Water Cooler Talk: Interviewing Keys to Success

Coop search can be a very stressful time.  I am searching for my third coop and honestly this one has been the most stressful out of all of them.  This week the interview requests come out for A round.  The interview is the most important part of the coop process.  Your resume was able to get you the interview but now you need to show the company you are the person for the job.  From my experiences I have learned a few keys that can help during the interview.  

The first key is being confident.  When you interview, if you are not confident in yourself the interviewer will know.  They can see if you have any nerves and your responses to their questions will show that.  You need to go into the interview confident that you will get the job.  You can boost your confidence by making sure that you know everything on your resume and you are able to explain it.  This was one of my biggest problems on my first coop interview as a sophomore.  I wrote the resume so long ago I forgot what classes I wrote under my relevant course work section.  The interviewer asked me about a class and I didn’t remember anything that we did in the class.  Avoid this issue by knowing something that you learned in each class and a major project you worked on.

Another key is doing your research on the company you are interviewing at.  This should be the first and last thing you do before the interview.  In every interview I have ever had one of the first questions I get asked is some form of “What do you know about us?”.  If you have done extensive research about the company the person interviewing you will be impressed.  You can also use that research to help you answer later questions.  

My final key is to treat the interview like a conversation.  The interview in its simplest form is just two people talking.  This was the number one reason that I was able to get my last coop.  I went into the interview and just had a conversation.  I asked questions back and half the time we weren’t even talking about the job.  I treated the interview like a more formal conversation with my friends and it worked out.  

In the end, the combination of all three of my keys will help you during the interview.  Don’t worry if you do not feel you are qualified.  If you got the interview they must have saw something in you that attracted them.  Before my first coop, the only experience I had on my resume was a pizza place and a sit-down burger place.  If I was able to get a coop so will you.    

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Greg Monforte is a Drexel University Sport Management pre-junior from South Jersey.  Currently he works at Not Just Pizza in Sicklerville, NJ and Daddis Fight Camps in Philadelphia where he has social media and marketing responsibilities.  Greg is also the SMTSU Director of Marketing & Outreach.  Follow Greg on Twitter @Greg_Monforte.

Connect with Greg Monforte on LinkedIn.