Career Start Blog

Graduate: "I'm looking for the chance to work for a great company"

Hiring Manager: "That's great, why are you interested in this role specifically?"

Graduate: "I think this would be a great foot in the door..."

Well, you're 3-5 questions into an interview and you've already lost the job.

There are plenty of careers for Liberal Arts Majors, outside of your specific area of focus, it may just take a few tries to get your foot in the door.

What most parents, teachers, career centers, etc. will never tell you is that no matter how great your internships or GPA might be, in the minds of hiring managers, you're an entry-level candidate.  

When hiring entry level professionals, companies are far more interested in your aptitude and motivations aligning with the job you're interviewing for, than your credentials. Aptitude is hard to fake, telling a customized story around your career motivations, that just takes practice. 

Any Recruiter, hiring manager, or executive you'll interview with is trying to understand if you're excited about the career path directly related to the job you're interviewing for; however, they'll never ask that question directly. The employee demographic with the highest churn in any company is fresh-grads. 

The #1 reason for that churn is the employee deciding that the job they've started, isn't actually what they want to be doing. For that reason, hiring fresh-grads is high risk and requires deeper vetting around goals and motivations than other candidate demographics.

The best advice I was never given, post-grad, is to focus on why I was motivated for the job at hand, rather than leading with my interests in the organization.

For more info check out our blog on interview best practices.

If that's not enough, take a look out our interview checklist to optimize your interview strategy.