An Interview with Shannon Connolly
 Shannon graduated with a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the University of Delaware in 2006. While completing her MPA, she was a research assistant working part-time within IPA’s Conflict Resolution Program (CRP). Prior to that, she attended Frostburg State University for her undergraduate degree and holds a masters degree in social work from New York University. After graduating from the University of Delaware, Shannon was selected to join the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a Presidential Management Fellow and will complete this program in July 2008. As a result of her fellowship, she was offered and accepted a full-time position with the NCI Office of Workforce Development.
Synergy: To be selected as a Presidential Management Fellow is extremely prestigious given its national selection process. Tell us about the process.
Connolly: The Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program is a federal fellowship program run by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). It is a fast-entry into the federal government. I first heard of the PMF program from my academic advisor at UD-Maria Aristigueta. After being nominated by UD, submitting my initial PMF application, and being selected as a semi-finalist, I went to an all-day interview in Philadelphia. The interview was pretty intense: a timed writing assignment, an individual interview where you have to 25 minutes to read a scenario and prepare a five- minute presentation to a panel of three interviewers, and a group interview where you have to work together with four other candidates to discuss the same scenario you were presented with in your individual interview and come to consensus on the group's position and then develop a five-minute presentation to the panel. Three interviewers observe this entire group process. I was selected as a finalist and attended the PMF job fair, which is held every April for that year's finalists. The job fair is a 2-1/2-day event that brings together the finalists and all the agencies in the federal government who are interested in hosting PMFs. Although OPM facilitates the opportunity for finalists and agencies to connect, the impetus is on the finalist to secure their own interviews and placements.
In preparation for the job fair, I researched those agencies I thought I might be interested in and came upon NIH, contacted them, and scheduled an interview, which took place during the job fair. The 25-minute interview was with a panel of three interviewers who asked behavior-based interview questions.
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