Students are encouraged to book an advising appointment for a mock interview to prepare for interviews, but you can also use these questions for self-study. You can book your advising appointment on campusBRIDGE.
You can also partner with a friend and they can ask you a sample question while you answer to practice interviewing.
- How have your courses prepared you for this position as an (editor, author, public relations representative)? Please outline the courses you feel are particularly relevant to this position.
- What are your career goals for the next five years? What have you done to accomplish them?
- What do you feel is a skill area that you are lacking to be successful in this position?
- What would you consider your greatest strength? Describe a situation in which you demonstrated this strength.
- Share an experience in which conferring with a client, editor, publisher, or producer helped you to effectively revise written material.
- Would you consider analyzing data or information a strength? How so?
- How would you rate your writing skills? Tell us what steps you have taken to develop as a writer.
- Tell us how you organize and plan your work.
- Do you feel it is the role of the editor or of the writer to complete revisions?
- I recognize two of the publications that you have published your work in. If I contacted the editors of those publications, what would they say about your relationship? Or your reliability?
- Have you ever had to give feedback to a colleague on writing that you felt was not up to par? What was it about the writing that affected the document's quality? How did you give your feedback and how did the other writer receive that feedback?
- Not all criticism is welcome. Tell us about a time when you received unwelcome advice about your writing, but had to follow the advice.
- Tell me about a time when a colleague provided corrective feedback on one of your skills. Did you accept the feedback? Why or why not?
- Tell us about a time when you felt you had to sacrifice quality to meet a deadline. What were the circumstances? What was one thing you learned from the experience?
- Tell us about a time when you had to deal with a negative or hostile critique from a person that you did not know well. How did this impact you and did it make any changes to your writing and how you deal with criticism?
- What strategies do you use to find publications that will accept your writing? What methods do you use to market your writing?
- Tell us about your previous experience as a writing teacher. Have you ever been completely responsible for course design, test writing and student evaluations? What would your previous students say about your teaching methods? What would they say about your administration, such as returning assignments and your feedback?
- Do you have a writing mentor and/or are you a member of a critiquing group? Tell us about an experience with either a mentor or a creative writing group that you feel has had a positive impact on your writing.
- Tell us about a time when you had a negative experience with either a mentor or a writing group. How did you deal with this experience? Based on those experiences, what have you learned about mentoring other writers and how would it shape your ability to mentor other writers?
- Tell us about a time when you willingly took on additional tasks or responsibilities. Why did you accept those tasks or responsibilities at that time?
- Tell us about a time when you worked on a narrative with at least one co-writer. Did you have a peer or leadership role on the project? How did you keep your shared vision aligned? Did you complete the narrative and what was the outcome? If you did not complete the narrative project, could you explain the most significant factor for not completing the project?
- Have you ever asked for an extension on your work? What were the circumstances? When is it acceptable to miss a deadline?
- Give me an example of a conflict you had with a co-worker and tell me how you resolved it.
- We use this style guide. Tell me about your familiarity with their style and requirements.
- Fact-checking is extremely important: have you ever quoted a fact or made a citation that you later found out was incorrect? What did you do to resolve the issue? How do you fact-check your references/ resources?
- How do you maintain interest and accuracy in your work when you are doing routine tasks?
- Tell us about the methods that you use to organize the logistics of a project.
- Give me examples of two projects you want to do: one you think has commercial viability and one that is a passion project. If you had a reasonable production budget at your disposal, but could only afford one project, which one would you choose and why?
- Describe your experience with fundraising. You may refer to professional projects, work as a volunteer, or fund your education.
- Tell us about a time when you deliberately sought out an award that required a personal campaign or self-promotion.
- Tell me about a time when things didn’t go the way you planned.
- You’ve been given two different tasks, with the same deadline, by two different people. You will not be able to finish both. What do you do?
- Do you have a portfolio? Are any of the projects you worked on available online? Can you show us? How might your roles in these projects be similar to the job you are interviewing for?
Updated March 2024