Most of the useful things I know about interviews were told to me by somebody else.
Over the years, I picked up bits of advice about how to prepare, what to rehearse, what not to memorize, what to do with the questions I really hoped nobody would ask, and how to stop sounding like I was composing a written submission while speaking. Some made sense immediately, whereas some I ignored until I eventually learned the same lesson the hard way. Some only became clearer after I’d sat on both sides of the interview table.
The thread running through almost all of it is simple: make fewer things novel on the day.
I’m not trying to memorize the interview. I want the opening to feel familiar, the experiences I might use to be familiar, the uncomfortable questions to have crossed my mind before, and even the act of sitting there and thinking under pressure to feel slightly less new. Then I’ve got more attention left for the part I can’t rehearse: actually listening to the people in front of me and responding to what they ask.
I’m also assuming the basic homework here. So one would obviously understand the role, the organization and what it’s dealing with. For a presentation, it’s about knowing your own deck. But the more useful part to me is what happens thereafter.
Saying the answers out loud
The biggest thing for me is saying the answers out loud because it’s very easy to sit somewhere thinking:
Yes yes, I know how I’ll answer that.
Then somebody actually asks the question and somehow I spend four minutes explaining the background before getting anywhere near the answer that sounded so good inside my head.
I’ve caught this many times. Something that feels concise while I’m thinking it becomes ridiculously long once I hear myself say it, and a beautiful sentence I wrote down can sound like a submission when it comes out of my mouth, because nobody talks like that.
So I talk to myself quite a lot before an interview. I’ll walk around the room saying an answer again, stop halfway because it sounds stupid, restart it, and eventually land on something that actually sounds like me.
Remembering the shape of the answer
I sometimes write an answer out first because writing helps me think. Once I start practicing, I care more about the rough shape and the experiences I might use. Sometimes there’s also a line or two I like enough to remember.
Memorizing a whole paragraph falls apart as soon as the interviewer asks something slightly different, which they obviously will. Then I end up forcing a prepared answer into a question it doesn’t fit.
The same experience can be useful in very different ways. A difficult project might come up when somebody asks about leadership, then the useful part may be the disagreement I had with someone, a mistake I made, the trade-off we chose, or what I regret and would do differently now. I want to know the experience well enough to talk about the part that actually answers what they asked.
Saving the mirror for the bigger ones
For most interviews, saying the answers aloud is enough for me. The mirror comes out when the interview feels especially consequential, or when I’m rusty enough that I want to see what I actually look like while answering.
I did this particularly for one of my applications eons ago. There were a few interviews in that process with some panel interviews, and I practiced those in front of a mirror a lot. Tbh I found it to work well for me, or at least I thought it did. By the time I got into the actual interview, I’d already seen myself say the answers enough times that the whole thing felt much less foreign.
I can see it being useful when you’re pretty new to interviews too, because you pick up your habits quickly. Once you know what you look and sound like, the mirror can go back to being a mirror.
Recording, unfortunately
Recording is another thing I bring out for the bigger interviews, and I hate watching myself on video, which is probably part of why this works so well.
You discover a lot of weird things you do without realizing it. I slouch and sometimes suck in through my nose for no reason when I’m thinking. There are random nervous tics, shifting around in the chair, looking away at odd moments, and other stuff that feels totally normal while I’m doing it and looks distracting when I watch it back.
Then there’s all the verbal junk: “errrr”, “erm”, “basically”, “actually”, “well”, and whatever else I apparently say while my brain catches up. I say some of these much more than I realize, and if every second answer starts with “well” or I keep saying “basically” while thinking, it gets very obvious on a recording. Basically, if I keep saying basically, then basically I’ve got a problem.
Once I notice something, I can work on it. I sit a bit straighter, look more settled, and let myself pause for a second instead of immediately filling the silence with “errrr”. A two-second pause feels much longer when you’re the one being interviewed than it does to everybody else in the room.
Recording also exposes how long the answers really are. If I thought I gave a quick response and the video says I’ve been talking for four minutes, okay, apparently it wasn’t that quick.
Rehearsing the first few lines
The start of an interview is usually the point where I’m most conscious that I’m being interviewed. Once the conversation gets going, I tend to settle down and it feels much easier.
So I rehearse the first few lines more than the rest. I think about how I’ll introduce myself, what I might say if they start with some version of “tell us about yourself”, and roughly how I want that first answer to begin. For a presentation, it’s the opening and how I’m going to frame the thing I’m there to talk about.
I won’t memorize a 2 min speech (that’s too robotic alrady), but I’ll practice the opening disproportionately hard. I want the first minute or two to feel familiar enough that I know where I’m going, without sounding like I’m reciting something.
Once those first couple of minutes are out of the way, I’ve settled down, and then I can stop performing the prep and start having the conversation.
Mentally playing through the whole interview
This part sounds slightly weird when I explain it, but I find it useful. I picture the whole thing beforehand, including the boring and awkward parts. I imagine arriving, walking into the room, greeting everybody, sitting down, hearing the first question, getting asked something difficult, pausing because I need to think, and eventually reaching the end and walking out again.
If it’s online, I do the same with joining the call, watching everyone appear on screen and waiting for somebody to start.
I think of it as the nerdier office-worker version of what athletes do when they visualize a competition. The whole event feels a little more familiar when it actually happens, which helps because there’s already enough going on in my head without also processing every part of the experience as new.
Rehearsing screwing up too
What I run through in my head isn’t a perfect interview where I answer everything beautifully and leave to imaginary applause. I think about what happens when something goes wrong too.
Maybe:
- Somebody asks something I genuinely didn’t anticipate
- I start an answer and realize halfway through that I’ve gone down the wrong path
- I know I could have answered the previous question much better
- My mind just goes completely blank.
Presentations have their own versions:
- There’s an obvious typo (worse if it’s on the 2nd slide (gg wp))
- I lose my place
- Somebody challenges me on an assumption I hadn’t considered
- Discussion goes somewhere strange (this happens ALOT)
- Slide that seemed obvious at home suddenly needs much more explanation in the room
If my mind goes blank, I can pause. If I don’t know, I can say I haven’t dealt with that exact situation and reason from what I do know. If I realize an answer is going nowhere, I can stop digging, reset and answer the actual question. If I think later that I answered something badly, I can correct it briefly if a natural opening appears instead of spending the next 10 mins trying to manufacture one.
I mean, you already shat the bed, no point crying over it, and definitely don’t show vulnerability in front of people who are trying to assess you. DO NOT announce that I’m nervous, apologize three times, visibly replay the mistake in my head, or let one lousy answer contaminate the next five. Quite often the panel has already moved on. In a presentation, the room may barely register a stumble that feels enormous to me.
Some questions are predictable
There will always be questions I didn’t expect, but interviews have enough predictable bits that I can think through the obvious ones beforehand. You can normally anticipate quite a lot from the role, your own experience and what the organization is dealing with.
For a leadership interview, I might think through questions like:
- Why do I want this role?
- What experience do I have that is particularly relevant?
- What difficult situation have I dealt with, and what did I actually do?
- What have I got wrong before?
- How do I deal with disagreement, especially with somebody senior?
- What’s my leadership style look like in practice?
- What’s likely to be difficult about this role?
- What’d I do differently if I encountered a similar situation again?
Preparing for the questions nobody wants to ask
This is probably the more useful part of the prep because if there’s a weak part of my experience, something that went badly, an awkward decision I made or an obvious question hanging over a project, I’d rather wrestle with it at home than discover my answer while several people are staring at me.
I do the same thing with presentations. I look at the deck and ask where my evidence is weakest, which recommendation is likely to annoy someone, whether I’ve quietly made an assumption that somebody senior will spot immediately, and which slide I’m praying nobody asks the obvious follow-up about.
It’s quite comforting when the difficult question eventually appears and I realize I’ve already fought with some version of it before. I may still need to think because the question will rarely be identical, but at least I’m not starting from zero.
Getting the key message right
Before I practice anything, I need to know what I’m actually trying to get across. For an interview, what are the two or three things I want them to understand about me by the end? For a presentation, what’s the one conclusion or decision I need the room to leave with? If I can’t state that cleanly to myself, practicing the delivery isn’t going to fix it.
The panel controls the questions, and I still go in knowing the things about me or my experience that I hope they walk away understanding. I’ve definitely left conversations before and thought:
Shit, we never talked about that at all.
So now I’ve a few things in my head that I hope surface somewhere. I still answer the question they actually asked, and if there’s a natural opening to bring in an experience that matters, I use it.
I do the same with big presentations. If everybody forgets most of the deck by tomorrow morning, which they probably will, I should at least know what I hope survives.
Some things only real interviews can teach
This is one piece of advice I wish I’d followed more consistently: do more real interviews before the one you desperately care about.
I wouldn’t interview for random jobs I’d never take just to practice. But there’s something to be said for going for roles I could genuinely see myself taking, even if they’re not the one I’ve already built up in my head as The Important One.
I don’t interview often, so an important interview can also become the day I’m shaking off the rust, which isn’t ideal.
All the rehearsal helps, but it doesn’t reproduce the weirdness of sitting opposite people who are actually deciding whether they want you. Real interviews have awkward pauses, questions you misunderstood, a panel member whose face gives you absolutely nothing, and answers that wander somewhere you didn’t expect before you have to find your way back.
Preparing the final question too
There’s one question I can almost guarantee will appear in some form:
Do you have any questions for us?
I always want something ready. It should be something I actually care about, because otherwise the question feels performative. I also avoid anything I could have answered by reading the organization’s website. The questions I like most tend to get the panel talking about what the job’s really going to be like.
One I like is:
What do you think will be the hardest problem for the person coming into this role?
I genuinely want to hear the answer because it tells me something about what I might be walking into. There’s also a nice side effect because sometimes somebody turns it around and asks me what I think, or how I’d approach the problem, which is basically a free extra interview question on something I already thought about before I entered the room.
Know when to stop
Sometimes the panel answers my question, thanks me and starts wrapping up, so I let the interview end there.
Please don’t reply:
Oh actually, can I tell you what I think about that?
If there’s a natural opening in the conversation, I’ll engage with it and see where it goes. If everybody is obviously trying to end the interview, adding a bonus five-minute sales pitch is probably not going to save anything.
Prep helps me sound more like myself
Someone once asked whether I remain my “true authentic self” during interviews or put on a different image. I think I’m still myself, obviously with a stronger filter than when I’m having lunch with my friends. I know I’m being assessed, so I choose my words more carefully and suppress some of the stupid shit I might otherwise say.
My views stay mine though. If I’ve got a strong view about something relevant, I’d rather explain what I actually think and why. Whoever hires me will meet the real version eventually, and I’ve got to work there, so successfully hiding everything inconvenient about me for an hour doesn’t seem particularly useful to either side.
Prep helps cos the first version of an honest answer can be rubbish. I might ramble, bury the point under five caveats, give way too much background or take forever to work out how I want to say it. Practicing means I’ve already gone through some of that mess before the interview.
Once I’m comfortable with my own material, I also have more attention left for the people in front of me. I can listen properly, shorten an answer when they clearly get it, go deeper when somebody seems interested, and change direction when the question isn’t what I expected.
Big presentations are the same problem with a different shape
I prepare for important presentations in much the same way, especially the ones where I expect disagreement after the deck ends.
The slides themselves worry me less because I control them and know what comes next. The discussion is where everybody else gets to take the conversation somewhere I didn’t plan, so I spend quite a lot of time preparing for that part too.
I practice the presentation aloud and listen for the bits that feel strange to say. I think about who’s likely to disagree, where the argument feels weakest, which assumption could get attacked, and what question I really hope nobody asks.
I also want to be clear about what I actually need from the room. What decision am I asking people to make? Who’s likely to hesitate? What are they likely to care about? I can deliver the deck perfectly and still fail if I answer the question I wanted to discuss instead of the one the room actually needs resolved.
Sometimes the hardest part is simply saying the difficult sentence in the room. Imagine people have spent years supporting an existing approach and my slide effectively says:
We recommend stopping the existing approach because the evidence no longer supports it.
That sentence looks perfectly reasonable sitting here in a blog post. It feels quite different when there’s history behind the decision, people have invested themselves in it and everybody is now looking at me.
Conclusion
None of the things written above are secret, they were passed down to me over time by bosses, mentors, or in articles I read. Now they’re yours! GL HF.