Interview smarter, not harder.

Dreading the endless interview prep? Research overload, a mountain of behavioral stories, and hoping you remember them all? You're not alone. There's a better way to land your dream job, without the stress.

Principles:

  • You, your experiences, and your skills are what matter.

  • Understand the company culture and role, but avoid information overload.

  • Pivotable Stories: Prepare a few key experiences that can answer multiple questions.

A couple other things to keep in mind:

  • Being the interviewee is hard. So is being the interviewer.

  • Interviewers have many responsibilities and need to make quick decisions.

    Interviews are ultimately human interactions.

The most efficient way to prepare for interviews:

You’ve spent an unquantifiable number of hours gaining skills, building relationships, solving problems, and delivering value. To land your next role, you have 45 mins (or often less) to convince the interviewer that you’d be a great fit for the role. No pressure.

Not only do you only have a few minutes to convince the interviewer, the interviewer just came from an important meeting, they have an endless list of action items that aren’t being addressed and they need to pick up the kids from daycare in 2 hours.

So, what’s the best way to prepare:

  1. Be yourself; Show up relaxed

  2. Be genuine and authentic

  3. Do research, but not too much

  4. Don’t spend time building endless stories; Pick 5 or less.

Let’s unpack each one

Be yourself; Show up relaxed

Sounds easy, but how many times have you truly been yourself and shown up relaxed to an interview where you really wanted the job? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

When you sit down are you centered? How’s your breathing? Where are your shoulders? Are they touching your ears? How’s your mood? Are you feeling light and energized? Or tight and nervous?

How you show up is a big deal. You certainly want to feel prepared, but more than anything else, you need to be yourself and show up relaxed. An interview is a human interaction. If I was given the choice of being overly prepared and tight or under prepared and relaxed, I would take the latter all day.

Be genuine and Authentic

Have you noticed that we still haven’t covered any sort of “standard” prep advice. The next most important thing is to be genuine and authentic in your response. If you’re reading off a script, can’t talk about your interest in the role/company from the heart, or you can’t get through a story about your self without looking at your notes, the interview outcome is not going to go in your favor.

You’re talking about yourself after all. No one knows you or your experiences better. In fact, the interviewer likely has absolutely no idea what was happening in the behavioral stories you are covering. They are trying to answer the following questions:

  • Is this someone I can work with everyday

  • Can this person do the job

  • Will this person fit into the culture

Being yourself and authentic goes a long way in the interviewer answering in the affirmative for the important questions they need to answer.

Do research, but not too much

You should research the company and the role to understand what you’re signing up for. Using the company website is going to only say good stuff; Reading comments on Blind is only going to tell you bad stuff. How can you strike a balance?

  • Ask questions about the role, team, and culture during your time with the recruiter and with each interviewer. This will get you much closer to the truth.

  • Leverage your network to understand what the company is really like. These conversations are likely to get you much closer to the truth that what you’ll read online.

  • Listen carefully to everyone you meet during the interview process. It’s amazing how much of a companies culture comes through in small during interview conversations. Trust your gut on what you learn.

Don’t spend time writing endless stories; Pick 5 or less

We all love the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) method. And yes, you should answer behavioral questions using the STAR method. However, even if you are going to be interviewing with 5+ people, you shouldn’t prepare too many stories/examples. Instead, focus on a small number of truly impactful examples that can answer multiple questions.

For example, imagine in your last role you spent 6 months developing and implementing a new strategy for your organization. That’s super important and should absolutely be used in multiple interviews. You can use that story to answer a question about dealing with ambiguity, what you did when you disagreed with a decision, how you handled a difficult stakeholder, you get the idea…

The mental model should be: Here are the 3-5 things I’ve done. I know the work inside and out and regardless of the behavioral question, I can explain a portion of the major story that will sufficiently answer the question of the interviewer.

This works for 2 reasons:

  • These are huge pieces of work that you know so well. You don’t need to practice endlessly because you’ve lived these stories for weeks/months and know them for all sides

  • You will be relaxed in the discussion because you are only going to talk about the stories that you know best

  • You can answer an endless number of follow-up questions because you’re only focused on your top work stories

So What…

Embrace your authentic self, prepare strategically, and approach your interviews with confidence. You have the skills and experiences to succeed. Go land that job!

If you found this useful, let me know! I’d love to hear from you! Also, if you think a friend would benefit from these ideas, please feel free to share.