Five quick tips for interviews for PhD and research positions

When you appear for interview for PhD/research position, the following may help:

1. Make sure you have already visited the research group website and made yourself aware of the research focus.
2. In most cases, you would already know the name(s) of the interviewer(s) (Professors/ research group head) — do spend sometime to read their main research direction and their key papers.
3. Not all questions are meant to evaluate your technical skills. Some questions are common. Their is no right or wrong answer in general. However, they do mostly contribute in evaluating your skills on how well you can describe yourself and how dedicated you are going to be the research group goals. For example, why do you want to join our group, why do you want to move to (say Germany), what are your plans after this position, how early can you join, what skills you will bring to the group.
4. Most interviewers may ask you at the end if you have any questions. Do ask one or two questions, they really like it. May be do not ask about salary but go to ask about the workplace and their expectations or just ask about food and coffee facilities. This usually bring smile on the face of interviewers and helps in getting to know each other.
5. In most interviews, you almost already know if you have made it or not (well, may be I am slightly biased here but in most cases I already guessed I haven’t made it). Yet, it is good to ask when can you expect to hear from them. This somehow helps in getting a yes/no response in a due time and you do not have to wait indefinitely.

Please let us in the comments section what you think of these.