It’s interview time for a lot of hospitals! This week and the next coming weeks will be full of interviews so make sure you are prepared! Here are a few tips that I have to share, with the help of Schmidt from New Girl, because who doesn’t love New Girl? If you haven’t watched this show, put this into your queue, especially if you’ve had a bad day. Nonstop laughs, I’m telling you!

Have your email notifications turned ON

This way, you never miss an email. You don’t want important emails like these getting lost in the midst of all those junk emails you’re never going to read. Maybe while you’re at it, with all that free time you have now that you’re not filling out applications and rereading essay questions until your eyes bleed, you can finally organize your emails a little better and decrease that number of unread. You’ll thank me later.

Set up your voicemail box

As a coordinator, there is nothing worse than calling someone and the voicemail stating,

“The person you have dialed at 2-1-5-7-4-6-2-4-4-4 is unavailable. At the tone please record your message…”

One, it looks unprofessional for you to not have your voicemail set up with your voice/name in this day and age with the technology that is available to us. It looks lazy.

Two, it makes me second guess that I didn’t call the right person, which as someone setting up interviews, I don’t have time to second guess, so help us out!

Three, absolutely make sure that your voicemail box isn’t full. This could be a crucial part to you not getting an interview. If I can’t leave you a voicemail you may have just forfeited your interview spot. Please note: just because you don’t answer does not mean you forfeit your interview spot, but if I’m unable to leave you a voicemail, that may sway me; if anything it comes across as unorganized and not prepared.

Prepare your answers in advance

There are going to be some obvious questions that will come up and you’re going to need to make sure you’re prepared to answer them clearly with confidence. It is super important that you answer the question thoroughly without rambling. We don’t need to know your life story, but we do need you to answer the question.

Also, it’s a given that everyone applying for an internship “loves kids.” So when we ask you the question “Why did you choose child life?” or “Why do you think you’ll make a great child life specialist?” Give me more than just the typical cookie-cutter answer. What personality traits do you possess that would make you great at this? What have you seen other child life specialists do in the field that you can look at and go, “Oh yeah, I would totally do that too.”

Pause, Deep Breath and Smile

Nothing is worse than if an interviewer can sense tension during an interview. Take a deep breath beforehand, center yourself on this moment and try not to let the other parts of your day affect this big moment for you! You could be having the worst day, but for those 20 minutes on the phone, I’m going to need to see your sparkle! Make sure you’re smiling, even if it’s a phone interview. It’ll help with your inflection/pitch and make you sound less monotone!

Rejections will happen

If you’re sending out multiple applications to 20+ hospitals, yes my friend, you will have rejections. They will come, but do not get discouraged because you only need ONE hospital to look at you and go, “There’s our intern.” So while all of your friends are getting lots of interviews, even if you only have one, you only need to “wow” that one. So knock it out of the park!