How to ace your next job/PhD interview with ChatGPT
A step-by-step guide with useful prompts
As interview season approaches, I would like to share with you the single most helpful interview preparation tool, the one and only: ChatGPT.
No, OpenAI is not paying me to sell their product (I wish!), but if Sam Altman ends on this substack I would like to let him know that my life would be so much easier with a Premium subscription.
Nonetheless, if you get invited for an interview, the first thing you should do is celebrate. Congrats! You are probably in the top 10% of all the applicants. That is a pretty big deal.
If you are anything like me, the second thing you do when you get invited to your first interview is to spend the following 6 hours googling in different formats and wording “PhD Interview Questions!!!” (exclamation marks are not optional).
I’ll save you some time. What you will find is an endless series of questions that look more or less the same, and that seem more suitable for PhD scholarship in the biochemistry lab at the University of Wyoming. Not great if you are applying for political science at a university in London. Unfortunately, Google often only provides you with US-based questions that are far from subject-specific.
Let’s go back to how I ended up here in the first place
Last year I got invited to three different interviews in the same week: two PhD interviews, and one job interview as a Research Assistant.
Fantastic news! Or not really since the positions were wildly different from each other.
In the first one, I had to present my own PhD proposal, in the second one I had to show them that I had the computational skills to work on their project (and to complete a PhD in statistics), and in the last one that I had experience working in a team and getting in touch with stakeholders (not sure what that means).
After shedding tears on my keyboard while typing 1000 times “interview questions” in the Google search bar, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to have a personal assistant with endless free time, and trained on 45 TB of data (ideally over 175 billion parameters)? Yes, it would.
How to set up ChatGPT for your mock interview?
First, find the job posting or description of the PhD programme.
Then open ChatGPt and give the following prompt:
“I am going to give you some information about a job posting, please keep it in mind for later” - [insert here the job posting]”
Wait for it to process, then input the following prompt:
“Now, imagine you are the interviewer for this job posting and I am the applicant. Formulate 20 interview questions (also generic, not related to the job posting specifically) and ask me one at a time when prompted. Let's start with the first question.”
I specified to ask one question at a time, so I could have time to practice out loud. I would record all my answers with the dictate function on Word.
At the end of the 20 questions ask ChatGPT to give me some feedback based on the job posting, with the following prompt:
“Now imagine you are on the admission committee. I will provide you with my answers to your questions. Please give me feedback on my interview answers highlighting weaknesses, strenghts and areas of improvement through bullet points.”
Here is what it looks like:
Once you are done, congratulate yourself: you are one step closer to being ready for your interview!
Disclaimer
While ChatGPT can provide assistance and generate responses, it's important to note that the feedback and responses generated are based on patterns and information available up to the model's knowledge cutoff date in January 2022. Additionally, the model cannot access real-time information or understand specific personal experiences. Therefore, users should use the information generated by ChatGPT as a supplemental resource and exercise caution in relying solely on it for critical tasks such as job interview preparation. It is recommended that individuals verify information, tailor responses to their unique experiences, and seek guidance from career professionals for a comprehensive and personalized approach to job interviews. ChatGPT is a tool that can aid in the process, but it does not replace the need for thorough preparation and individualized advice.
(This disclaimer was generated on ChatGPT with the following prompt: Can you write a disclaimer on why someone should be careful in using chatGPT to prepare for their job interview?)
Other useful tools
Another useful tool that I have encountered but haven’t personally used is Google Interview Warmup. I think this tool would be more useful for job interviews than PhD interviews, but it is still worth a shot.
Google Interview Warmup provides a free online service designed to help people prepare for job interviews.
Last but not least (DO NOT MISS THIS STEP)
I find ChatGPT a very useful tool, but at the end of the day acing an interview is all about convincing yourself that you deserve to be in that room with the admission team, and no, trust me, they didn’t make a mistake.
I know, impostor syndrome is real, and the very process of being assessed makes you doubt your achievements, your hard work and your potential. As the opening monologue of the movie Annie Hall once said: “I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”
Last but not least step: Practising with friends, and trusted ones can help you remind yourself that, after all, there must be a reason if you made it this far.