During my first year at university studying Psychology, I took a business management course and was introduced to the amazing world of Human Resources. I became fascinated with the way that psychology and business interacted. Applying psychological principles into such a structure-filled world gripped my interest like no other. I knew that during my third year at university I wanted to gain some experience in the field of Human Resources, so I took a look at the university's CareerConnect page and discovered the InternPlus programme. To my joy, they had a posting up for someone to work on a 6-month research project within the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) HR team. Without hesitation, I prepared everything I needed to apply.
For this post, I wrote a tailored cover letter explaining what previous relevant experience I had, as well as why this specific post attracted me. To ensure I had a competitive application, I set up a virtual 30-minute session with one of the CV advisors from the university and asked for feedback on formatting to ensure it was professional and conveyed my past experience in an effective manner. The team not only gave me pointers on how to re-format my CV, but also gave me confidence in my application. I think that this session was one of the key reasons behind as to why I was a successful applicant. After I had prepared everything, I sent my application away.
A few days after applications for the position closed, I received an email from the recruitment team asking to schedule a 30-minute interview. I was overjoyed that I had gotten to the interview stage as this was one step closer to getting experience in the field I was prospectively going to go into after I graduated university. Due to the pandemic, the interview was held online through MS Teams, and was my first experience doing an interview online. For the interview, I was asked to prepare a short 5-minute presentation where I could explain how I would go about conducting a focus group. The prompt that I received was very open ended as the interviewers wanted to see how we would interpret and tackle the question. In attendance of the interview was the head of the EDI Network, a member of the HR recruitment team, and the supervisor for the role.
During the interview itself, I could not figure out how to upload my presentation so had to get help from the interview board present. After sorting out technical difficulties, I presented what I had prepared and then we moved on to a question session where the interview board wanted to know more about what past research experience I had and just to get to know me as a person more. Even though the interview started off with a bumpy start, it came to a smooth conclusion. I was told that they would get back to applicants the week after the interviews, and so for the next few days I was nervously awaiting a response.
A few days later, I received an email saying that my interview was successful and that I had received the role! I am now a month into the internship and have learned so much. I am so thankful for the experience and would recommend that everyone apply to an InternPlus internship.
Edit July 2024: Please note that CareerConnect (abdn.targetconnect.net) is no longer accessible. Please log in to MyCareerHub instead to access appointments, jobs and events. Any questions, please contact careers@abdn.ac.uk
