I applied online. I interviewed at SickKids (Toronto, ON) in Feb 2019
Interview
My worst interview experience in my professional life. I am more of a computer scientist. I had an interview for a bioinformatician position in a neuropathologist’s lab. Interviewers were the doctor herself, project manager, and two medical/biology students. All of them were mathematic/computer science-illiterate, but at the same time arrogant. They had delays, but they did not apologize. When the assistant open the door for me, the project manager came out of nowhere, and jostled me aside to enter the area first. I did not know at the moment that I should be interviewed with this rude lady later. Apparently the job ad was not related to the position (probably they had got it from another position). They did not ask any question related to the job ad, such as statistical methods, programming, etc. I realized that it was a position for two labs. They said that they want someone for “easy things”, but they were not able to clarify what those are. Look at their questions and judge yourselves about the interview. Later I got a rejection email claiming that I do not know the fundamentals.
My advice to these “researchers”: Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary area. It is not expected that everybody knows everything as you do not know either. It is not bad at all to get help from different experts in your interview sessions when you are not expert in that field, and let those professionals ask questions in their area of expertise and judge the candidates.
I firstly send my CV through the system for the application,
I received the email to answer screening questions one by one.
Get the Interview appointment.
The interview lasted 30 minutes, asking questions about your research background, your research interests, why you choose this work, etc
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
When answering the screening questions, they will ask which supervisor you would like to work with.
Make sure you put the person that is most likely to hire you as the first supervisor.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at SickKids (Toronto, ON) in Nov 2019
Interview
Applied through school co-op site. On-site interview went straight into a technical interview. They asked a question in 3 sections, biology, statistics and programming. Programming part included bash/command line and python. Didn't ask any behavioural questions, study about basic biology/sequencing and brush up on statistics.