Since my last post was on the topic of the PA school interview I wanted to talk about an interview that doesn't yield the outcome you were expecting i.e. you get waitlisted or rejected. After paying for my CASPA application and submitting to my first set of schools, I checked my email/mail for any sign of an interview offer. A long time seemed to have gone by before I opened my email and the subject line read, "PA Program - Status of Application". "We appreciate your interest..." I didn't have to read the rest to know that I had not received an interview offer. That entire day I went through the motions. My loving husband reminded me that this was only one school out fo the six that I had applied to, there was still hope.
A few weeks later I received my first interview offer! I read and re-read the email over and over again. I couldn't help but share my excitement with someone else. I called my husband to give him the good news. He was in a meeting and whispered his excitement and congratulations to me.
The husband and I boarded a plane and headed east to my first interview. I'll fast forward to the results of my interview. I bombed it. I was unprepared and caught off guard by the questions that they shot at me. Even the one about my favorite Disney character. The night after my interview I kept replaying the entire thing over and over in my head. I watched myself crashing and failing. As a result, a month later I received an email stating that I was put on the waitlist. The truth was that I wasn't at all surprised.
However, I had very little time to mourn my waitlisted email. On that very same day, I received an invitation to interview for another school. I felt like this was a God-given opportunity to redeem myself.
The best part of this all was that I wasn't the one to open these emails. My husband had secretly been monitoring my emails from schools, so he called telling me he had some not so bad news and some great news.
Here are some of the things I worked on to better myself as an interviewee after my first attempt.
1. Mock interview with a Physician Assistant - The PA Platform is a website run by Savanah Perry. She provides services to Pre-PA students. One of her services is her mock interview. The truth is, without the mock interview I would not have been prepared for my second interview. Savannah is thorough and even provides with a document evaluating your answers and advice on how to better answer questions. This put all of my doubts to bed. I knew what I wanted to say but I did not know what the interviewer wanted to hear. Savannah is not only a recent PA school graduate, but she also participates on the Admissions Committee panel for her alma mater PA program.
2. Research on the PA profession - Know your stuff! I cannot stress this enough. Understand what a PA does and it also would not hurt to know the history of the profession. They will most likely ask you Why do you want to be a Physician Assistant? Incorporating some of the practices of a PA into your answer could help you shine a little brighter than the rest of the bunch.
3. Practice, practice, practice! - Practice interviewing. Start from scratch, put on the suit/outfit that you will be wearing on the interview day. Do your hair and make-up if it will help you feel like this is the real deal. Sit in front of a mirror or video camera and answer some commonly asked questions. Take note on how you respond. Practice your "pausing face". This is the face that you make while formulating the answer to the question in your head. It shows that you think through problems. Another thing practicing helps with is getting your smile down. A nervous smile can be spotted a hundred miles away. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. Just remember to smile naturally.
4. Prepare to answer a question 1,000 different ways - The number of questions you can be asked in an interview is infinite. There are simply too many for you to remember specific answers to specific questions. This limits your ability to answer anything that the interviewer might throw at you. Which is why it is so important to make a list of things that you want the interviewer to know about you. This makes it easier to answer a variety of questions and also allows you to consistently remind them of why you are a great candidate for their program.
5. Be prepared for an open or closed format - When you walk into the interview room, the interviewer may or may have read your application prior to the conducting the interview. You must be prepared for either scenario. This is why I was so ill-prepared for my first interview. I had no idea it would be a closed format interview and panicked when they informed me that they knew nothing about me. It threw me for a loop. My second interview was a series of three mini-interviews. Two of the interviewers did not know anything about me and the last one had read through my application. Be prepared!
In a future post, I will talk about commonly asked interview questions!
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