SMU (Southern Methodist University) Executive Assistant Interview Questions
& Process

The process started with an application, followed by a phone interview, and then an in-person interview. After that, they would offer you the position. The application itself isn't hard, but they are very particular about it. It's a must to include a cover letter, and they won't even look at your application without one, which feels a bit much, but it's what they want.

I had an initial phone chat, and then about a week later they called back to set up the main interview. The process involved three panel interviews, with around five people on each panel. They wanted people from the different departments the job would touch. It was pretty in-depth. I also had to do a skills test covering spelling, grammar, and MS Word/Excel.

SMU takes a really long time to schedule a phone interview. Once you get through that, you have an in-person interview. The in-person interview is pretty easy if you're just confident and smile. If you are working in Student Affairs, the interviewers aren't the brightest. They like to do things in groups to make it seem more intimidating and like they make decisions together. Everything in SMU Student Affairs is very collective, but it's really just a show. The head of the department makes the decision with a panel of people under them who are there to make it look like their group decision. In reality, they do hardly anything besides have meetings and take notes that look almost identical from one to the next. Whatever the boss decides goes, and the committee just pretends it was a group decision. It's quite strange.