From the 2010 Alliance to Save Energy Green Campus Energy Efficiency Summit – Greening the Campus, Building the Workforce

1. Highlighting The Green Campus Internship
in Your Job Search
Steve Miller
Jocelyn Orr_______
Sean Higbee___________
Doug White_________________
Amelia Gulling_____________________

2. Session Purpose & Format
• Offer some tips on interviewing
best practices and the related
value of the GC internship
• Present (multiple) peer
testimonials and tips from recent
GC alumni
• Call out your own experiences
and ask burning questions!

3. A Few Interviewing Tips
• Preparation: They key for keeping control
– Know your strengths
– Know what you like to do
– Know what type of contribution you can make
• Typical process:
– A screening interview: Often conducted over the phone, and
many times by an employee within Human Resources.
Important to emphasize your technical skills and educational/
employment background.
– The employment interview: One or a series of discussions, that
will includes the hiring manager. Important to emphasize your
compatibility/fit to:
• The organization’s goals and mission
• The people/culture
• The job function and technical requirements.

4. A Few Interviewing Tips
• Networking happens all the time - Practice the 30 second
drill (your elevator speech):
– Tell me who you are
– What you want
– How I can help
• Prepare for all interviews
– Focus on the 3 main points that you want to leave behind
– What the organization does and how it’s structured
– How you can make a difference
– Ask pointed questions
– Take control…It’s your future!
– 99% of all interviews are cultural

5. Behavior Based Interviews
– Based on the assumption that past behavior is the best
predictor of future behavior (and performance)
• Research shows that traditional interview questions (e.g.:
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What are your
strengths and weaknesses?) yield little predictive validity
– Requires the interviewer to ask a pre-defined set of questions
(organized around core competencies), that challenge you to
describe how you have handled situations in the past.
– Even when posed with a ‘traditional’ interview question, you can
still utilize behavior-based examples in your answers.
• (e.g.: If asked about a particular job-related strength,
answer, but then provide an example of how you successfully
exhibited this quality/skill in the past.)

6. Behavior Based Interviewing
• Examples of behavioral interviewing questions/probes:
– Tell me about a significant work/school accomplishment, and what steps
you took to get there.
– Describe a particularly difficult problem that you recently had to solve.
– Describe how you approach learning a new technical skill/task.
– Describe your work style, how a new manager can extract the most
contribution out of you, and a recent example of this.
– Tell me about a time when you have taken a risk and it’s paid off. What
did you do and what were the results?

7. Behavior Based Interviews and
the Green Campus Experience
• Some behavior based questions where you can clearly
leverage the Green Campus experience.
– Tell me about a time when you were part of a team, charged with
a timely and ambitious goal.
– Describe a time when you were able to apply your coursework to
a campus/community problem or challenge.
– Tell me about a situation in which you had to sell a project,
program or concept to classmates or campus/community
members.

8. The Case Study Response
Using the STAR Method
When answering a behavioral question, remember to tell a story!
• S (State the situation – the problem or challenge.)
• T (Define the specific task, strategy or objective.)
• A (Describe the actions that you took.)
• R (Relay the results that you achieved.)

9. The Case Study Response Using
the STAR Method
• Example: Tell me about a creative idea that you pursued in an
attempt to foster more sustainable practices on campus?
– Situation: Talk about campus pressures (AUPCOCC, Campus/
System Green Building and Clean Energy Standards,) students
concern for taking local action to address climate change, etc.
– Task: As part of a student-led team to address energy waste on
campus, I saw a need for and proposed Project ‘A’…
– Action: First, I developed a scope of work. Next, I presented the
project plan to a collection of critical campus stakeholders, etc.
– Result: After just one quarter of rolling out this project…
• 500 kWh in measured electricity savings, that translates to 700
pounds in avoided carbon emissions.
• Based on these results, the Housing Services Department agreed
to expand this pilot effort to all first year residence halls…

10. Green Campus Alumni Experiences
BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD ON IT…
• Jocelyn Orr
• Sean Higbee
• Doug White
• Amelia Gulling

11. Open Q&A
• Can you offer additional interview experiences?
• What burning career search questions do you
have?
• How do you suggest talking about your Green
Campus internship in order to set yourself
apart from other candidates?