I had always dreamed of participating in the Disney College Program after growing up in a family that took trips to Disney World every year. The program is an amazing opportunity to work for the company and the best way to begin a full-time career at Walt Disney World. The program is extremely competitive, and there is an extensive application and interview process that participants must go through. The first step is filling out an application. There is minimal information required for the application, but the most important part is the work experience. When describing my previous jobs, I used key words that I knew Disney would be looking for. I referred to customers as "guests," which is how cast members are told to refer to everyone that comes to visit the parks, and I used Disney's four keys: safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency, to describe my responsibilities. These applications are checked by a computer system that looks specifically for key words, so using Disney's four keys will almost guarantee that you will move on to the second process.
Another important part of this first application is choosing the roles you are interested in. You can select high, moderate, low or no interest in each role, and if no interest is selected, then they will absolutely not put you in that role. While it is great that Disney lets you prevent them from placing you in roles you don't want, putting no interest in too many roles makes it more difficult for them to place you somewhere and it can increase your chances of getting into the program. There are tons of roles to choose from, but a lot of them are only given to a small amount of DCP participants. When choosing which roles I was interested in, I looked at each role and asked myself; "would I rather do this role or not do the program at all?" This helped me figure out which roles I truly wanted. Another mistake that I made was thinking that low interest meant no interest. I thought that I was more likely to get my high interest roles, and was disappointed when I was cast in one of my low interest roles, merchandise. It is important to be prepared to be cast in a low interest role, because it does happen very regularly.
After filling out the initial application, you move on to the web-based interview. This can either come immediately after sending in the application, months later, or any time in between. It is completely random when you get moved on to this stage, or when you stop being considered. I got my web-based interview two weeks after submitting my application. The WBI is an online exam that is used to help Disney figure out more about your values and how you are as a worker. Each question is timed so that you only have a few seconds to answer each one. This felt a lot like a psych test to me, and it was probably the most stressful part of the application process. It is difficult because you have to think fast, and you don't know how well you're doing until the end. When you've completed all of the questions, it tells you immediately if you've passed or failed. If you passed, you are prompted to schedule a phone interview. If you fail, then you are no longer in consideration for the Disney College Program.
I scheduled my phone interview for one week after by WBI. To prepare for the interview, I looked up previous questions and thought about my answers. I watched tons of YouTube videos of previous participants doing their phone interview so I could hear exactly how it would sound. I also had my friends ask me questions so that I could practice answering questions on the spot. Then, I wrote post-it notes of some answers to potential questions I could be asked, and stuck them on the wall I would be facing during my interview. I actually didn't end up looking at them at all during the interview, but it did help that I had practiced prior because most of the questions asked were questions that I was prepared for. My interview was only about 10 minutes long, and I worried that the guy who interview me didn't like me because he wasn't as excited about me or interested in talking for a long time as I had seen in interviews that I watched on YouTube. However, I felt confident in all my answers and was pretty sure that I would be accepted. When I was interviewed, I got asked a lot about how I would react to certain situations, and the main role that I had gotten asked about was merchandise, even though it wasn't one of my high-interest roles. After talking to friends that I made on the program about their interview, I realized that the role that they ask you most about is probably the role you are going to get, as that is the one that they are casting at that moment.
Two weeks after my phone interview, I was accepted for merchandise. This was my first time applying to the program, and the entire application process took about a month in total.
