Shownotes
In part two of the interview workshop at UMass Medical School, Carina introduces interview exercises to help everyone get in the right mindset for interviewing.
These exercises, inspired by the world of improv, aim to help individuals overcome the fear of selling themselves and improve their communication skills.
Resources: the book "Yes And" and the podcast "Think Fast, Talk Smart," for further communication skill development. Overall, these exercises provide a fun and effective way to prepare for interviews and improve interview performance.
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Transcripts
Swell AI Transcript: 004 BioCareer Coach Podcast Interview workshop part 2.wav
Carina: Friends, if you did not catch last week's podcast episode, make sure you go back and listen to it because we covered the first part of the workshop that is continued here in this episode. This week, we are going to do some exercises that are going to get you in the right mindset for interviewing. Interviewing is scary, it is hard, and you have to sell yourself, and that's the hardest thing to sell. So, I have put together a few fun interview exercises. They come from the improv world, so be prepared to grab a buddy, do these exercises, and get really comfortable in an interview situation. All right, finally, we are just going to move into the mindset. So this is where the woo meets the work. So we do need to be in the right place, the right frame of mind in order to interview. And something I hear a lot when I'm working with candidates is that they are very afraid or nervous to sell themselves. And this comes actually from our scientific background. Unfortunately, we're not supposed to oversell anything. We shouldn't overstate our data. We shouldn't, you know, overstate our results. And so we are a little bit conservative in how we talk about ourselves. Now, that's not just scientists. That's everyone. Selling yourself is pretty much the hardest thing you will ever sell. But as scientists, I do, I hear the same themes coming up over and over when I'm working with candidates, and it is often coming back to that they don't want to overstate the evidence. So we're going to talk a little bit about this because you're not going to be overseeing the evidence, but there is a bit of a mindset shift that we need to overcome. We're going to talk about three exercises you can do. as you're moving toward your interviews. So I really hope you have some good buddies in here. So these are buddy exercises. You definitely need to do these with other people. The first one is called Yes And. And this is an improv technique. And I have two great resources here. The book Yes And, written by an improv master, talks about how people can use improv to overcome mindset blocks and put you in a more positive state of mind. more of an optimistic way of thinking, and it's a great book. I've read it probably three or four times now. The next one is a brand new book, but Matt Abrahams just wrote this book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, and he hosts a podcast out of the Stanford Podcast Network called Think Fast, Talk Smart. It's a fantastic podcast. The book is great. As soon as it released, I went out and bought it because I'm a big Matt Abrahams fan. So these two things are great resources for how you can hone your communication skills for that really on-the-spot communication that you're going to need to be able to do during your interviews. You don't know what they're going to ask you, so you have to be kind of ready to respond. So the exercise, yes and, is really simple and it's fun. It will, if done correctly, have you laughing until you're crying with your partner. So definitely attack this one. So I always start with three words. You can increase the number of words but it gets harder. So start with three. So you're going to partner up, and you're going to do this exercise by saying three words, and then the next person continues your thought with their next three words, and then you come back and you continue the thought with three words, and your secret weapon is yes and, because that always moves the conversation forward. If you can't think of what to say next, you can yes and it. So as an example, you might start out. Lisa, do you want to do this exercise with me? Can I put you on the spot? All right. So you say three words, any three words to start a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: Gatorade, cupcakes, pancakes. Yes.
Carina: Oh, wait. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, I mean, that's fine, but I will piggyback on anything. It normally is more of a conversation. So if I were to start, I might say, Lisa, I love. And then you just say the next three words. Okay. Gatorade, pancakes, cupcakes. Yes. And me? You're fine. You're fine. This is why it's hard. We're going to practice this. So you would just continue my sentence. We're going to build a huge sentence of a story, whatever. And so I said, yes. And me?
SPEAKER_00: I can give you some too.
Carina: Yes, I love to eat pancakes. Me too. You see, this is super fun. And it gets silly and wild. And if you just practice this, you and your partner will get really fast at it. And I have practiced it a lot. So that's why I'm right there with it. But it is not natural. It is not natural. But if you went to an improv class, they would have you doing this up on the stage, but with props, too, and funny outfits. So it gets just wild. But the whole point of this is to get really fast at picking up someone's thought and continuing with it. And so we start with three words, then you might go out to four words each, and then we might do five words each. It gets longer because you have to count the word. It gets harder because you have to count the words in your head when it's longer. I've gone up to 10 words, and that was really hard. Because you're trying to talk and count to 10. That's challenging. But anyway, this is a fun exercise. I definitely recommend you pick a partner and start here. And then we're going to go on to the next exercise. This one's called starting a company. I love this exercise so much. The whole premise of starting a company is you're going to have a partner. You can do this in groups also. It doesn't have to just be one person. Same thing with yes and. You can have a whole group of people going around a circle. you are going to compliment the other person and tell them why they're going to be so great in this company you're starting together. I'll do a couple rounds. So here's me and I'm going to say, Lisa, I think we should start a biotech company because you are so amazing at tying people together and making connections. And then you would say, Yes. And yes, and note that. Yes. And Karina, you are really good at giving really weird story ideas. So I think that'll be great for attracting investor attention. And I'll say yes. And Lisa, I love how you have a great sense of style. So what we could do is we could create a company where we actually decorate the mouse rooms for other biotechs?" And then you'd say, yes, and I love your sense of color, so maybe we could actually dye the mice blue or green or purple, depending on the color scheme we pick. Does that make sense? I don't know a whole lot about you, so I was only able to go so deep on that. But if you know somebody really well and you're now in a group of people that know your research, the whole point is to compliment somebody on something you know they do really well and expand on why that's important. And so it can get really silly and, you know, 10, 15 rounds deep, you are going to devolve into dyeing mice different colors or something like that. That is totally fine. That is part of the exercise. Does that make sense to everyone? Do you think that's fine?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And I find that one thing that stands out is that we just have such a difficult time talking about ourselves. This is helpful to hear from other people.
Carina: You hit the nail on the head. That is the hidden value of this exercise, is that you're going to hear the positivity coming your way about what your peers actually think about you. And that is so hard to do for yourself, but it's really easy to reflect back on other people. And so it's such a service too. It's a fun exercise. You'll definitely have good laughs. You'll start the wildest companies. You can do anything. I said, start a company. It could be plan a trip. It could be all kinds of scenarios, but it's fun. All right. Then last thing is, and this is tagging right along to what Lisa just said. This is called your best friend. And in this exercise, I want you to, if you have a best friend at UMass, I certainly did, you know, that's a great place to start. Think about your best friend. I will describe my best friend from UMass. So she was a brilliant neurobiologist, just top notch. And she was so funny. She tied people together. She was the type of person, I'm saying was, she definitely still exists, by the way. I'm just thinking about our time at UMass. She was the type of person that was the glue that stuck the group together. You know, that light that you walk into the room and you just think, okay, yep. This is why we're all here. She is why we are all here. And she had such a way, too, of explaining really complex problems in ways that we all could understand, because none of us were neurobiologists, but somehow we always knew exactly what she was doing and why. Whereas, you know, I was over here talking about biochemistry in way too lofty terms, and she had no idea what I was doing. She was so good at communicating. And it shows because now she's a teacher. She has her own lab. She's at a teaching facility, has her own lab, and she teaches. No surprise there, because she is a fantastic communicator. So I'm going to stop there, but I could go on all day about my best friend. Right? Who couldn't? Everyone could. Lisa, do you have a best friend?
SPEAKER_00: Interesting you say that. Yes, but my best friend has passed away and today is his birthday actually. I am so sorry to hear that.
Carina: What did you love about him?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was amazing. He taught me so much and he was just very funny and we'd spend a lot of time on the phone talking to each other about nothing. But this is probably one of his, he was a very, he was kind of a jokester. So this is probably one of the things he's doing right now because I'm like,
Carina: Yeah. That's the universe for you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Today's his birthday. So it's, oh my God, that's so funny.
Carina: Oh my gosh. I'm so glad I got to share him with us. That's really special.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you. I love these because what I have found about this group in particular, it, when I look at some of your cover letter guys, it's very technical. It's very, this is what I did. And there's a lack of passion and in some of the cover letters, which I think will come off in interviews, right? Because one of the reasons you write a cover is it helps you practice for an interview. So I think doing some of this is maybe very helpful for you to kind of loosen up and show that human side of you that we all know you have. Cause I see it in our one-on-one, you know, engagement, but I really want you guys to work on that using some of these exercises because I think some of you just come off too technical.
Carina: Agreed. Yeah. Like I said, biotechs are filled with humans and we want to know who you are. And I think once you do these exercises and you start to think a little bit more positively about who you are, because, and so that's why I say, if you have a best friend at UMass, it's great because you can pair up and you can describe each other and you can hear reflected back how special you actually are, how accomplished you actually are. One thing, and maybe you've experienced this, Lisa, people worry a lot about moving into industry because they don't think they have the skills. But the wonderful thing about a PhD is that it sets you up to learn anything. I mean, how many things did you learn in your PhD? It's kind of ridiculous. People don't think about that. When I think about all of the people that I knew at UMass, I mean, none of us knew how to do any of the things we learned how to do. We all went in, we thought, okay, how do I need to solve this problem? We figured it out and we did it. That resourcefulness is something that is actually highly prized in industry because you might think industry has it all together, but they don't. They're still learning too. They're still developing and figuring things out. So the ability for somebody to come in and be a problem solver, proactive, all of the things you are already is so important. Thank you for joining me for that workshop recap. I hope it was really valuable to you. If you want more like this, join our Slack community. We love to go into detail with candidates. We answer questions in there. And some of those questions end up in my career coach column or in this podcast. So it is helpful to me too. You're doing me a favor by coming in and getting your questions answered. I hope to see you in there. And if there's anything we can do for you, send us a note at hello at collaboratorycareerhub.com. See you soon. You just have to communicate that.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. I mean, some of the competencies that you guys have developed throughout the PhD program gives you the ability to identify problems, analyze them, come up with a methodology to solve them. These competencies can be applied to many aspects of life, not just science. Intellectually, you've been through one of the most rigorous things that Yeah, I think the only thing, I can't even think of anything more difficult. I think maybe the MD is just side by side, but it's one of the most difficult things in the world. And to go through that rigor, you do not come out on the end the same person. And an employer knows that.
Carina: Okay, I hope you really enjoyed those exercises. Those are a lot of fun. If you grab a fun partner and just get a little silly, you're gonna really enjoy them and you're gonna come out the other side with a better idea of how to further a conversation within an interview. And you can take some of those improv style techniques and you really can apply those in both interviews in real life and networking events all over the place. So getting good at talking about yourself in a positive way and keeping a conversation alive is going to be so valuable to you. If you like this and you want more like it, come to our free Slack community where we answer questions from job seekers and early career scientists all the time. We would love to have you there. And some of your questions might end up in my career coach column for Biospace or here on this podcast. So you're really doing me a favor by getting your questions answered. Thanks so much, and we will see you next week.