Students blog

Job interviews can be one of the most stressful things in life for certain people, for others, it may come naturally. However, no matter how good you are at talking, how good your resume looks, or even how serious the interview is, preparing for a job interview is one of the biggest steps when looking for work. Here are a few helpful tips to help you prepare.

One of the most important steps in preparing for a job interview that not many people realize is research. Doing research on the company and the role they are hiring for is one of the easiest ways to make yourself stand out compared to other candidates. Whether it's talking about the company's involvement in the community, their values, or talking about specific skills you saw in the job posting, having knowledge about these topics and talking about them shows that you are interested and care.

Another very important step is familiarizing yourself with common questions and knowing how to answer them while referencing your resume. Practicing common interview questions before an interview is one of the easiest ways to get yourself more prepared. I have participated in countless interviews, and I can confirm that lots of companies ask the same behavioral questions. Having knowledge and exposure to these questions and how to answer them will save you in future interviews. Referencing your resume is also a nice trick to do while answering questions. Talking about experiences on your resume helps the interviewers remember your answers and helps them follow along with the story you are about to tell.

The final tip is to be yourself and don’t try too hard. It’s easy to stress over interviews, lose sleep thinking about what to say, and spend hours trying to figure out the perfect answers. The truth of it all is, you are never going to be 100% prepared and do perfect. You’ll never go into an interview knowing every question and having a perfect answer to every question. However, if you can be yourself and stay calm, the interview is bound to go better than you think a majority of the time.

At the end of the day, nobody is perfect at interviews. You could follow all these tips, spend countless hours preparing, and pull your hair out stressing and overthinking, but nothing is guaranteed. If you are going to take anything from this entire blog, let it be this: Be yourself, make eye contact, dress to impress, and remember that all it takes is the right company, at the right time, to never have to prepare for a job interview again.

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College is an exciting time for many young adults. For most, it’s their first time away from home and they have an opportunity to explore the world on their own. However, with this newfound freedom can come some negatives as well. One of those negatives might be the loss of productivity. But making just a couple of changes could help students maximize their daily productivity.

As I mentioned before, college is a time where most people finally venture out on their own. They are away from their parents and gain this whole new feeling of freedom. However, this feeling of freedom can sometimes lead to students becoming unproductive. This freedom allows them to make decisions on their own such as skipping class, sleeping in, saving their homework until the very last minute, or maybe even scrolling on TikTok for hours on end. These choices can lead to very unproductive days, and those days can turn into weeks or even months.

There are quite a few ways you can maximize your productivity in college, the following two examples have worked for me. The first is waking up early. Waking up early allows you to get up and get going without feeling like you’ve already wasted half the day in bed. Something that has helped me wake up early has been taking eight a.m. classes to force myself out of bed in the morning. The second action I take to feel productive is to build in a daily time go to the gym. Going to the gym or exercising in some other way gets you moving and for me, makes me feel motivated to tackle the rest of my day.

Now I’m not saying that sleeping past eight in the morning, skipping class occasionally, or even taking a personal day now and then makes you unproductive. What I am saying is that it may be a contributing factor to you feeling unproductive. If you often feel as if you are unproductive or maybe unmotivated to conquer the day, start by making a couple of small changes and build from there.

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College is an exciting time for many young adults. For most, it’s their first time away from home and they have an opportunity to explore the world on their own. However, with this newfound freedom comes a lot of stress. This stress is something that I had a hard time handling properly. It took a toll not only on my mental health, but my physical health as well.

During my freshman year I found myself locked in my room and doing homework all the time. I struggled to allow myself to do anything besides homework and felt a level of stress when I did. I never went to the gym, wasn’t staying active, and most importantly I wasn’t eating the best. I would often catch myself getting stuck in a “buffet mentality” at the dining hall and constantly never felt full. This led to me eating pizza and drinking soda with nearly every meal.

Coming into college I was a little underweight for my height, and all I wanted was to put on some muscle. Instead, I put on fat, and quite a bit of it. Although eating was my main issue, never going to the gym didn’t help. By the time Christmas break came around I could tell I had put on some pounds, and not in the way I wanted. I knew I had to make a change. Instead of letting stress control my life, I used it to fuel my motivation to find interests that helped me escape, whether it was going to the gym or doing some other physical activity.

Don’t let the stress of college control your life like it controlled mine. Physical health is one of the most important things that lead to a long life. You also need to watch what you put in your body as fatty and unhealthy foods can lead to you feeling worse about yourself and increase the stress you already feel.

There is more to college than just the school portion. Remember that and always try to take care of your body both physically and mentally.

Do you have a compelling story or student success tips you’d like to see published on the Pearson Students blog?  If you are a college student and interested in writing for us – click here to pitch your idea and get started!