April 17, 2009

Employers Criticize Ivy League Students' Interview Skills

Corporate recruiters still flock to Dartmouth and other Ivy League colleges to recruit graduates as employees. They value the grads' knowledge – but they also wish they had learned better interview skills along the way.

Several recruiters were quoted in a recent article in the Dartmouth student paper as saying that many graduating seniors looked better on paper than they did in person. Some of the most frequent bloopers committed by students in on-campus interviews and follow-up contacts were:

• Knowing nothing about the company or organization they were interviewing with

• Not thinking about how they should present themselves to a particular employer

• Not making an effort to expand on their resumes by saying what an experience meant to them, or why it might be relevant to the position they were applying for

• Being too casual in language and manners (you won't get points for wearing an interview suit if you slouch in your chair while you're wearing it!)

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