15 Interviews & 40 Questions: A List to Help You Prepare for Your Next Interview

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on 15 mock interviews for graduate students and postdocs. While a list of standard interview questions was provided as a resource, each interviewer was encouraged to bring their own spin to the interview process. I was able to take notes and compile the questions below. If you are a student who is about to go on the job market, hopefully these questions will help you prepare.

Questions About Previous Experience

• Tell me about your experience as a grad student.
• Did you always know you were interested in this type of work?
• Tell me about your background.
• Have you written any grants yet?
• Can you tell me about your most exciting project in your research career?
• Tell me about how you got into this.
• Tell me about what you’re currently working on.
• Tell me about your history and then I’ll tell you about my lab and we will go from there.
• What kind of skills are you bringing to the table?

Questions About Teams & Mentoring

• What kind of supervising style do you do the best under?
• Can you describe your experience on a team?
• Have you had any mentoring experience? What has that been like?
• What strengths do you bring to the table in your lab?
• How do you prioritize the ideas you have?
• What is the best mentoring style you respond to well?
• Are you a person who likes to prepare ahead of time or do you need deadlines to inspire you?

Questions About Challenges

• Can you describe challenges you’ve overcome and how you worked through them?
• What’s the most challenging aspect of your work?
• In this position, you don’t get to publish. Is that going to be a challenge for you?
• From your experience in working in different environments, you’ve probably encountered different interactions styles. Have you had conflicts with colleagues? How did you deal with them?
• Your boss comes to you and says this person is causing friction in the lab and needs to be talked to. How, as their supervisor, would you deal with that?
• Do you have ways to deal with the stress of this job outside of work?
• How do you take criticism?
• Have you ever made a mistake? How did you deal with it?
• What kind of plan do you have to learn from your failures? What process do you go through?
• You want a marketable portfolio. What are you doing to make yourself more marketable?
• I’m trying to get a sense of how you handle group situations. Can you explain how you are in a group?
• How do you handle the dialogue in collaborations between authorship?

Questions About the Future

• How are you helping bring innovation to your lab?
• What experiences are you looking to have in my lab that will prepare you for the next step?
• I want you to dig a little deeper into what you expect from yourself. What will you do to make yourself more competitive?
• For this project, what people and what resources do think you’ll need to move forward.
• Hypothetically, say you found the answer to your research. What would you do next?
• Knowing your background, what do you see yourself teaching?
• What areas would you prefer NOT to teach?
• What are your long term goals?
• What kind of impact do you think your work will have?
• What are the most important aspects of a job to you? What do you look for?
• What do you bring to the table in my lab and what are you seeking to learn to get you to the next step?
• What are some ways you are trying to further your own professional development?