documentation .
The projects range from starting a blog, introducing a new module to events, organizing a completely new event, working on building infrastructures in a university, solving a local problem and optimizing systems . The types of projects that you can do are infinite and it usually starts with the words
‘You know what should be happening instead?’ or ‘You know what the problem is?’. All you have to be is a little solution oriented, and simply steadfast in your efforts.
Level 7: Failures
You see amazing things happen when you start picking up project s, in the process you start searching for yourself , you discover a philosophy for life , you volunteer for humanity , you develop lifelong skills and you struggle for that basic GPA. In this process you actually find out who you are and who you are not. And if you have been questioning whether doing engineering or management is the right thing for you, then going through this path will answer that question. With each project s, you face failures.
Failures are blessings in disguise. You can only find a solution if you can see the problem, and to recognize your failure is the best thing that can happen to you. You then have a choice to make. Ignore the problem and move on or to eliminate the problem and scope in on that field.
When sitting in that interview room, if you have not failed then you have never tried to reach your potential. The interviewer will be very critical of that . Your interviewer knows that you are a human who is prone to making mistakes and that wrong decisions will eventually come out of your pool of rights as well.
To complete the pyramid, you need to have a share of failures, and for that you should have experienced everything that was listed before.
All in all, this article is not for the people who wish to still trick the interviewers. This is my method of going in that room ready, and it is essential that if you want to go in ready, then you start making your way up that pyramid too. Challenge yourself everyday to do more than the bare minimum.
It is not enough that you are doing extra-curricular and having a good GPA. Even being a president of a local organization is not an achievement since there is no definitive proof of your success and work. All that matters in the end are quality experiences.
Published in GIKI Horizon Magazine 2017.
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About the author
Rayyan is an Ontology Engineer working for a startup in San Francisco. His work revolves around complex adaptive systems, systems thinking and software languages. He is a 2018 graduate from the faculty of Chemical Engineering and is an active member of the GIKI Alumni Association. You can email him your thoughts and views at, connect@rayyanzahid.com.
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