I had my very first interview over the phone yesterday for the post doc position that I had written about earlier. The whole morning I was freaking out and so nervous, however after a few minutes, I felt pretty comfortable talking.

It is definitely not like a regular interview (from what I hear anyway since I never had a real non-academic interview before). There were no behavioral questions i.e. What is your greatest strength? or If you were a houseplant, what would you be? sort of thing. It was all about science, all about the things I did in my academic research past. I had things planned out in my head, but for the inevitable “What did you do during your Ph.D?” question, I think I just ended up rambling on.  Dammit, I wished I was more articulate when I need to be!

It was more casual than I anticipated and the two PI’s seem very friendly. I asked them a lot of questions as well too (i.e. how many post docs have gone through their lab and what they were currently doing in their career etc.), and learned more about how things were run. I wished I got more detail on the research project though. However they ddi not seem to mind that I have no experience in protein X-ray crystallography and it’s something I wouldn’t mind learning. Doing a post doc means I get to expand my current skills set further.

At the end of the interview, I remember feeling that it could have gone better and I really wasn’t sure if they were interested. They were really nice to me, but I thought maybe it was b/c  it was for the sake of being nice and they weren’t going to reject me until the email. I sooo wanted to have the feeling that I nailed it, but I didn’t. So I was worried that they weren’t interested at all. However they did say that I’ve made an impression on them on the phone and want to meet me in person and as soon as possible. So this Friday I will be making my way there for the 2nd round. In my thank you letter, they had replied and told me to prepare a talk about about 45 min and questions. Gah! My Ph.D talk was only 30 min. Also I think I need to restructure the talk to suit them more. So my itineary on Friday would be to meet them at 11 am, give them a talk, have them question me and then go for lunch and they will show me around.

I’m nervous about this talk. I would hate to travel there, do my thing and then be rejected! I’ve been trying to keep the k nowlege of this from ppl. Asides from NS and LP I didn’t tell anyone else. Now it’s been expanding…I don’t like that. What’s w/ the secrets? I just rather preserve my pride in the case of rejection.

I really should be thinking more positively.

I do have a question: Should I focus everything on this talk these next few days? or should I continue w/ the job applications.

Jobs applied since last post: 0 (b/c was preparing for the phone interview and had a party on Friday night)