- Think critically. If your interviewer asks you how to build a bicycle, don’t panic and freeze. Just think about the steps you would take to solve this problem. How would you conduct research or assemble a team to tackle this challenge? What kinds of questions would you ask and where would these questions be directed?
- Call your mentors to mind. Keep your toughest professors, coaches, and counselors in your head as you enter the interview, and if you’re hit with an especially tough question, ask yourself “How would he/she answer this?”
- Think aloud. Don’t be afraid to show your work by taking the interviewer through your entire thought process. For example, if your interviewer presents you with a hypothetical sick patient/mechanical problem/on-the-job crisis and asks you for a diagnosis, share your potential solutions and your reasons for ruling each one out.
- Weeks before your interview, contact people who are currently immersed in your target job at your target level. Engage in unscripted conversation with these people over coffee or email and focus on current software utilities, political events, or scientific developments that have altered the field in your absence.
- Use the internet. Specifically, blogs. Read up on industry news, but devote a portion of your attention to blogs and bloggers who offer not just news, but opinions, insights, and commentary dealing with specific events taking place in your field.
- Practice. If new software utilities, procedures, or theories have become standard while you’ve been away, familiarize yourself with these new models in a hands-on way.
- Read. All the time, whether you’re in the midst of a job search or comfortably employed. Staff development studies suggest that reading almost any work-related material (books, journals, internet articles) for at least an hour a day can move you ahead of your peers and turn you into a recognized expert in just a few years.
- If you don’t recognize a new procedure or utility that your interviewer wants to discuss, admit this and ask for more information. Intelligent curiosity will win more points than blustering and posturing.