Asking questions at the end of the interview means shows that (1) you’re invested; (2) you carefully absorbed the content that your interviewer talked about to the degree that you have follow-up questions; and (3) you understand the cultural understanding that interviewing is a two-way street.
This is where you can also ask about next steps and timelines. For short-term roles like internships and contractor positions, I also recommend asking how success will be defined, e.g., conference paper/poster submission, internal readout, etc.
Most importantly, asking questions at the end of the interview is the one opportunity that you get real signal on your performance.
This is your opportunity to correct any misconceptions about you.
Not getting an interview in the first place is rough, but is not really about you. There were likely hundreds or thousands of applicants. Maybe that team already had an internal hire in mind. Applying to internships and jobs is high effort for 0 signal. I hate it, too.
But having an interview not go well is probably at least 50% a little bit about you. Sorry. (The other 50% I am allocating to the interviewer—again, it’s a two-way communication channel.) This is signal that is worth listening to and reflecting on after an interview.
However, this is also your opportunity to ensure that your interviewer will not reject you based on any misconceptions about PhD students or academics, your research field, etc.
Here’s the main question that I ask:
“What are some ways in which you’ve seen PhD students or those with experimental psychology backgrounds struggle in the internship/role?”
Here are some (paraphrased) answers that I have received:
- “PhD students are biased to conducting larger, more complex experiments. This is often at the expense of sharing
out results earlier.”
- This is where I’ve described running multiple smaller experiments that triangulate around the same research question to get a broader perspective and/or make small progress towards answering that question with each experiment. Critically, I describe how I record and share the results with each iteration.
- “Grad students don’t know how to pivot with changing timelines. For example, if the deadline changes from
3 weeks to 3 days, they will still attempt to do it all by pulling all-nighters rather than scoping down the project.”
- Most times, timelines change due to resource limitations or assessing future resource expenditure. Again, this is where I’ve described how running pilot studies to get early results, assess resource planning, and iterate on my research plan. Sometimes it’s enough to run a pilot, and sometimes additional studies are needed to address gaps in knowledge that emerge based on the pilot results.
- “Academics don’t know how to collaborate with cross-functional teams”
- This is where I talk about my experience working with diverse researchers across experimental psychology, computer vision, HCI researchers and designers, modelers, etc. and across universities.
- “It’s hard to understand their slide decks” or “It’s hard for other cross-functional teams to communicate with
them if they are uncomfortable with speaking to audiences outside their speciality”
- This is where I describe how important audience design is to my core research and how I adapt my communication & slides to match the goals of my audience.
A brief description is enough to gently correct any misconceptions and also impress your interview that you have thought deeply about these kinds of problems.
Correct these misconceptions while you can during the interview! You will likely not talk to that specific interviewer again, unless it is the hiring manager or with a teammate for the role that you end up landing.
Tip: Save your questions about logistics for the negotiation process once you get a job offer.
About thank you emails
Remember to write a “thank you” email to your interviewer afterwards! Just as with networking emails, this is to express your gratitude and also to reinforce their memory of you. Even if you don’t get that specific job, they may keep you in mind for other job opportunities that arise and that may be an even better fit for you.
If you haven’t heard back and decide to follow-up, it’s better if your first follow-up isn’t asking for things.
AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.