Sunday, January 23, 2011

My Interview Kit

Different interviews ask for different things. Some places want your academic records, some places want letters, some places don't need anything. Over time I've found it's easier to always carry a "standard issue" (you can see the Army lingo begin to slip into my daily verbose) of items in my bag when I attend an interview.

  1. My NUS High School Diploma folder (a.k.a my academic results, co-curricular and research summaries)
  2. My CV/Resume (A general one and a specific one. The general one is multi-purpose, the specific one works sometimes for specific purposes)
  3. A thumbdrive containing soft-copies of all my certificates and the aforementioned two items. I whip this out if somehow something's missing and the registration staff would like it. It saves you a load of trouble than having to say "Can I email or snail mail it to you ASAP?"
  4. My publications: key research papers and books. (This could be a significant ARP paper or say, works of fiction that have been published. Essentially anything which is important to you)
  5. A deck of cards. I tend to mention that I perform magic as a hobby, so it helps if I'm able to pull out a deck of cards and show the interview something. (This of course depends on the circumstances)
  6. Stationery. A good pen, pencil and some writing paper. (All purpose goodness for when you may need to draw or write something. If you have to take notes, somehow, this works. If you wanna show something, it beats having to ask the interviewer "Do you have some paper I can use?")
I've found that this pretty much covers all my grounds, and by always packing the same thing for every interview, big or small, I find that I run a lower risk of accidentally missing out something. 

How about you? What do you carry to your interviews?

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