A postdoc asks -
I recently got an interview opportunity for a position with the California Department of Public Health. I am only familiar with the interview process for faculty positions, but I have no experience with positions in non-academic settings. My friends told me this type of interview will ask many behavioral questions, including problem-solving, teamwork, etc., which I have no idea how to prepare for using my academic skills. Will you provide me with some strategies or resources that I can convert my skills in academic settings into other settings, e.g., a State researcher position, to better answer this type of interview question?

It can definitely be tricky to figure out how to approach behavioral questions, especially when you are more used to talking directly about research and ideas than talking about interpersonal interactions. In general, the purpose of behavioral interview questions (from the employer’s perspective) is to learn about your past interactions (in any environment) to imagine how you’ll navigate working for and with them in the future. There isn’t much expectation that the experiences you share come from the same or similar working environment; they just want to be able to extrapolate from your answer. For example, if they ask about a time when you had conflict with a coworker, they want to figure how you are likely to handle conflicts 1:1 with a peer. Any story you can share about how you have dealt with a peer-to-peer conflict will be useful for them, no matter what setting it comes from. Personally, I’ve frequently used examples from my experience as an athletic coach or just playing sports to answer behavioral questions, when the specific example is going to be stronger or clearer than a more “professional” example.

As a general strategy, start to answer behavioral questions by providing a direct example of what they are asking about (or being very clear about why you are choosing to share a less direct experience); describe the situation you were in, the task you were trying to accomplish, and the actions you took. Make sure to demonstrate awareness of how you behaved in that situation and how you are likely to behave in the future (for example, you might even share an experience that you did not handle particularly well to illustrate how you learned to approach things differently going forward). 

Don’t worry too much about having a perfectly matching experience to talk about! Anyone interviewing you will know that you don’t have direct experience working at the Department of Public Health already, so they’ll be prepared to do some translation on your behalf, no matter what experiences you choose to talk about.

-David Blancha, Assistant Director, Career Development Team for Researchers