At Whitney M. Young Job Corps, everyone is a little bit of a teacher.

Take HR Manager Michelle Hendrickson.

She does what you would expect an HR Manager to do at Whitney, between hiring new employees, acclimating them to the workplace, and other responsibilities, but on top of that, she’s also creating a class to help Job Corps students learn more about a fundamental skill: job interviewing.

“The students already receive some help with interviews, resume writing, etc from our Career Transition Readiness team, but this is going to try to enhance that a little bit,” Hendrickson said.

Hendrickson’s training will laser-focus on a few specific areas. She will mainly seek to teach the students how to best prepare and make sure they understand what interviewers are trying to learn from students.

“Things like what type of an interview will it be,” Hendrickson said.

The most common, she noted, is a behavioral interview.

“Someone might ask you something like ‘Give me an example of when you did this, give me an example of a time when,’” she said. “Typically the past predicts the future, so they’re trying to give you an example of a time when you had a challenge on the job or something like that in your life.”

One of the real benefits to this class, though, is that not all students have work experience, but Hendrickson aims to teach them to handle these questions anyway.

“Sometimes when a student doesn’t have actual on-the-job experience, we can find these examples from life experience,” she said. “They may not realize it, but they may already have the answer to that kind of a question…we’re going to help them have some ready answers.”

Even typical Job Corps experiences can be a benefit to students.

“We’re going to try to help them to publicize all of the hard work they’ve done here,” she said. “Things like learning a work schedule, being out of the dorm at 7:15 in the morning, having to have your bed made and your room and the dorm clean, the uniform requirements.”

These habits illustrate organization, motivation, consistency, professionalism, and other values that make a significant difference, but not every interviewer will even realize a perspective employee will even have. They also demonstrate Job Corps’ eight career success standards in action, especially information management, independent living and personal planning.

“A lot of employers do not realize all the hard work we do here at Job Corps and what it takes for a student to be successful,” Hendrickson said. “Those are the kind of things you want them to talk about.”