Interview experience

[start1]

I have been interviewing for IM this season and in majority of interviews had interviewers ask me one/two questions only.

Interviewer would either ask "do you have any questions for me" as first question/second question (I.e. 2 minutes into interview). Essentially, I have been asking question after question (5-6) until time for the interview is finished (I am conscious this may be annoying? But haven't been sure what to do so just asked multiple questions). The questions I am asking are reasonable ones (i think). Should I be asking 1-2 questions and saying I don't have any more questions? Won't the interview be very short this way?

What is the right approach in this situation? How can the interviewer gauge if I am fit for the program if they have asked one or two questions? Is asking "do you have any further questions" a signal that they have nothing further to ask me? This begs the question, how much impact interview has on ranking (granted nothing drastically obnoxious was done?)

Were they expecting 1 question and then they were going to ask further questions?

I have had interviews where interviewer has asked multiple questions and where I have had really good, engaging conversations as well. But it seems a lot are as above.

Anyone on the other side of the table have any insights? @aProgDirector

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[ilovecorgis]

I think this happens to all of us, and is a fairly normal part of the trail. I noticed that interviewers who were most likely to ask 1-2 questions also had the least familiarity with my application (i.e. being surprised when I bring up something that was very central to my personal statement or my activities list), so IMO it has nothing to do with you personally.

I approach these situations similarly to you, with a few carefully designed questions and a few more that I invent on the spot based on our conversation. I find that interviewers will stop you between questions if they had something specific they wanted to ask, but most genuinely just don't have other questions to ask you.

I think the interview is kind of like the personal statement in the sense that it's really hard to impress someone to the point where your rank will go up, but as long as you don't lie, use proper grammar, and don't accidentally express enthusiasm for another school, it's also really hard to shoot yourself in the foot.

 

[IMreshopeful]

Just wait until if/when you do get to fellowship. There were some interviewers who basically just started the interview saying “do you have any questions?” This is in my view typically because they already know your application and they want to know how much interest YOU have in the program. It’s helpful to have a few standard questions to ask and you can also try and formulate a couple of questions as the interview day goes on that are targeted towards your program of choice.

Keep in mind that as you go higher in training, the applicant pool selection gets lower. For IM, they have gotten prob 3000 applications, are interviewing 300 people, and need to rank for 30 positions. For fellowship, for cards or
GI, they need to fill 6 positions and interview 30-60 people from 1000 apps. So they already likely have read your app and now the interview day is primarily about seeing how you interact with people and gauging your interest. Understand that it is very much like dating in this respect haha.