Career Choice & Change: Job Hunting, Internship Seeking & Discovering Your Career Path: Interviewing

This guide uncovers resources for exploration of careers and college major choices, career development and change, and resumes and interviewing.

The Next Step

Don't get complacent after you've submitted your resume and cover letter; your preparation work isn't done yet! Check out the resources on this page to see how you can prepare for the next step of the job application process: the interview.

Guides to Acing Your Interview

Learn how to improve your performance on interviews from the links and video below.

Big Interview (UC San Diego)
Big Interview is a interview training system through the campus Career Services office. This service is available free-of-charge for UC San Diego students. Register for access using your @ucsd.edu email..
The Climb Guide to Interviewing Resources and Tools
This page provides guides for interview questions and other tips for navigating the job interview.
O'Reilly Interviewing-Related Content
This subset of the O'Reilly collection includes e-books and audiobooks about interviewing in general, as well as for specific jobs/industries.

Vault logo Vault has blog articles with many, up-to-date features on Interviewing. Below are some examples.

"Do’s and Don'ts of Virtual Interviews in 2024"
This Vault blog entry summaries tips for performing well in this kind of screening interview.
Achieving Interview Success with the STAR Method
STAR is an acronym that stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This Vault blog talks about how you can use it to model interview answers well.

Research Before Your Interview

Researching the company interviewing can help you make a better impression at your interview. For links to look up companies and answer some of the questions below, click the Companies tab (above).

How does your job fit in the overall function of the department and whole organization where you’ll be working?
What is the company’s mission and vision?
What are its key products/services? Who is the competition? Who are the customers?
Who are the key leaders of the organization, how big is it and how is it structured?
What is the news and social media coverage like for the organization and its leadership
Are there any mentions about your company on ‘insiders’ sites like Glassdoor and Firsthand?
What is the company’s culture like?
What is its history?
What are the latest developments for this organization?
Can you find anything out about the interviewer or key leaders of the organization?

Search the Library's Collection

Want to see the latest items we have on these topics? Selected subjects for easy browsing:

TIPS: Don't see your favorite topic listed above? You can search your own topics and titles by using UC Library Search. For best results, sign in to UC Library Search using SSO and your @ucsd.edu email address. To limit to the most recent ebooks, choose the radio button that says "UC San Diego Library Catalog" for your search, then filter the results to online only. Changing the results order from "relevance" to "date: newest first" will show the most recent additions to the ebook collection.

Featured Books

HBR Guide to Your Job Search by Harvard Business Review Harvard Business Review; Kitty Hendrix (Narrated by); Al Kessel (Narrated by) Whether you're new to the workforce or have a well-established career, this book contains practical advice for navigating your job hunt. Learn how to: structure your search strategically; translate your strengths into a strong personal story; activate your network to find opportunities; write a resume that gets callbacks; craft answers to common interview questions; and set yourself up for success in your new role.
Call Number: O'Reilly audiobook
ISBN: 1663731896
Publication Date: 2024
How do you fight a horse-sized duck?: secrets to succeeding at interview mind games and getting the job you want by William Poundstone
Call Number: O'Reilly audiobook
ISBN: 1666104078
Publication Date: 2021
How do selective employers choose which people to hire? It's through interviews asking uniquely demanding questions testing imagination, persistence, and creativity, like: Can an astronaut throw a baseball so it hits the Earth? If you had $2,000, how would you double it in twenty-four hours? How is a milk carton like a plane seat? Chicken McNuggets come in boxes of six, nine, and twenty. What's the largest number of McNuggets that McDonald's can't sell you? Learn how to approach such questions and stand out in your interview.
Interviewing for a Job e-book collection (O'Reilly)
Vault Guide to Behavioral Interviews: a step-by-step guide to preparing for and acing behavioral interview questions
Call Number: Vault e-book
ISBN: 9781438198590
Publication Date: 2020
This publication contains essential tips for preparing for and acing behavioral interview questions. These questions (which often begin with the phrase 'Tell me about a time when...') are now used by organizations in nearly every industry. This means that, no matter your desired role or company, you'll need to know how to deliver excellent answers to these questions in order to get hired.
Vault Guide to Case Interviews, 9th ed. by Paul Greenland et al.
Call Number: Vault e-book
ISBN: 9781438199412
Publication Date: 2020 (latest)
Case interviews are a crucial part of the hiring process in the consulting industry. Designed to test an applicant's knowledge of business and financial models, their ability to think fast, and sometimes even how well they work as part of a team, the case interview can be a grueling experience. Included here are more than 50 sample case interviews, guesstimates, brainteasers, and other consulting interview cases as well as advice on questions to ask the interviewer. The guide covers frameworks such as Porter's Five Forces, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the BCG Matrix, the four Ps, the four Cs, and CAGE distance.

Previously featured items:

The Triton Career Guide by UC San Diego Career Services Center
An all-in-one guide to writing resumes, cover letters and interviewing.
LiveCareers: Job Interview Questions
This site provides tips for all steps of the interviewing process. This section offers details about handling interview questions. The Library has several additional interviewing books you can check out!
Knockout Job Interview Presentations by Rebecca Corfield
Call Number: Proquest e-book
ISBN: 9780749459253
Publication Date: 2010
This book provides information on preparing and giving job presentations. UCSD email login required for access.

Wage Survey & Statistics

Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' website for the Occupational Employment Statistics survey is a good place to look for what is the general wage for your job in your geographic area (U.S. only).