Anna: Hello, and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. I'm Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting's president. I'm here today with Karen Buttenbaum, who has been with Spivey Consulting for almost 12 years, and she is also a former Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School. And today we are talking about the five categories of admissions interview questions and how to answer them. Hi, Karen.
Karen: Hello. How are you?
Anna: I'm doing pretty well; how are you?
Karen: I'm all right. Yeah.
Anna: So let's talk about these five categories of admissions interview questions, which I think is something that you came up with, in terms of your way of categorizing these various types of admissions interview questions that law school applicants might encounter across various different law school interviews.
Karen: It is unscientific. I just completely made it up, because I figured it would be an easy way to help applicants understand how to answer those questions. When you think about them in these categories, I think it does make it a little bit easier to understand why they're asking these kinds of questions and how to respond if you understand why they're asking those kinds of questions.
Anna: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And you are coming to this with the experience, certainly, of having coached a great many applicants on interviews, but also having developed Harvard Law's interview program when you were there. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Karen: When interviews started at Harvard Law School, I was there, and it started out as phone calls, and it really was a little bit more just catching people off guard, not really planning for it. So that was an interesting time. The interview questions have been refined over time. And schools may have their own categories for coming up with them, but I don't think that is as helpful to the candidate who is about to be interviewed to understand their categories.
So the categories that I came up with are really more for helping applicants understand why they're asking those questions and how to respond to them.
Anna: That makes total sense to me. Let's start going through those categories. Do you want to give a preview first of what the five are, and then we can delve into each?
Karen: Yes! So, there's five categories, but for some schools who do pre-recorded interviews, there's only four, because the first category is an icebreaker question. So this really can range from anything from, you know, how you're doing to the weather to just what your visual looks like in your background if you have a cat on your shoulder or something like that, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend.
Anna: But that's not happening in a Kira interview.
Karen: Right, exactly. So "icebreaker" is the first category. And then there's "Why law?" "Why this law school?" And then the other two categories are, I think, where people get stumped, and it's mostly they fall into either, "How well do you know yourself?" and "How well do you get along with others?" I think a lot of the questions fall into this "how well you know yourself" category.
So we can start with the icebreaker question if you want to start there. So, like I said, the icebreaker question is not going to come up in a Kira interview when you don't have an actual human asking you questions. But if you have a human, then you may get human questions. You know, people are curious. Admissions officers are curious people. I think that is something to remember. You know, I will use the word "curious" and not "nosy," because I was nosy as an admissions officer, but I think curious is the right word. They want to know about you.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely.
Karen: And they're humans. So if you're in a geographic area that they're familiar with, or they saw something on your resume that stands out to them, or there's something personal that connects the two of you, then those are all on the table. I mean, any question is really on the table, but the icebreaker question, it really can be, you know, "How are you doing today?" Or, you know, "Oh my goodness, your area is really cold right now," or something along those lines. Just human questions. So answer it as if you were a human that can have a conversation.
And I do think that that matters in a lot of ways, because a lot of times, you want to be able to just interact with somebody and not be overprepared. So you can overprepare for an interview, and this is just something that may throw you off guard, but you shouldn't be thrown off guard by a conversation. If you are walking into a room and you meet somebody, you should be able to have typical conversation, and that's really what this icebreaker is. And it doesn't always happen. They could just jump right into, like, "Why do you want to go to law school?" But just be prepared for anything. So that's the first category is the icebreaker question.
Anna: I think that's a helpful one to think about because the vast majority of people, if they were just in a regular conversation with someone outside of the context of an admissions interview, would not be thrown off at all by these types of questions and could answer them in a way that is perfectly natural and perfectly reasonable. But when you are so in your head, as sometimes applicants can be going into things like this, evaluative admissions interviews, and you're thinking about all of these different questions that you've maybe prepared for and your talking points and whatever, it can throw you off to just get a question like, "Hey, how are you?" And I think people should be just prepared mentally for that type of thing when they are interviewing with an actual human.
Karen: Absolutely. Speaking of being overprepared, I do think that one of the key things about preparing for these interviews is to know the questions ahead of time—I mean, a lot of times you can find those online; sometimes school will even give you a list of questions that they will ask—but you don't want to respond to those in your preparation in full sentences.
Anna: Yes.
Karen: You want to respond to those in bullet points. You use different language when you're talking than you would if you were writing things down. It's just a natural flow, and if you sound robotic or if you sound AI-generated, you may get a curveball question. Which I guess is the sixth category that I hadn't really thought of. And I've done that—as a jerk, I guess, as an interviewer—if somebody was really sounding completely robotic.
Anna: Like they're just reciting something they've written, yeah.
Karen: They're completely reading from a script? I would throw in a curveball question. Which is not something like, "Can you explain nuclear physics to me?" but it's something like, "How do you stay informed?" Something that's not on a list. You know, something that would just jar them out of it. Now, I'm not doing interviews anymore, and I do now recognize that was not the nicest thing in the world to do.
Anna: I mean, I think that's a fair question. Maybe a bit of a curveball in that it wouldn't be on a list that someone might find online prior to going into the interview. But I do think that's a reasonable thing to think that a law school applicant would be able to talk about, right, like how they stay informed.
Karen: But I do think if you think about these responses in bullet points rather than sentences, then you're more human, and you respond more naturally.
Anna: Yes.
Karen: And you think about these questions as, "They're just asking me questions. This is not an inquisition. It is really just an interview to get to know me."
Anna: Yeah. So, you don't want to be scripting out your answers, A, because, for those answers that you do give, you're most likely—unless you are, you know, a professional actor or something—you're most likely going to sound very stilted in a way that admissions officers do get used to recognizing. And then also, there very well may be new questions or questions that haven't shown up anywhere online yet that you are asked. We see some law schools adding new questions every single year, throughout the cycle.
Karen: Right.
Anna: So you do want to be mentally prepared for answering questions that you haven't necessarily thought about before. And it's a lot easier to spot the contrast if you are reciting, reciting, reciting, and then stumbling over the new one. Versus just if you're talking organically in response to a conversation the whole time. So thank you, Karen. I appreciate that discussion about preparing. Let's get into the second category.
Karen: So the second category is "Why law?" Why do you want to go to law school? So when you wrote your personal statement and your other essays, you likely answered this question as part of your application. So you've likely written about it in your application. When you're answering the question in an interview, you don't have to change your reasoning. You are still the same person who submitted an application a few weeks or a few months ago. You don't need to come up with a brand new reason for why you want to go to law school, but when you answer it in an interview question, it is much more about "What is your motivation for going to law school?" And so, my very unscientific formula for answering "why law" in an interview question is, about 80% of your response is what led you to this point. What has motivated you to go to law school? What brought you to this point? And about 10% of it is that you like it and/or you'd be good at it, and that usually naturally comes out as you're telling the story. And then about 10% of it is what you want to do in the future. And, again, it's completely unscientific. I just use it to demonstrate that only 10%—or a very small percentage of your response—is about the future, because you haven't lived that yet. And the question is really about what has motivated you to get to this place and not necessarily speculation about the future. Of course, it makes sense that you would want to have a goal for the future. You don't want to go in and say, like, "I don't know what I want to do," but it's really not what they're asking. If they want to know, like, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" they will ask that question, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" But this question is really meant to be more about what has motivated you to get to this point. So that's the "why law" category.
Anna: I think that's one that most people are probably expecting when they go into law school admissions interviews, but I think that breakdown of the focus on motivations—with part of your answer being about your aptitude or the fact that you'd be good at being a lawyer, and part of your answer being, "this is what I'm hoping to do career-wise in the future"—but focusing on that motivation, I think that's really helpful advice, because I do think that's a common mistake that people make for sure.
Karen: So the third category is "Why this law school?" And again, this is going to be a question that you're probably going to expect, but there are so many reasons why you want to go to a particular law school. I do think that it's easy to think about this in buckets or bullet points. Take out all reference to rankings or prestige or "your school's going to do this for me." And again, if you wrote an essay for this school on why you want to go there, your reasoning doesn't necessarily have to change from when you submitted your application, but how you present it in the interview may change.
And you may know exactly how you want to answer this question, and that's totally fine, but if you're lost, I think thinking about it in three bullet points—you want to think about three bullet points. Three reasons why you want to go to this school.
The first one probably should be academic in nature, because you're applying to an academic program, so for me, it makes sense that an academic reason for applying to an academic program would be primary. So there could be more than one academic reason, and that's fine, but I think academic is one of the buckets to think about.
The second bucket is community, or what the school atmosphere is like. So something that's non-academic, that's maybe social in nature, or the ethos of the school, or the vibe that you get from the school. If there's something that's intangible about the school that you visited, or you know it well, you can use that. So those are the first two buckets. And if you want one or two of those, you can use those multiple times if you want to, but you don't want to have a laundry list of all the reasons you want to go. So I always think of keeping it at three bullet points.
The third bullet point—if it's applicable, because it's not for everyone—is location. I think location of the school is usually third in the list of reasons for why you would want to go, but for some people it can be really, really important to be in a certain geographic location. And if that is a reason, absolutely include that in one of your reasons for wanting to go to that particular school. I think using the three bullet point method, but mixing and matching whatever makes the most sense for you from those buckets of academic, social/community, and location.
Anna: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So within that location bucket, I think, are also personal connections you might have, you know, if you have family in the area or something like that, you know, a support system that you can lean on while you're in law school if you go to that law school or somewhere in that city—that's definitely something to mention, which is something that I hear questions about all the time of people who think, as you were saying, this is an academic program, but then they limit themselves to that, and they say, you know, "Okay, so I should only really talk about the academics and the super serious stuff, and I should not talk about these personal connections that I have." And I think people are shooting themselves in the foot with that a little bit.
Karen: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think it's really important to have that support system in place. So this is actually, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, I think the location part of it becomes increasingly important if you're being interviewed off the waitlist. Having that "why you want to be at that particular school" is really important to logistically getting there over the summer, and realistically if you're able to attend that school. In the majority of the application process, that may not be as important, but it is particularly important during the waitlist process.
Anna: That's a good point. Do you put employment outcomes in your "academic program" bucket?
Karen: So employment outcomes are tricky, because I don't like it when applicants are saying, like, "You can do this for me," because the importance needs to be on the opportunities that the school has that can set the student up for success.
Anna: Yeah.
Karen: So how you talk about employment outcomes, I think, is really important with the tone, because you don't want to put the burden of getting you a job on somebody else. That is your responsibility as an applicant, as a student. But if there's a track record in place, or there are really strong opportunities and support systems in place to help you get to where you want to go, that's what you can talk about in employment outcomes. It's not so much Tte way that the school is going to do this for you. You've seen, a lot of schools have changed their career services offices to more "career services," rather than they used to be called a lot of "placement" offices, because it's not necessarily the school's job to get you the job. They just give you the tools to get you the job.
Anna: That's so funny, because that's something that Mike Spivey, as you know, he's all in on trying to get law schools to do more of that placement and to be going out there and getting people jobs. But as of right now, most career services offices are probably not going to want to hear, "You are going to go get me this job."
Karen: In the interview process, you as the applicant need to be taking responsibility for that, and you don't want to have a sense of entitlement. I think that's the key thing. I think the tone matters there a lot.
Anna: Absolutely.
Karen: And it's more about the school having the systems in place, the support system in place, and not like, "Oh, you get so many percentage of people into clerkships," or "You get them into these specific jobs." It's really up to the applicant to be in charge of their own future and their own job search.
Anna: Yeah. That makes total sense. So, a bad answer to this question that has to do with employment outcomes might be something like, "Why do I want to go to your law school? You get 30% of your class into big law, and I want to do big law, so, you know, I feel good about going to your law school because you're going to get me into big law."
Karen: Yeah.
Anna: A better way to talk about it would be—if applicable, if true—"I've talked to students of your law school, I've talked to alums of your law school, and they speak so highly about the career support that you offer and the alumni network and how powerful that can be in terms of going out and getting jobs, and you offer all of these resources that I've looked into and that sound wonderful and helpful for me"—vaguely along those lines.
Karen: I mean, I think the overall interview is about employability.
Anna: Absolutely, the interview as a whole is relevant to employability, because if you want to get a job out of law school, you are almost certainly going to have to do an interview. And at baseline level, this shows how you can relate to someone in an evaluative interview context.
Karen: Yeah. And I will say that slight nervousness is totally fine. It's endearing, in some ways, to show that you care so much that you would be nervous. But like, shutting down nervousness is a different issue altogether. But I think it's normal to be a little bit nervous to go into these kinds of interviews. It's completely normal, and it's totally fine. And most of the time, the vast majority of people who are interviewing you are not out to ask you gotcha questions. They really are just curious people who want to ask you some questions.
Anna: It doesn't necessarily require the level of perfection and polish that people might think is required.
Karen: Correct.
Anna: Yeah, that's so interesting that you brought up being nervous and that potentially being like a little bit endearing. Because at our Spivey Consulting retreat last year, as you know, we had a top law school's admissions dean come in and talk to us about various topics having to do with admissions. And one of the things that she talked about was interviews, and how she actually really liked when people sometimes just acknowledged, you know, if it was just very obvious that they were nervous, if they just acknowledged and said, "I'm feeling pretty nervous because, you know, I'm just excited about your school," she said that she really appreciated that. I think that that's something that hopefully will make you less nervous to know.
Okay. So what's our next category?
Karen: So the next category is kind of a big one in terms of the number of questions that you probably see. And it's, how well do you know yourself? And so these are the kinds of questions that maybe make you scratch your head when you read them and say, like, why are they asking me this? One of the questions that gets asked a lot is, "What are three words that describe you?" And that can come in various different forms, like, "If the admissions committee were to describe you, or if you were to meet people, how would they describe you?" or "What would your friends say about you?" And so thinking about three words that describe you is really, how well do you know yourself? What are some character traits that you have that you think define who you are as an individual and how you come across to others? What's important to you? So those questions that you get about, "Tell us about yourself," or "What's important to you?" but they're also questions about, "What is one of your best accomplishments?" or "What is a mistake that you made?" "What motivates you?" Those kinds of things are really trying to get at who you are as an individual, what's important to you, where your priorities are, and things like that. It doesn't all have to come back to "why law" and, like, that you've always been interested in law, like "I am judicious," or like "I am fair," and "I'm really argumentative"—don't say that.
Anna: Don't say that!
Karen: Don't say that. But thinking about your strong, good character traits, what is important to you, and what are things that really make you who you are.
Anna: Yeah. I think that's such a good point about, it does not always have to be super focused on law. Because I do think that's a common mistake that people make is they go in and they just want to hammer, law, law, law, which makes sense. I certainly sympathize with that notion and what results in those types of answers. But it's not what they're looking for with these types of questions. Now, you don't want to go in the exact opposite direction and list your top three traits as you are artistic and friendly, or whatever. You want to have some level of seriousness to them. But yeah, it absolutely does not need to be all about law, or some of these questions it doesn't need to be at all about law.
I have a few more examples if we'd like to list them. Questions like, "What is something that you'd like admissions to know about you that wasn't in your application?" Questions like, "If you were on the admissions committee, what would you say is your greatest weakness?" "If you were on the admissions committee, what would you say is your greatest strength?" "What motivates you?" "What brings you joy?" "How do you think your classmates would describe you as a fellow student?" Things like this, I think, all fall into this category of "how well do you know yourself."
Karen: Yep. And there are so many more questions like that.
Anna: Oh yeah, endless.
Karen: Like there's some completely oddball questions that have been asked before in certain interviews, like, "If you had $10,000 to spend, how would you spend it?"
Anna: Oh, I like that one.
Karen: To me, that one is like, how well do you know yourself? Because what's important to you? What would you spend that money on? Is it travel? "I would love to take a trip to this place I've always wanted to go to." That has nothing to do with law school, right? But it does tell them that, in your answer, it will tell them what your hopes and dreams are outside of law school. What's important to you? "I would give that money to this family member that really is struggling right now." That shows your generosity. There's so many questions that fall into that category; it doesn't just have to be the obvious ones of, "Give us three words that describe yourself." It's also about what's important to you and where your priorities are.
But it can also be about your humbling experience, or when you've gotten feedback that wasn't great, how do you handle that? How do you handle disappointment? Those are part of your character and part of how you come across.
Other than the title of this very unscientific category of "how well you know yourself," I think there's also a way in here of showing that maybe you're still evolving. I think that's okay. I think in your application, a lot of times, people will show some evolution in themselves and their own characteristics and what's important to them. That happens a lot in applications; you show your growth. You're not done learning. You're going to law school because you haven't been there before. You don't know what you don't know. And so, this category also can be a place for showing growth. And showing that you don't know everything yet. And that's okay. You're still evolving as a human being.
Anna: One of my, sort of, example questions that I'm looking at—because we have all sorts of interview questions and various lists and things, including on our TikTok, which is actually what I'm looking at right now, so feel free to check out our TikTok for some example interview questions—but one thing that sort of gets at what you were just talking about, I think, is a question that I've seen I think on multiple law school interviews, or a version of it, which is, "What is one thing you think you'll find challenging once you enter law school?" So that's really forward-looking; that is certainly about you, and I think it does require you to think about how you will evolve and change during law school, because you don't want to say, "I will find this part challenging, and I will be unable to overcome it, and that's the stopping point," right?
Karen: Exactly. I mean, I think that's a really good example, because you haven't done this yet, and that's okay. You're in the same boat as the rest of your classmates who haven't done this yet. If adjusting to that pace or something like that is something that you're excited for that challenge, but it might be new because you haven't done it, that's okay. You don't have to say exactly what you just said; you don't have to be like, "I'm not going to be able to overcome it," but you can be excited for a challenge. That's okay.
Anna: Totally. So, let's talk about Category 5.
Karen: So the fifth category is how well you get along with others. And this is probably something that has come up a lot more in recent years on additional essays.
So those questions about, "How do you handle difficult conversations? "Have you changed your mind about something, you know, after having a difficult conversation?" These are the questions that are along the lines of, "How do you handle conflict?" "How do you handle difficult conversations if you were engaging with somebody who disagreed with you, how would you handle that?"
This is an important question for a lot of schools, because you're going to, in law school, have disagreements. And, of course, they don't want people who are just going to be combative as part of the class. So it's an absolutely fair question to be asking a potential law student how they handle conflict, because you don't go in and just agree on everything in law school. Law school discussions are all about a back-and-forth of disagreements in some ways. And I think it's something to answer honestly, but also, being open to hearing other points of view. Listening and learning from one another, I think, is really important.
Sometimes they'll ask you for an example. So when you're thinking about those kinds of things, don't limit yourself to the high-stakes discussions. You do not have to think about an example that is about something political or something that's a hot-button issue. It can be low stakes. Now, my example of low stakes is usually like, does pineapple belong on pizza? Which I think is a little bit too low stakes. But, you know, but I give that as an example just to think outside of the box in terms of what's something that you've disagreed with somebody on.
The key element is how you responded to the disagreement. So your answer can be something along the lines of, that you listened to the person, and you really got the core of what you disagreed on, and it turns out that, through that process, you found common ground, and you found that you didn't necessarily disagree on everything, but there were some key concepts that you disagreed on, and that's fine. You can agree to disagree, and you can do it in a respectful way. And I think that's really the key for this category of questions of how well you get along with others, is that you can be respectful and you can be a good listener. You're not going to be digging your heels in and saying, "No, this is the way that I see it," and not listening to somebody else. And you really should be somebody who will listen to somebody else's point of view, because not everyone has the same point of view, but you often have more in common than you realize at the start of an argument.
Anna: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's really good advice, because I do think sometimes people can end up getting in the weeds with these types of questions of talking about their hyper-specific issue that they disagreed with someone on and then getting lost in that substance of the disagreement, when really what they're trying to get at is that "how do you relate to other people" component.
Karen: Exactly.
Anna: One thing I do want to note, because I don't think we give any specific examples in this vein, is that these behavioral-type questions can also fall within the previous category of "how well do you know yourself." So questions like, "Tell me about a time that you demonstrated resilience." "When is a time that you went outside of your comfort zone?" Questions like that are going to be asking you for examples from your life, but they are not necessarily focused on how you interact with others. Just as a general note, those types of questions can show up in that previous category also.
Karen: And again, these are completely unscientific. This is just supposed to be helpful!
Anna: Well, speaking of being unscientific, we do have our bonus sixth category that we thought of earlier, which is those curveball questions. Tell us more about that.
Karen: Yeah. So, like I said, these are humans who are asking you questions... or who have typed up the questions for you to get in a Kira interview. And sometimes they don't neatly fit into these categories. So on the human side, anything that you wrote about in your application is fair game. If you wrote about something that is of interest to the human who is interviewing you, you may get asked about that. An example I always have of that is when I was reviewing an application and interviewing somebody when I was at Harvard, they had on their resume that they played the bagpipes, and I thought that was interesting. He did not put that on his resume specifically so that I, of Scottish ancestry, would be reading the application, somebody who actually likes bagpipe music, which is kind of rare, I think. So I asked him about that, and I think it threw him off. And I didn't mean to do that; I was just being a nosy admissions officer who had some questions. So things like that, if you, in your interest section on your resume, put down that you run marathons or you have this interest that is a connection, that is totally fair game to a human being who is asking questions of you.
There are also some questions that are pre-recorded that are just not expected. I think there are some that are about current events that not everybody is up to date on. You know, a question that was used several years ago—not now—was about "Americans' fascination with the British monarchy." So if somebody asked you why you think that Americans are fascinated with the British monarchy, you have an opinion on that. Maybe you've never thought of it before, but I guarantee you do have thoughts on it. There are thoughts about it. You can think about why that is. If you think about Disney and princesses and the idea of princesses and not a care in the world because you have all the power and money that you need. I don't know! Those kinds of things can come to mind, and you can formulate your own response to that.
Not that I think that those questions will come up on any sort of a regular basis, but this is the curveball category. So you can be prepared for anything. But just answer it as the intelligent human being that you are, like you're having a conversation with somebody. Again, it has nothing to do with law school and why you want to go to law school. This just is probably the admissions office's way to see how you would have a conversation, like you were at a party somewhere and just having a conversation with somebody about the British monarchy, because that's usually a topic of conversation.
Anna: This type of question, specifically having to do with current events that have no real direct connection to the law at all, come up pretty rarely, I think.
Karen: Very rarely.
Anna: And this one about, like, the British monarchy came up with one school last cycle, and I don't think they've used it again this cycle. So it's not something that I would be going into a law school interview like, expecting that you're always going to get a question like this, but you also should just have it in the back of your mind that, like, they could ask you about current events. They could ask you about something that you're just totally not expecting at all. And it's okay for you to take a second and think about it and say, "You know, I haven't given much thought to this topic before," then you think about it, and you come up with your well-reasoned answer, and you do the best you can do.
I think that's a great way to think about it, Karen, is like, if someone brought this up at a party and you were just talking to one person, how would you respond? With, of course, the filter of, this is a professional interaction in terms of your language and tone—you know. But yeah, these are really not very common, but we would be remiss not to at least bring up the possibility, because it is a possibility.
Karen: Right. Yeah. And then the other subcategory in the curveball is if you're sounding too robotic and they want to know something that's off script. I already mentioned that.
And then sometimes schools will have an opportunity for you to ask questions for them. You do not have to have a laundry list of questions for them. One or two questions is usually fine. And a lot of times your questions may have been answered by the time you get to the end of the interview. But it is a good thing to ask questions at the end.
My general rule of thumb for asking questions at the end of an interview is to set the interviewer up to brag about their school in some way. Like, obviously you're not going to be asking questions that you can easily find on their website. You do want to ask questions that are genuine to you and what you want to know, but you don't want to be putting the interviewer in a position where they have to defend their school in some way. So I would advise against asking the interviewer to compare themselves to any school.
Anna: Yep, definitely.
Karen: That is your job as the applicant to make that comparison. So what you're asking the school to do is to give you information, and usually that is something that's going to be positive about the school. You're not an admitted student yet. You can ask the hard questions when you're an admitted student. But at this stage, you're an interviewee and an applicant, so you don't want to be asking those hardball questions. So I usually think of a soft question that is still genuine to what you want to know, but something that's going to allow the interviewer to brag a little bit about their own school.
Anna: Yeah, I think that's a great way of thinking about it, of letting them brag about their school. I think it can also be helpful, especially if you're having trouble coming up with questions that are not just on the school's website, to think about that particular admissions officer's experience. So you can ask them specifically about their personal experience with the school, as opposed to something very broad about the school.
That question of, like, "Do you have any questions for me?" typically happens at the end of an interview. Which works out, because we are reaching the end of our podcast time. Do you have any last piece of advice that you would like to leave people with if they're listening to this as they're getting ready to prepare for an interview?
Karen: Yeah, I mean, I think just having conversations with people, if you want to practice your answers with other people, definitely think about them in bullet points. Don't think of them and memorize full sentences. You can look online and find interview questions if you're not given them in advance. Think about typical interview questions. Dress appropriately if you're going to be on camera. You do not need to be in a suit in most cases. You can be in business attire. I usually say business; I'd rather you be overdressed than underdressed for the interview. It is a professional setting. I mean, don't wear a tux or a ball gown or anything like that. I think that's the only way you can be overdressed for the interview.
Be in a place, if you're going to be on video, that's not distracting with background noise or scenery [note: the irony of this being said while a dog barks in the background is not lost on us]. And take it seriously. It is important, but this is not an inquisition. It is an interview, and it is a conversation. So it is a professional conversation, but it's still just a conversation.
Anna: I think that is a great place to end. Thank you, Karen, for your time, and thank you, as always, to our listeners. We hope that you enjoyed this episode, that you found it helpful, and we hope to see you next time.
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