Adi’s Biotechnology Job Interview Experience – 2

This is second part of Adi’s Job search and Job interview experience. He completed M.S. In Biotechnology and In case you have missed the part one, you can read it here -  Biotechnology Job Search Experience 1

Phone Interview – HR

My first round was only HR and was very general. It was basically questions regarding my date of graduation, my visa status and a brief synopsis of my experience. The next round of telephone interview was simple too. I felt it was a general check on their requirement and my skill set. It almost took 40 days time in between these two phone screenings and in the mean time I had few mail conversations with the Hiring HR, regarding my OPT stuffs.

Later they sent me a mail asking for a telephone interview with the Scientist who was in charge of hiring. So, for this interview I just made myself prepared for questions from my basic Biochemistry and a complete review of my skill set on my resume.

Phone Interview With Scientists

On the day of my interview, I just got off to a silent room with maximum mobile reception with my resume and a scribbling pad. The guy called and gave a brief introduction of himself. My first question was to explain my thesis. So I gave a brief summary of it which almost took 15 mins. He then asked question on how I designed my experiments for my purification of my molecule. Then he later asked about my intern and then my question were very much from basic biochemistry and immunology which I remember studying during under grad.

1 Hour Phone Interview

I remember him asking a question which had 3 answers but I knew only 2. Then I told him that I am not sure about it at that moment. He was very kind and gave me an easy clue, by telling “ Ok I will give u a clue for it” which was almost the answer. So I was then comfortable. His last question was “Do u have any questions?” which I guess is a very common question. Out of my curiosity I asked my their target molecules of research and about their platform of research which was mentioned in their web site. This was it and it almost took 1 – 1 hr 15 mins.

Personal Interview

After the phone screening I thought it just went ok. Then after 3 days they mailed me to come for a face-face interview in NY. Since I was located in LA, they took care of all the travel and stay in NY. In the mean time the HR mailed me the interview schedule. It had a panel of 9 people with the HR guy on top and in the rest there were 2 Directors of the group and 3 Senior Scientists, 1 Post – doc and 3 more Research Associates who were MS Grads whom I had to meet over lunch and the rest were all PhD holders.

By seeing it is a bit scary as there are lot of people. But trust me its real fun if you are going to meet all these guys. In the mean time I had an opportunity to talk to the owner of this blog to get a brief idea of how stuffs work in the interview. He told to be smart and to answer only what you know and to make sure that I ask questions so that they can judge me. The above advice was really useful because during the course of interview they keep asking whether you have any questions. And he also asked me to do a background research online in the people on the schedule.

Part 3 to be continued…

Image Credit : IRRI Images

Related posts:

1. Adi – Biotechnology Interview Experience Part 3
2. Adi’s Biotechnology Job Search and Interview Experience – Part 1
3. 19 Do’s and Don’ts After Job Interview
4. Good Read – Job Interview at Google
5. The Best Job Search and Interview Book