Every year, around 600 people apply to the CBYX Young Professionals program. About 150 are selected for an interview. And only 65 make it into the program. Here’s my advice on how to ensure that you nail your interview and become one of those sixty-five.
On January 13th, I woke up to an email from a program officer inviting me to move on to the next phase of the application process and interview.
Attached to the email was a form asking for my general information along with thirty-three time slots. There was definitely a smile on my face as I filled out the information and selected multiple time slots that lined up with my availability. Though, I’m sure that if they had just randomly assigned me a timeslot, I would’ve cancelled whatever I needed to in order to make that interview.
After showing the email to my boyfriend and relaying the news to my family over the phone, I spent the entire afternoon attempting to research what the interview process would be like. But, other than a post by Paige Censale, there wasn’t anything that I found to be useful. Everything was either geared towards those interviewing for the high school program, outdated by more than five years, or mentioned the interview taking place in-person (mine would be held over Zoom).
So, with my attempts at research resulting in failure, I turned to ol’ reliable, and began studying mock interview questions on Quizlet.
Before the Interview
Within the email inviting me and the other semi-finalists to interview, the program officer stated our form needed to be filled out by January 24th, and that we would be contacted again during the week of January 27th so they could share some information about the interview along with our assigned interview date and time.
This meant that I had roughly two weeks to do nothing except wish for time to go by quicker and prepare.
But, there’s only so much preparation someone can do before an interview.
Without knowing what questions you’re going to be asked or what they’re going to want you to do, you’re forced to believe that the interview will be just like all the other ones you’ve had before. You’re also forced to hope that the questions they ask will be similar to the ones you’ve been rehearsing with.
For those two weeks, I went through Quizlets that had been created by previous program participants (though I think most of them were intended for future semi-finalists of the high school program), selected the questions that I thought were most likely to be asked, and rewrote them in my notes app. I would then hand my phone over to my close friend and answer his randomly selected question. I tried my best to pretend that he was someone on the interview panel and my fate was in his hands, but it was a little hard to do so when not even he could remain serious. We did this everyday until January 29th.
On January 27th, the presidential administration initiated a federal funding freeze. This essentially stopped the disbursement of federal funds, grants, and loans to varying varying organizations across the United States of America. And, on January 29th, I received an email from someone working for the program. It stated:
I don’t think I got out of bed that entire day. I spent the entire day crying, asking my close friends to fetch me snacks and fast food, and panicking to my family.
To me, that email felt like the beginning of the end. I was certain that the next email I received would be telling me that the program was being suspended for the following year or that it was ending completely. Luckily, the next morning, I woke up to the following email:
There wasn’t enough time to process this emotional whiplash. And it’s not like those negative feelings from the day before were something that I wanted to linger on. Instead, I waited a couple hours for that next email, rewrote all the important information they sent in my notes app so it wouldn’t get buried, and went right back to prepping with my boyfriend.
(Right) Before the Interview
My interview took place on February 5th at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST.
After looking through my closet, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really have anything that was appropriate to wear. I had formal clothing, but at this point, I had no idea who would be on my interview panel. For all I knew, it was going to consist of only government employees from both the United States and Germany. And, I had a feeling that they wouldn’t be impressed by a floral dress and a neutral cardigan to cover my shoulders.
So, the night before my interview, when I should’ve been going over possible interview questions again or falling asleep early, I was making my way across town, visiting various department stores and shopping centers in search of a classic, white button-down top and a black vest. I had made my mind up and I couldn’t imagine wearing anything else, so I stayed out until I found both of those items (thank you Ross) and crashed as soon as I was home.
When I woke up in the morning, I took a shower, then did both my hair and makeup at my desk, in front of my computer, and already logged in to the Zoom session. I was terrified that I would somehow get distracted and miss it. Spoiler Alert: I didn’t miss it.
The Interview
Once the interview session began, there were a total of five other people within the Zoom.
Three of them were potential candidates: an operatic singer, a science major (who I want to say was studying biochemistry but I can’t totally remember), and another college student (other then the brief introduction he gave, I didn’t learn much about him as he was the first one to be interviewed, but my guess is that he was studying politics or international relations).
There was also an employee from cultural vistas organization and a doctor.
The doctor was a previous participant of the program. Years back, he had done his own interview, got accepted, and lived in Germany for a year. He said that this program completely changed his life. It motivated him to continue learning and speaking German, and then to pursue a career there. A career that I would already be terrified enough to attempt here in the United States. Everything he was saying really connected with me. I mean, why wouldn’t I want to dream about finding a career and making a life for myself in another country? The fact that I felt this connection and knew that someone with the same exact wants as me had actually gotten them gave me the last little bit of courage I needed to feel good about doing this interview.
After brief introductions, the interview panel asked if we had a preference of order. I let everyone volunteer themselves in front of me and went last (honestly, I was just trying to the show judges that I was adaptable and more considerate of other people’s wants).
Everyone was allotted a certain amount of time for their time, but you don’t need to use all of that time. The first person who interviewed was done quite quickly, while the second person took a lot longer than I expected. And I can’t even remember how long the person who went right before me took. In my mind, his interview went on for a while, but this was probably just because I was sitting in a breakout room by myself with nothing to do other than worry and panic.
When it was finally time for my interview, I was surprised at how casual the questions and conversations were. It was difficult to tell what they were asking out of pure curiosity, and what they were asking for the actual interview’s sake.
Unfortunately, I failed to write down the questions I was asked, but here are some of the ones I remember: What would you do if you were served a meal by your host family and it didn’t seem appetizing to you? How would you handle homesickness? What does being a youth ambassador mean to you?
Halfway through the questions, I was suddenly told that we would be moving into the German portion of my interview. It wasn’t anything formal or overly long, but it took me by surprise. I was expecting this to happen towards the end of the interview or to have a bit more time to mentally prepare myself for it. Instead, I was stumbling over basic sentences because I was so nervous. Luckily, I had the opportunity to redeem myself by explaining my nerves (in German). As far as I am aware, they don’t use this portion of the interview to determine whether you make it into the program or not. They just use it as an informal way to gauge how proficient in the language you are. I assume this is because they want to ensure that the program is full of people on different language levels.
And then, the interview was over. They gave some closing remarks, I asked some questions, and then the doctor said something that left me feeling like I was on cloud-nine for the rest of the day. He told me: “it’s refreshing to see someone who is willing to put their all into this program“. As soon as he said those words, I knew that I had left a great impression on them. I had done all that I could possibly could, and there was nothing to do but wait to see if I had made it in or not.
After the Interview
After a month and a half of refreshing my email, checking my reddit, and hoping that the government wouldn’t randomly decide to cancel the program, I received one of the best emails of my life:
While the interview was stressful in terms of preparation and the anticipation, I found that it was the actually most exciting and easiest portion of this entire application process. If you’re preparing for a similar interview, don’t psyche yourself out about it. At the end of the day, they’re just interviewing you to get a gauge of who you are as a person. And if you’re reading this, then I’m sure that you’re already a wonderful person and would make a great addition to the CBYX-Youth Professionals program.
Good luck.
P.S. Here are some other blogs that were useful to me, even if I didn’t stumble across them until after I had submitted my application: Paige Censale and Maggie Without Borders.
If you have plans to apply for CBYX Young Professionals or anything similar, gather all your necessary documents ahead of time, draft your essay answers and allow someone to read over them, follow the advice given in this post, and learn more about the program by checking out my other posts.
