Career Center Offers interview Software

Imagine your perfect interview: you walk in wearing a great outfit, feeling confident, and after 30 minutes you’ve won the interviewer over with your wit, intelligence and charm. While this might sound like a dream, the Career Center’s trying to make it a reality for students at the University of South Carolina.

Last fall, the center launched two interview software programs, InterviewStream and Perfect Interview. Both programs are accessible from a personal computer with a webcam, and by appointment at the Career Center. The programs offer a variety of features to help students improve their interviewing skills. Students can choose from several settings to create an interview to their liking, such as how many questions to respond to, the amount of time to allot for the interview, and the types of questions to be asked. The programs boast banks of more than 1,000 questions, so students can build an interview based on their career area. The programs also have recording capabilities, so students can see themselves being videotaped while completing the interview, and they can review it once they’ve finished the interview. This feature is helpful because it allows students to correct minor flaws like bad posture, facial expressions or fidgeting. Students can also e-mail the interview to a Career Center staff member for critiques.

The programs will help students prepare for any type of job interview, as Sumter junior Aretha Cooke found out when she was applying for a job as a desk assistant in a residence hall.

“I was going to the Career Center to get information and I was told about Perfect Interview,” Cooke said. A staff member walked me through it step-by-step and taught me how to use it.”

Cooke said the program was user-friendly and that it allowed her to select the length of the interview and how many questions she wanted to answer.

“I did a 15-minute interview that had 25 questions,” she said. “ It gives you sample answers if you have trouble and you get immediate feedback—it plays back your video so you can watch your interview.”

After using the program, Cooke had an interview and was offered the desk assistant job. She said she enjoys working in central campus.

Graduate student Johanna Fouts is also a fan of the programs, though she used them for a different reason. Fouts, a graduate student in teaching, critiqued InterviewStream for a professor who wanted her students to use it; she said she found the program “very informative” and liked “being guided through the process of conducting an interview.”

“The interview process was very easy,” Fouts said. “Overall I felt the program was very useful, and the questions available were very good.”

Anne Orange, program manager for the center, said the programs are great for students who will be interviewing for jobs at any of the upcoming career fairs in February, such as the education or science and engineering fairs. CareerFest also will be held in February.

Students interested in using the software or in learning more about upcoming career fairs can visit the Career Center’s Web site at www.sc.edu/career/ or contact Anne Orange at aorange@mailbox.sc.edu.