See, it’s all very simple. To get a job you should do some sort of internship. To get an internship, you should have some sort of prior experience. To gain experience, you should have had some sort of job.

Of course, as soon as you take that final exam for that final course or write that one last long paper known as the dissertation, companies will come begging for you to work for them. Of course, don’t deign to apply for those mediocre paying jobs, as a six digit salary minimum is what you deserve and should demand. Of course, one look at that Stanford studded resume and all companies you apply to will invite you for interviews. Of course, interviews will be a mere formality — essentially an occasion for the interviewer to express his awe at your stellar academic career and how honored he would be if you consent to work for him. Of course, moon is made of green cheese and fishes go biking on Mount Everest.

Your first step is to complete a resume. All you have to do is explain in detail your objective for applying (don’t make it too specific or too general), your entire educational background, all of your academic awards and honors (if being the honor student of the month in your middle school is good enough for your dad’s car bumper, it’s good enough for your resume), job experiences emphasizing what the main challenges were, whom you worked with (provide small bios), what your specific contributions were and all the other extracurricular activities that demonstrate all your leadership, team work and independent thinking capabilities.

Having founded some successful startups helps to get you noticed, but a few world saving inventions may also work. Olympic gold medals are particularly good for demonstrating a well rounded personality. All of this should be on one side of the page and no, you can not use electron beam lithography. You may have noticed that whenever you do something worthwhile, you are making the resume writing process difficult for yourself, so please be advised against gaining too many good experiences.

You can write the resume in either chronological or functional format. The chronological format will list your most irrelevant childhood experiences at the top, while the functional format is too confusing for most employers. You should explain what job you were previously doing, and if it was really as nice as you describe it, why would you rather not continue doing that. You can post your resume on the company Web sites where your resume will easily pop out from the hundreds of resumes posted everyday.

Interview calls are sure to come. If you get too many refusals just send them back to hiring managers thanking them for their interest in rejecting your resume but as you have limited number of positions available for resume rejects, you will not be able to accommodate them this year.

Next, you should go shopping for your interview dress. The dress code on interview day for the males of the species is followed more rigorously than in Tibetan monasteries — dark blue suits, white shirts, red tie and black shoes. While females may enjoy some freedom of choice in sartorial dimensions, they still have to look in shape, and if you can do without breathing for a day, stuffing yourself into half-size clothes is the fastest way to achieve the goal. During the interview be relaxed but alert; make eye contact but don’t look menacingly into the interviewer’s eyes all the time; rehearse your answers but sound spontaneous; know everything about the company and still ask intelligent questions, bring up your own personality but tailor it to the interviewers taste; show a sense of humor but don’t sound too glib.

Make sure you sprinkle words and phrases like dynamic, entrepreneurial, enjoying challenges and goal driven etc in your conversations. You just have to convey that you are honestly passionate about the particular job, and this is a skill you will acquire once you honestly practice conveying your honest passion for different jobs.

To paraphrase George Burns, “Honesty is the key to success in interviews. Once you can fake it, you have got it done.”

Hemant Adhikari is a doctoral candidate in material sciences and engineering and a master’s student in management science and engineering. He has never actually given an interview before, so follow his advice at your own risk. If you do and succeed, don’t tell anyone else. E-mail him at adhikari@stanford.edu.