How to ace an interview » Science of Working

Show up as your best self and land the job!

Congratulations – you landed an interview! You prepped your materials, applied online and made it through the recruiting maze. Now is your chance to ace the interview, wow the interviewers with your skills and decide if you like the role.

In case you missed it, learn how to use the Start My Job Search Checklist, Prep for your Job Search and Create a Job Strategy.

Before any interview

Before your first interview, get your self ready by learning interviewing skills and planning your approach.

Learn behavioral interviewing

Anyone going into an interview should understand the behavioral interviewing approach. If you prepare for this type of interview, you will be prepared for almost any type of question.

Behavioral interviewing is a style of interview in which the interviewer asks you a series of questions and expects a specific kind of answer. They will ask you to talk about specific, real situations that you dealt with in your previous roles that highlight certain skills.

The queries might sound like: “Tell me about a time that you dealt with…” and refer to a situation with a difficult colleague or a time when you missed a deadline or you led a large project.

Use the STAR response for behavioral interviewing

Prepare your answers with the STAR response. Describe the Situation and Tasks. Explain your Actions and tell the Result of your actions. Be able to use the STAR response to describe scenarios in 2-3 minutes.

Prepare STAR responses for a variety of examples related to conflict management, leadership, getting results, building teams, and other common leadership competencies.

Even if your interviewer does not use behavioral interviewing, the preparation still benefits you. It forces you to think about scenarios from your past that demonstrate your strengths. You can use the same scenarios in any type of interview, and it prevents your mind from going blank in a moment of stress!

Practice interviewing

Refine your interviewing skills and get more comfortable answering questions through practice.

Find a friend or professional (through a career center or a career coach) and conduct mock interviews. Get feedback from your mock interviewer and evaluate yourself.

You’ll find things you want to improve or try differently. Do a couple mock interviews and you’ll find a pace and rhythm.

Some interview elements to practice include:

Practicing your STAR responses to behavioral interviewing questions.
Talking about yourself and finding the right balance of bragging and humility.
Describing your experience and education in a succinct way.
Explaining any resume gaps or career detours.
Demonstrating a series of jobs that led to successively more challenging and influential roles.
Explaining how your skills fit the job and company.
Highlighting what makes you unique and valuable as an employee and colleague.
Monitoring your energy level and body language.

Plan an interview outfit

Before your first interview, plan your interview outfit. This might seem minor, but sometimes interviews come up suddenly and you need to be ready. Otherwise you might spend a stressful night rushing around to buy what you need!

Your interview outfit might involve having the right kind of shirt or blouse to look appropriate in a zoom call for a virtual interview or having a full suit for an in person interview.

For some industries, casual dress is acceptable and expected. Think about the jobs outlined in your job search strategy and plan an outfit to fit them.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money, but you should be neat, clean and professionally appropriate.

Getting ready for a specific interview

When you get invited to an interview, you have some more work to do. It’s time for company research and generating your list of questions.

Research makes you look prepared and invested in the job. It also gets you ready to ask questions – you are interviewing them as a prospective employer as much as they are interviewing you!

Prepare your questions about the job

Before each interview, review the job description and generate specific questions about that role. Think about how your skills align with the job.

Remember, Step 2 of the checklist tells you to print and keep a copy of the job description. This is why.

Some questions to consider include:

What is the culture of the company and team?
What is the scope of the job?
What are the expectations for working hours and overtime?
Are there any changes in the works to this job or team?
What makes someone successful or unsuccessful in this job?

Research the job and company

You also want to research the company, so you sound educated and prepared.

Some company characteristics to research:

what the company does
how big it is
where it operates
who some of the senior leaders are
any major news announcements about the company
general reputation of the company.

By researching the company you demonstrate interest and attention to detail. That preparation helps you go in and do a great interview!

After the interview

Send Thank You emails

After an interview, send thank you notes via email or regular mail. This is a good follow up that reminds the interviewers about you.

Thank You notes matter a lot to some people and nothing to others.

Since you don’t know how your interviewers feel about them, take the time and send the notes.

Negotiate offers

You receive an offer! Now what?

When you get a job offer, carefully review the whole package and consider negotiating.

Employers expect you to negotiate. So, set your excitement aside and take a critical look at the offer presented.

Some things to review include:

how well the job matches the criteria you set in your job search strategy
can you live with any criteria that are not ideal?
look at the compensation – the base salary, sign on bonus, annual bonus, stock options
benefits – sometimes you can negotiate for things like the company paying for COBRA coverage until your new healthcare coverage starts
vacation time

As a candidate, you have the power to negotiate and get the compensation you deserve. Once you are an employee, you often lose your ability to negotiate, because your raises will be constrained by company-wide budgets.

This is an exciting time! Use the interview to showcase yourself and to determine how you feel about the job.

Good Luck!

Check out the entire Start My Job Search series

For an overview of job searching in 2021, read my article on HBR: 5 Tips to Help You Get Hired Right Now

For tactical tips, read the following articles:

Additional Resources for Interviewing

At Career Contessa, Rebekah Grmela helps you prepare for a video interview in How to Have a Successful Video Job Interview.

KFORCE breaks down the STAR method of behavioral interviewing in the article Top 5 Behavioral Interview questions to Know.

Alison Doyle at The Balance Careers writes How to Research a Company for a Job Interview.

Understand what salary to negotiate for with help from Payscale with their service What Am I Worth?

A version of this article was originally posted on startmyjobsearch.com which is no longer active.

How to ace an interview