Hi everyone. I'm an incoming member of the EIS class of 2016. I followed the thread from last year and read through the thread from the previous year a lot during the application process and found it really helpful. I never commented but thought I'd give you all a bit of information from my experience with this process that you may find helpful and will hopefully take out some of the guesswork for you.
I want to start with a couple of disclaimers:
1) I am in no way, shape, or form writing in any official way for EIS. I have basically no inside knowledge and am only drawing on personal experience. What I tell you is personal opinion and definitely not official.
2) You should all be aware that EIS leadership monitors threads like this. Not in a "We're out to get you if you say the wrong thing" kind of way, but in a "We want to know what the applicants are hearing and what misinformation they might be getting" kind of way. Still, keep that in mind as you comment.
With that said, here are a few things I gathered about the application process:
1) The number of applicants obviously changes every year, but last year, I think we were told that over 600 people applied. There are roughly 80 positions each year. Rarely, there are more and occasionally less. I have no idea what the reasons are for the fluctuations. About 10 positions each year are given to international applicants. This year we only have 7 international classmates. Again, I don't know why. I've gathered from talking with other EIS officers and reading these threads that a large number of applicants are usually international (I think about half - but again, not official). It seems the classes are usually about half health professionals and half PhDs.
These aren't really numbers EIS gives out. Except for the number of applicants, we weren't told any numbers during our interviews, and I remember asking some officers during my interview and being told they don't know. Honestly, I suspect the program wants people to just take their application at face value and not worry about the numbers. So I'm a little reluctant to share this because I have no real evidence to back it up - basically just rumor, but I know having this information was really helpful to me to have a sense of where I stood, statically speaking.
2) Try not to conjecture too much. It's easy to speculate that maybe this year they'll take more officers because there's Zika or maybe they're holding on to the last group of interviews until after Halloween because they're too busy tracking candy poisonings, but honestly that stuff is just maddening and will never be confirmed or denied by the leadership. The application process is long. Try to be patient and not make yourself crazy.
3) Take the timeline at face value. If you call the office to ask when they'll make a decision about interviews, they're going to tell you the same information that's listed on the website. Even if interviews go out early (I can't remember if ours did or not), they're still going to tell you whatever the official posted date is.
4) That said, expect to get information last minute. You'd be amazed at how many things the staff is juggling at once. So try to be patient and not read too much into it if you haven't heard a lot from them. I received my interview date confirmation 2 weeks before the actual interview. For the conference, I received my travel itinerary just a few days before I left.
5) I really have no idea what EIS is looking for as a good candidate, but I think UGAPinkDawg really hit some important points in his earlier post. This is a training program, and they want you to be able to articulate what the training is going to do for you and your career in the long term. Also, most positions require you to work on teams, and being able to show that you can be a team player and get along with others was clearly important. Flexibility also seemed to be helpful in terms of where you're willing to go and what you're willing to do.
For interviews:
1) The cost of your transportation, housing, and food are paid by you, and each of these is also arranged by you. They didn't feed us on interview day. We had to use a break in our interview schedule to find somewhere to go eat, which wasn't hard but something you should know.
2) The interviews last year were held at the Century Center campus, not the main CDC campus. I don't know if it will be the same this year, but there's a hotel just a few blocks away, which will provide you a shuttle to the campus if they're in the same place this year.
3) We were asked to pick from a list of Centers, Institutes, and Offices (CIOs) and find three groups we wanted to interview with. You'll also have an interview with official EIS leadership. That last interview has a reputation for being very formal. The interviewers don't often react to what you're saying and will generally not give you feedback on your responses.
4) Last year, the interviews were pretty structured. Each interviewer was asked to pull from a set list of questions. I'm not going to divulge what questions I was asked, so please don't ask me to, but they were fairly standard interview style questions. Things like, "Give an example of a time you had to help handle a conflict." (That is not an actual question I was asked.) After asking those questions, most of my interviewers were a lot less formal and we just chatted casually.
This post is already really long, so I'm going to stop here. I'll try to swing back around later on and add information that may be helpful for those who are selected if you want. For now, good luck to everyone applying!
