Author: Ivy Cho
The November Community Corner is all about Internship and Post-doc Interviews!
INTERNSHIP
Questions You May Be Asked
- Sites will often ask personal questions to get to know you better such as “Tell me about yourself” to something very random such as “What’s your pet peeve?”
- As they are looking for a good fit, they may ask “What drew you to our site?” as well as for further clarification on your research/clinical/professional interests.
- There may be performance based questions such as asking about your sample reports and/or they may ask about a vignette such as “Interpret this data sheet” or “What test would you add/eliminate to the following battery and why?”
Questions for Faculty
- Try to ask about information that is not readily available on their brochures/websites such as “how are rotations/ supervisors assigned?”
- Personalized questions may demonstrate interests such as talking about the specific research/ rotation that each faculty is responsible for.
- It may be beneficial to ask about the location of the site such as “What are some fun things to do around (city/town)?” to indicate willingness to move.
Questions for Current Interns
- Speaking with current interns may be the best way to see if you can envision yourself at the site; therefore, asking about the work environment and workload may be helpful.
- Further, you may want to ask for the interns’ perspective about the strengths/weaknesses of the site/supervisors/training as well as living in the city/town.
Additional information and specific questions for internship may be found in the Internships in Psychology: The APAGS Workbook by Carol Williams-Nickelson, Mitchelle J. Prinstein, and W. Gregory Keilin.
POST-DOC
Questions You May Be Asked
- Post-doc interviews have a tendency to be more focused on the personality fit rather than performance and knowledge; therefore, similar questions to internship in order for the faculty to get to know you will come up.
Questions for Training Supervisors
- As less information is available for post-doc positions compared to internship, discussion about your training priorities would be essential to help understand how the site fits with your needs.
- Having transitioned out of being a student, specific questions about salary/bonuses, loan forgiveness, access to financial advisors may be helpful.
- Further, specific questions about the benefits they offer such as retirement packages, subsidized healthcare, and/or healthcare packages for significant others/family members are appropriate questions to ask.
Questions for Current Post-Docs
- Similar to the internship process, speaking with the current post-docs would demonstrate the most insight to help you find out if you can/want to train there for 2 years. Additionally, these post-docs may be your fellow training mate for the first year. It would be important to make sure that you can get along.
- Discussion about the work/life balance, the presence/absence of support from the site to gain licensure as well as employment after training are some topics that may be helpful.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- More information about these processes will be available through ANA! Be sure to check out ANA Education Committee’s part 2 of the webinar series on “Internship and Fellowship Application Panel.”
Wednesday, November 18th at 5 pm EST | 4pm CST | 3 pm MST | 2 pm PST
Register HERE.
- Join ANA Student Committee for the November social for a more in-depth conversation about the interview process on
Friday, November 20th at 8 pm EST | 7 pm CST | 6 pm MST | 5 pm PST
- Past community corner postings with additional information on internship and post-doc interviews. The documents are attached to this email.