slomo431
Smash Ace
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2006
- Messages
- 866
I honestly think my track record with interviews is pure luck but ill try to describe a bit of what I do. I offer no guarantees with my advice.
Definitely research the company. I always look at press releases, awards and recognition the company has gotten, their community efforts, maybe a glance at annual reports and other financial info. Also I look em up on google news and just explore their website for an hour or two for anything else. I also learn about their products a bit but other than a general overview of what they do and where they operate it hasn't come up much in interviews.
Come up with a decent list of questions. I usually have some general, like what's the corporate culture like, and some gleaned from my research on that specific co. Since its health its also good to brush up on what's happened the last few years with health care reform. Also with your questions try not to sound like you're just picking at random off a list try to have questions that might naturally flow from one to the next, like from how large is the act department to how valued do you feel the act dep is at this co? Have enough questions to carry the interview if necessary, I've had a guy stop asking me stuff 15 min into a 1 hr interview and had to keep it going myself.
Get your stories straight. By that I mean, its best to answer a good number of questions with an example from your history illustrating that answer. With my being out of work like 10 months I typed out word for word good stories I felt could be used about my experience. It helped getting it on paper beforehand to refresh it all in my memory. Didn't memorize it but remembered all the main ideas. Could be a good exercise for you too since id expect you to mostly talk about what you did in college. There's a lot of good question lists online you can use to get an idea of what to talk about.
Lunch is part of the interview. Its a lot less formal, you can relax a bit, but you still have to be on, sort of. Be friendly, maybe ask them what they do and how they like things at the co, and just generally carry on conversation. I've always been taken out by other entry level people near my potential level.
You prolly know not to ask about benefits at this stage, but I've been advised not to ask about act study programs too. I guess at this point its just assumed everybody has a decent one. I've asked at lunch most of the time though.
A few questions seemingly always come up throughout a day of interviews. Andy will probably be able to describe what humana interviews are like specifically, but things like your greatest weakness, where you see yourself in x amount of years, and why you want to work for this company always seem to be there. For me, I've never really given out a real weakness, always some bs. There's a lot of good examples online, but use something that applies to you and that you can back up. My "weakness" is my overly strong attention to detail making me work a bit slow and methodically, but I always use good time managment to meet my deadlines and I feel it just shows my dedication to doing things the right way. Actuarial outpost is another good resource if you need a few ideas on some tougher questions.
For you specifically, there's a good chance you're going to be asked what you've been doing the past few years, so be ready for that. It came up for me about my 10 months.
Sorry if that's long I'm just spitting out anything that comes to mind.
Edit: oh yeah and like andy said try to figure out what you're interviewing for.
