I spent today interviewing college juniors and seniors from our college alma mater to help prepare them for real interviews for internships and getting their “real” jobs.  I do this every year as most colleges and universities don’t prepare their students for interviewing and I did a lot of it while I was in the work force.  For those of you who are new to my blog, I used to manage bank branches for PNC Bank until about eleven years ago, when migraines made it impossible to keep the schedule necessary to do the job effectively.  Preparing students for interviewing is something I do to help students prepare for, let’s face it, a very difficult endeavor.  Today, with a very tough job market, it’s especially important to prepare the students for interviewing.  The accounting majors do most of their interviewing in the fall and we send them to a symposium where major accounting firms have evaluated their resumes and invite only the best to interview.  The seniors went to the symposium on Thursday and came back saying they were surprised at how underdressed many of the students from other colleges appeared to be.  I do a seminar for our students giving them dress standards and everything I can think of to prepare them for the interview.  Then they research a company and we interview them on videotape for the company they researched.  We only videotape the interview, not the feedback they are given when we are finished.  I want them to feel comfortable watching the video with friends and not be embarrassed at things they may have said.

I tell them that this is the only interview they will ever have that the interviewer gives them feedback as to what they did well and things they need to correct.  This program has really been effective and this year, we had twelve seniors get job offers before the symposium, so they are really taking this seriously.  With the amount of student loan debt most students have when they come out of college, it’s only fair that their college or university offer them help in obtaining good jobs.  It’s sad that most schools don’t do much or anything in the way of assistance.  I’m proud to volunteer to do this for the students and my school, and am really happy that they are getting jobs.  I have to say though, it is really exhausting and I normally fall asleep on the way home.  (Obviously Rich is driving.)  I try to space the interviews out so I only do four a day, which for me is still a lot, but it’s something I feel totally committed to doing.  The best part of the experience is when I see one of the students right after they get their job offer and how proud and excited they are.  It makes everything worth it.

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