The sites have high expectations based on interviews of previous interns. Following these tips and visiting career services in your school/major or the Office of Student Employment can help you shine.

General Advice

• Use Dr./Ms./Mr. in conversations and emails unless they invite you to use their first name. The correct titles are specified in the interview match email. Do not change Dr. to Mr. or Ms., Dr. is the most respectful title if that is the one provided in the interview match email.
• Do your best in every interview. A site that seems great in the description can turn out to not be a good fit for you, and a site that seems just ok could be your perfect match after the interview.

How to prepare

• We will send a link to the Handshake job description when we send interview matches. Read the descriptions and any websites within the descriptions to help customize the cover letter for each site if your application short answer did not have enough detail or specifics. This will also help you prepare for the interview. Remember that the descriptions include any requests on hours you’ll work and availability needed. Be prepared to share your potential fall schedule or ask additional questions about their preferences on time blocks.
• Do not share too much personal information. It’s ok to say you selected a site because you or someone you know is impacted by the disease/condition/whatever but end the explanation there and move on to why else you selected that site specifically. Supervisors have complained about this and hesitate to choose students who overshare and seem to have selected them for that alone. Your cover letter and interview responses should be specific about why you selected the site and show you read the description of what they do and what you’ll gain. 
• Prepare for the interview with specifics on how your transferable skills meet the qualifications they’re seeking and why you selected that site. Use your application responses to help with this and add more detail if you received feedback that you need to provide detail or specifics. Do not use chatGPT or other generative AI to create interview responses. If you used it for the application, rewrite answers now in your own words to practice. You will need to talk about your experience in your own words and with examples specific to you.
• There are no standard LHSI interview questions, though many ask typical questions you can find by searching for “interview questions.” We share this set of interview questions with supervisors (no guarantee they’ll use them). Your career office may also have a list of common questions to help you prepare.

Meet with all assigned interviews

You must meet with all assigned interviews to remain eligible for matching with LHSI. If you do not meet with all of your assigned interview matches, you will be removed from the matching process.

You may follow up and send them another email after a week with no contact. Please be patient, they are often coordinating with other team members to find meeting times before they reply and that can take a little while. Let us know if you’re having trouble getting in touch with a site after two weeks since your first message.