Don’t try to BS your way through answers; if you don’t know, let them know that but also tell them how you’d go about getting that information.

Relax, show a willingness to learn and you’ll be ok.

I got my start working for university IT and made it all the way to a CS Ph.D. and into industry.

Edit: and get good sleep! It’s nearly midnight on the West coast, get as much good quality sleep as you can.

Talk about your interests. Show a passion for your hobbies outside of work/the industry. Relate those passions to your goals within the industry. Generally just be interested and they’ll find you interesting. You got this!

Update edit: Congrats on the offer!

Go to bed

My tip.is always to remember that this is not yours to loose, its just an interview like a 1000 others you’ll have. If you don’t get it you didn’t, try again tomorrow. When I think like that I’m usualy more relax and don’t over talk.

Be prepared to talk about class projects you’ve done, what went well, what didn’t go well and how you’d improve that next time. If you do any extracurriculars like clubs, game night, or even a frat, include that as it shows you can be social.

It’s okay to be nervous. You’re not a CONfidence man.

1. Force yourself to smile and say something f like “good to meet you” or “thanks for seeing me” . Soft skills come naturally to some, but the tricks can be learned by anyone and are based on manners.

2. Have a couple of anecdotes about your approach to problem solving. Doesn’t matter what they are, there is no right or wrong answer, just have your approach ready in your head.

3. If its help desk, say you like helping people. One line i used a long time ago, was something like “I am quite shy on the telephone, but i actually helping people with technical problems “. It’s just keeping it real, a credible .

4. Consider de-emphasising your technical ambitions. They’ll have a dozen people saying they want to be a CCIE or data scientists or whatever the current flavour is.

Instead, I’d with “I’m doing well on with compsci degree, I don’t have any difficulties with the technical aspects, but I really want to see how my skills fit into a company, and make a start on understanding the realities of a business environment “

They want some one they can worth with, they can worth with almost anyone , but they won’t want to work with an “unknown”, so the more you can give - no matter who you are - the better.

You got it.

If the interviewer brings up personal life/trying to get to k ow you stuff be totally willing to expand on your interests. The interviewer is filtering k personal skills. Simply being able to talk about a hobby is a form of bridge building between people they seem to value. Create a script. Imagine a person asks you about your free time, have conversations in your head with the fictional person.

Do the same for talking points related to your resume. Everything you put on there is a potential question they’ll ask. For example, put that you have experience with security and they are you to ask about what you’ve done or know regarding that. Pre-write an answer.

My best advice is thus: pretend to be a jacksss gatekeeper and read your application from that perspective. Write down your critique. In your head argue against that and write it down. Memorize those talking points.

Go to the bathroom before you go into the place.

Remember that you are also interviewing them. They won’t expect you to know all the answers, but will want someone that they can work with. If you can, answer questions with the STAR method (situation, task, approach, result), but don’t waffle. You can use one piece of experience in a variety of ways: teamwork, research, urgent deadline etc.

It’s ok to say that you are nervous, they should try to put you at ease.

You may be asked ‘trick questions’, these are not usually to to you up but to see how you work an unknown problem. There is no right answer. Not knowing stuff is ok. Not being able to think up a plan is less so.

Remember whatever the outcome, this is really useful experience. See if you can get a site tour, ask about the tech used… You can then add this to your knowledge for later. In my experience, industry is frequently several years ahead of academia so you get a good chance to understand the real world.

Interviewing is a very specific muscle. You should try and do as many as you can. It’s also something you should regularly practice, even if you have a job you love and never want to leave. I’d say every year or two, just go and interview at a half dozen companies for roles that could be interesting to you.

I’ve just been through several rounds of interviews with different companies for a tech role. You want to build a brand and learn to communicate it to others. This doesn’t mean you need to write a laundry list of skills that you’ve obtained but rather define who you are and practice explaining that to strangers.

Nothing can prepare you for an interview scenario except and interviews. I’ve been in customer facing roles as well as being the interviewer and the only thing they have in common with being interviewed is that you’re sharing a table with someone else.

Good luck for tomorrow!

STAR. For every question try to give a situation, task, action and result which came from you personally. E.g. situation, someone was manually copying data from an online portal every month. As a task, you’re asked to write some code which scrapes an API, and you defined the task via docs and planned tests. Then as an action you worked on it for a few days, and the result was the company didn’t need to manually spend a few days per month doing it, freeing up people to do more exciting things.

It shows you understand the problem and know how to go about solving it in a professional way.

Hope I’m not too late. I just interviewed over a dozen people for an IT position so I have some experience as an employer

Be enthusiastic, be confident, if you don’t know the answer say ‘i don’t know but I’ll Google it later!’ because tech skills are not as important sometimes, it’s more like how will you get along with the team. Treat it as a fun opportunity to talk about your goals. Make sure you ask them questions, like what is the rest of the onboarding process like, how many more interviews, are the opportunities to grow in this position, is this a new position or am I filling in for someone who left? How many people on my team? And then end the interview by saying ‘i look forward to working with you’

Be confident, be enthusiastic. You got this

Ask ‘what success looks like’ at said company.