Editor’s Note:  This post is part one of a four-part interview guide for pediatric and school based speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists.   To read the rest of this guide, visit our Interview Like a Pro – The Pediatric Therapy Clinician’s Guide landing page.

Before Setting up ANY Interviews
The very first thing you should do before an interview is to make sure your ‘public image’ is professional and appropriate. Ask yourself, “If I was an employer, would I be impressed with this individual?” Items to consider include:

• Make sure that your voice mail message is simple, easy to understand and identifies you by name.
• Ensure that your Facebook page, Twitter profile, etc. are professional and clean. Review all posts and delete those that you “wouldn’t want your grandmother to see.” More and more employers are looking at social media pages to determine whether a potential employee has the personal character they are looking for. Double check your privacy settings to make sure that nothing compromising or embarrassing is visible to the public. Better yet, remove anything that would be embarrassing and/or compromising.
• Your email address should also be professional. An email address that is based primarily on your last name, first name is ideal. Many job search candidates create a separate email address just for their job search. Gmail is free and easy!
• Let common sense prevail. While “fun loving” public images, nicknames and messages are great when you are in school, you can be sure that employers are not looking for that in a candidate.

Before the Interview
Research the employer in advance.  Learn specific details about the organization, the department, and the job. The more information you have, the better prepared you’ll be to ask questions that are important to you.  Most of this information can be found on the organization’s website or by “Googling” them and reading articles you find online. If you are working with an agency like PediaStaff, they will be able to help you collect much of this information.

Part Three of this blog post covers a wide variety of questions you should consider asking.  Many of these can be researched ahead of time.
Continue to Part Two of Interview Like a Pro – The Pediatric Therapy Clinician’s Guide