welcome to genetic counseling awareness channel with katie lee all the best resources you'll ever need a genetic counseling awareness channel hi guys it's me katie lee cgc and welcome back to wannabe wednesdays this month in february i am focusing on tips that you can utilize when you're interviewing for genetic counseling graduate school programs so last week i covered four quick tips of how you can start preparing for your interviews and today i'm going to provide some examples of an introduction if you haven't checked out my video from last week definitely check it out here i
provide more tips on how you can practice your introduction i've had a request that next week i focus on ethical questions that might be asked during interviews i've got three great ethical questions that i've pulled directly from my experience and i'll probably add a couple more please subscribe to my channel and ring the little bell so you can find out exactly when i post that video next week alright let's get to these examples of introductions in my experience most interviews grad school interviews and job interviews begin with a question or a statement like tell me
about yourself or introduce yourself walk me through your experiences um i'd love to hear a little bit about your journey and how you got here this is a question you should be able to knock out of the park there are certain interview questions that you should see coming a mile away you should have great answers to some specific questions this is one other questions like what are your strengths what are your weaknesses if you'd like me to go through some of those common questions and good answers for those questions let me know down below and
i can do that in a future video the reason though that i decided to start with the introduction is because it's the first impression this is the first impression each interviewer is going to have a view and i'm pretty sure it's a saying you know the first impression is the last impression it's true you want to start off with a bang and make a great impression on that interviewer so they are interested in hearing from you for the rest of the interview you want your introduction to come off as sounding natural and to be interesting
to keep the interviewers attention you don't want to spend too much time talking about any one thing because they can ask you about that and they can read about that in your application and your cv while you're introducing yourself your other goal your really your primary goal at the same time should be demonstrating why you are a good fit for a genetic counseling graduate school or for this program by highlighting specific elements in your background so this is just not a for fun introduction obviously you want to highlight some specific things and then of course
think about those tips i talked about last week so practice recording yourself doing your introduction and look for things like playing with your hair you want to be able to have some excitement and enthusiasm on your facial expressions and through your voice with different intonations just think about lectures and professors you've had in college would you prefer to listen to somebody who's excited about what they're talking about and excited to be there today or would you rather listen to someone who sounds incredibly boring remember these interviewers are going through dozens of these interviews so you
definitely do not want a monotone voice or a lack of enthusiasm or fidgetiness to take away from what a good applicant you are those are easy things that you can work on and you should have now by the time you get in for your interview without further ado let's get into it the way i prepare for my introductions is i write five or six bullet points of things that would be good introduction material they are little tidbits that i can keep very short and sweet and summarize my experience and specifically experience that is going to
be relevant for the job or the program i'm applying to i tried to throw myself back to i think 22 year old katie and think about what i would have written as my bullet points i was one year out of undergrad when i was applying to genetic counseling graduate school so the bullet points i wrote for myself is i'm a university wisconsin madison graduate with a psych major i volunteered in a locked psychiatric ward and i really enjoyed that experience back at the time i was applying to grad school i worked full full-time as a
crisis support counselor i specifically had an interest in psychiatric genetic counseling and lastly i had a summer internship with a cancer genetic counselor hey it's editing katie here i just wanted to add in one thing so you have those five or six bullet points but you only want to choose three things to include in your introduction five or six is too many the reason you have more is because you might change up exactly what you're going to say as you introduce yourself to more and more people depending on what might be the most relevant to
them obviously it's modern day time so nobody probably has a stopwatch i just got this for my son to give him for valentine's day and i unbox it for myself because i thought it would be kind of fun to tie myself with an old-fashioned timer and i'm hoping by giving him this timer for valentine's day he will stop asking me how long is 30 seconds how long is two minutes how long is 30 minutes and we can just time it and he can watch and maybe get a better idea of how time works i'd say
depending on the setting your introduction should probably only last a minute to two minutes i also personally don't want to get stuck on one point i want to share enough information that the interviewer is interested and maybe will ask more questions about these experiences that i feel like are especially relevant so let's have at it thanks so much for the opportunity to introduce myself i'm katie hornberger and i'm a university of wisconsin-madison graduate with a psychology major and since graduating last may i've been working as a crisis support service counselor full-time in that position i'm
part of a mobile crisis response team and i respond to children and adults and their support people out in the community and all of our consumers are individuals who have both a psychiatric condition and intellectual disability or developmental delay diagnosed i've really loved working with this population and it's really fueled my interest in psychiatric genetic counseling when i first started pursuing genetic counseling i was not familiar with that niche and the more i work with my consumers and their support people the more i see a career goal for myself being going into the field of
psychiatric genetic counseling and of course i'm really excited to be here today and to learn more about the stanford genetic counseling program so that introduction took me 50 about 59 seconds and that's a great introduction you want to keep it short and sweet you could also add something else at the end like instead of your enthusiasm about the program a quick fact about you that is unrelated to genetic counseling i think it's great to be polite so maybe the person interviewing me just said katie it's really nice to meet you can you tell me about
yourself and i might start by saying sure it's my pleasure i'm katie hornberger and i'll always say my name again because especially in that situation where they're meeting so many people i think it's always good to just say that name get it in their head so there you have it there's an example of how you can introduce yourself during interviews if you have feedback on my introduction let me know down below i'd love to hear it if you've got questions about interviewing let me know i'd love to make a video about it and as i
told you earlier i'm planning to release that video on ethical questions during interviews next week so please like and subscribe see you guys later
