hey guys welcome back to another video today we're going to talk about genetic counseling interviews so I didn't want to make this video last year when I was in the interview cycle because it just seemed kind of weird to do that um there was I guess not really any credibility and also seemed like some kind of conflict of interest but nonetheless I've come up with the strategies that I used when I was practicing for my interviews and I've also talked with some of my classmates and my cohort so gathered a lot of information for some
tips and advice for interviews so my program just started our interview cycle we had the first interview on Tuesday this week I have to get this video out as soon as possible so hopefully I can help give some advice that can prepare for people doing interviews this cycle so I'm just gonna get right into it so the first piece of advice would be to not sound scripted so this is something that could apply to any question in the interview and will apply to the whole interview so you need to practice for your interviews so that
you can be confident and know what you're talking about but practicing too much will be counterproductive so I personally don't like to practice as much as I think some other people do I like to have an idea of what I'm going to say but I think practicing something um to too much of a degree of memorizing it is going to harm you rather than help you I think it really helps to sound authentic and so the more you practice I think there's a certain threshold where if you practice too much you sound inauthentic and it's
just kind of rehearsed and it doesn't sound very good so something I like to do is get just a general idea of what I want to say and I'll practice that a couple times but you don't want to type out a script or anything like that there is one exception I will say um the one thing that you should also have is a really good kind of elevator pitch about yourself basically it will answer the question tell me a little bit more about yourself so this is something that almost every interviewer asks you you'll definitely
have it in every interview day but sometimes every person you talk to will ask you this this question this is something that I think should be pretty routine you should have a really good idea of what your answer to this question is so that is the one exception tell me a little bit about yourself so that's kind of just like a pitch of you know your story so far probably like 30 seconds to a minute long another tip that kind of applies to the whole interview overall instead of particular questions is look at the camera
instead of the screen this is something that's you could take this advice for any kind of virtual video calls but in particular with Zoom or any kind of online video call that you'll be doing an interview with just make sure you're looking at the camera it looks it feels pretty weird so when you're practicing just look at the camera on the top of your screen and don't look at yourself or at the interviewer because you want to look at the interviewer and give them your attention but in doing so you're actually not giving them your
eye contact that may seem obvious but it's something you have to deliberately practice because it feels weird to just look at the camera so make sure you do that the next thing is with your resume or your CV go through all your experiences and make sure you can elaborate on them again that seems pretty obvious but those are things that people will ask you more about and in particular be able to talk about how all of them relate to genetic counseling so obviously that might be a stretch for some things um the best example I
could think of is that for my research my past experiences in research like in a lab don't really relate to genetic counseling that much but I drew on them a lot to talk about teamwork and conflict resolution and things like that because I could make that relate to how I wanted to serve as a genetic counselor and be energetic counseling program so obviously you put these things on your resume because they you thought they made you a strong candidate for genetic counseling program but being able to articulate that and just connecting everything to how it
will develop you as a genetic counselor rather than just talking about it for what it was that makes sense so instead of just saying what you did in that in that thing explain how it will make you a good journey counselor so being able to connect those dots is very important come up with a good fun fact that you can tell about yourself that is not related to genetic counseling so this is something that they'll do in a lot of icebreakers or just different people might ask you this kind of question like a fun fact
or an interesting fact about yourself and use that to share more about your personality and what makes you a diverse and strong applicant rather than just sharing shadowed this counselor or I've been a GCA working at so-and-so like really try to make that something that's not science related or if it's science related make sure it's like a really unique and cool thing so just that could that's a chance basically to express your personality and if you've made it to the interview stage they know you're going to be a good genetic counselor and that you have
good qualifications so while it's it could be a fun fact about genetic counseling that's you know great and all that's something they already know about you so you want to make sure it's something that can just help them get a better picture of who you are another piece of advice is research or interviewers so most of the time they will send you out a little itinerary of your interview schedule um if they don't do that when you accept the interview they'll do it right before your interview day usually they give you a schedule of who
you'll be interviewing with over the course of the day and it's really important to have a good idea of who you're talking to so I went through the different the website for all the programs I was interviewing at and then it has the program faculty that's usually who's interviewing you sometimes it's like a one-off genetic counselor or faculty member at the hospital that's affiliated with the program but they'll tell you who's interviewing with you and so it would be you know in your best interest to look up those people and see what their job is
just have a good idea of who they are um and that can inform the kind of questions you ask them and just how your interaction goes with them overall so that brings me to my next point is to have questions so in my experience um every interview pretty much I have certain questions they need to ask you and record as your answers but then they'll set aside a couple minutes at the end to let you ask questions and so it's really important that you have some thoughtful questions prepared they can be the same question for
multiple people if you want but just make sure you thought of a thoughtful question um this could be like what the program Dynamic is like what the how close the program is or what they do to support students just something thoughtful that you are curious about and don't ask the question just for the sake of asking it but really think of some thoughtful questions because it's as much about the program getting to know you as you get into the program because you're going to be ranking the program and the match algorithm does defer to students
to applicants preferences so it's really important that you like the programs your ranking and you really so you need to get the best idea of a program through these interviews this is your time to find out more about them so definitely take full advantage of that by asking thoughtful questions they will almost always set aside time for you to ask those questions the next thing I would say is I know I said don't sound too rehearsed but you do need to practice so you need to feel comfortable in the environment that you're going to be
interviewing in and so something I did which seemed a little bit Overkill but I think definitely helped is I would go on my laptop and what I was going to practice answering some questions um I think I made a quizlet of the questions and so I'll show you in a second where to get some question ideas from but I made a quizlet of the questions and then I would bring those up on like my iPad over here and then I'd go on my laptop and open up like the camera app and so I basically just
had it where it was the front-facing camera of my laptop staring back at me so it was just me on the screen basically like a selfie on the laptop and so this was to simulate like a zoom call where you were on the screen and there'd be someone else too of course but um just to have yourself on screen and then I also would put on the exact outfit I was gonna wear so I put on like a dress shirt and a tie and a suit the same like exact one I was gonna wear my
interviews and then I would stare at the camera see myself on the screen in a suit feel what it's like in the suit in my chair at my desk and then answer the questions on Quizlet and just look at the camera like I said and practice being in that exact environment and that's something that's just going to help you feel more confident and in control on the day of your interviews obviously it's very nerve-wracking experience but doing all you can to feel comfortable in that situation will help you perform better and so if you put
yourself in that situation um you know in a simulated setting during your practice I think personally that will help you when you get to the interview day and then it just feels like you know I've already been sitting at this desk in this position with this exact outfit seeing myself on the screen in a suit and feeling like I'm answering these questions in a professional capacity so I think that is a really good tip that I don't know if other people do that but I definitely would recommend it and so I mentioned the practice questions
so I'm going to show you on the computer here but if you're not in the Discord definitely join the Discord for interview season I don't look at it anymore that much because I'm in the program and after match honestly I didn't really use it but in the Discord there's this resources tab that I'll show you here and so you go into the resources tab you navigate through here like I'm showing and then eventually you'll get to this Google doc that they've compiled there's a whole Google doc of resources in general but then there's interview resources
in particular there's some articles and some podcasts here about what I'm talking about right now is um these questions so there's a ton of questions that are all just examples I'm sure some of these are in actual interviews I mean I don't even remember what they asked in my interviews in particular so I'm not trying to like give that away I don't even know what they were but they definitely are questions that are similar to or exactly on this kind of document here so that is a really good document and that's just something where I
would draw some questions from a lot of interview questions are pretty intuitive like some of your strengths some of your weaknesses why you want to be a Janet counselor um you know how your experience is prepared you for genetic counseling all that kind of good stuff that hopefully is pretty intuitive and you would be expecting to answer and then lastly something that you might not think of is I forget where I heard this advice from but prepare yourself to answer some ethical questions so with the questions it depends on the program I interviewed at three
places last year and they all had some semblance they all had these kinds of questions to some extent uh they varied in how many kinds of questions like this they asked but there are questions that are ethical about genetic counseling scenarios and so I can't remember exactly what they were and I don't want to give too much away or anything but there's just some different ethical quandaries in genetics as you might imagine so I don't know examples like testing kids for an adult onset genetic condition or um you know termination of pregnancy is a Hot
Topic right now so they probably could ask you something about that so think about how you would answer those kind of questions with a patient that's seeking an abortion after some kind of diagnosis questions about selecting for traits during the embryonic stage like with in vitro fertilization techniques discrimination with genetic information like things with like HIPAA or with Gina which is genetic information non-discrimination act so you don't have to know all these things inside and out you're not in genetic counseling program yet but just thinking about the different ethical quandaries of genetic counseling and just
have a good idea I don't think that when people ask these questions they want you to have the exact right answer I mean there's definitely a realm of answers that would be inappropriate to give but it's more about seeing your thought process and making sure you have a thoughtful response that you can think through these kinds of ethical situations so that's a big tip that I felt prepared for I forget where I heard it from again but I was glad that I had prepared for those kind of questions because they will come up in some
capacity depending on the school that you're interviewing with I think those are pretty much the only the only like major tips I have again I got those sourced from my own experience and from some of my classmates but again overall I would just remind you that if you have interviews this means that you are qualified to be a Janet counselor and to be an agenda counseling program and now they really just need to narrow down their students and see who they want to have in their program for the coming year so it's exciting and definitely
go into it with the confidence that you deserve to be in a program because like I said by virtue of having an interview that is true so you know be confident be excited about the opportunity to match the program and start your training again I think if you have gone through this journey gotten to this point you are at a really good spot because you know this isn't something you have to rehearse too much if you truly are very passionate about it that should come through and it shouldn't have to you know be a huge
deal even if you are caught off guard by a question it's relating to your passion and it's relating to something that you care a lot about and have prepared a lot for so I feel like that's a scenario where you can kind of go on autopilot and just you know explain how you feel about these topics and about this vocation and that should help you just have a very authentic answer um and really convey why you want to be part of these programs so best of luck to everyone interviewing and everyone no matter what stage
of the cycle you're in um I hope this video is helpful if there are particular questions you can leave those in the comments but hopefully I addressed most of the concerns best of luck with the interview cycle and I will see you in the next video
