The importance of interview prep has been written on a lot. But what steps can you take to ensure you’re prepping the right information the right way so you can out-perform your competition?
That’s exactly the topic this blog covers. The idea actually came to me in a recent livestream I did on LinkedIn (I go LIVE weekly for #CareerTipTuesdays) when someone asked me “What’s the best way to prep for an interview?”
And 💥BOOM💥 all these ideas started just exploding in my head. So I thought, ‘Okay, that’s what the blog in April is going to be about.’
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As I see it, there are several different ways to prep for an interview better than your competition. Some of the most important are outlined here:
- Empowering Yourself
- Research Strategies
- Compiling Content
- Must Ask Questions
- Digital Considerations
Empowering yourself in the interview process
The absolute best way that you can make sure that you ACE your next interview is to up your confidence, leverage your value, and shift the power dynamic to put yourself on equal footing with your interviewer.
I had a really interesting conversation recently with a colleague, Anthony Vaughan, and he talked about that idea of shifting the power dynamic. Anthony works closely with job seekers on doing that prior to an interview, and it ties in really well with this empowerment topic.
It’s all about understanding that you have equal value. You’re on equal footing with your interviewer, and you get to choose whether or not you want that job just as much as they get to choose whether or not they want you for it.
In order to empower yourself and get into a place where you’re really harnessing your power, it takes some mindset work.
It’s a lot of retraining your brain to understand that the interview is a two-way street.
That’s the first thing I want you to remember about interviewing. It is just as much about you finding the right fit in the job as it is about them finding the right fit for the job.
Many job seekers come to me in this position where they feel powerless and they want to make themselves as appealing as possible to as many jobs as possible. They ask me questions like, ‘How do I make myself look good / sound good for this role?’
The first question I ask is, ‘Is this a role you’re really interested in or passionate about?’ Often, the answer is ‘No.’
It’s just that they’re in such a place of fear, that they’re less focused on what’s right for them and more focused on just getting a job.
And let me just say that if that’s truly the position you’re in, I wholeheartedly support you in getting a job, any job so you can put food on the table and pay your bills. But then keep going.
Keep up that job search until you find something that aligns with your values and priorities. And when you do find those types of jobs, remember this blog to help you keep your power in the hiring process.
Throughout the entire interview process, you can keep your power by remembering that it’s a two-way street, and you have just as much deciding power as they do.
Another way to harness your power is to keep in mind that by the time you get to the interview process – especially once you’re past that first initial screening – they want you to be the one.
Hiring and interviewing are complex. It’s an exhausting, time-consuming process, and everyone is happier when the person that goes in there is the right person.
With the rare exception of intentionally difficult interviews/interviewers, most of the time they’re rooting for you to knock it outta the park. It makes their job so much easier.
Truly.
They don’t want it to be an uncomfortable, awkward situation. They don’t want it to be a lost cause or a waste of their time. They want you to be the one.
So, keep your mindset in that power zone, make sure that you’re really leveraging the idea that you get to choose.
You get to be the decider.
Along with mindset work, you really want to balance that out with good prep work, because being well-prepared is another one of the best ways to optimize your power.
The rest of the topics in this blog are going to help make sure that you’re researching the right things and compiling the right content so you feel confident and at ease in the interview process.
This will help your interviews feel more like a conversation between two equally-footed professionals, and not a situation where they have way more power.
Research
When it comes to prepping for an interview, doing thorough strategic research is key to boosting your confidence and elevating you above your competition.
The first area of research you can focus on is to research the company.
For many job seekers, this research is done early-on in the job search process. This allows you to target specific companies you’re interested in, instead of relying on the companies who have jobs listed on LinkedIn or Indeed.
If you haven’t done the company research beforehand, then that’s where you want to start.
The first thing I recommend is just going straight to the company website. Just by doing this, you can get a good feel for what’s important to them and what’s important about the type of person they want to hire.
You can read through the home page, look for those large text statements on the homepage at the top or throughout that tell you about how the company wants to be perceived.
This will tell you how to set your mindset, to be sure that you’re answering questions in a way that speaks to their priorities.
It will also help you to decide whether or not this company is a good fit for you.
(Because, remember, you get to make decisions each step of the way. So just because you’re offered an interview, if you look into it and decide, ‘This is not the company for me’, you don’t have to take that interview.)
Doing this research, going to the website and just looking through their homepage can give you a little bit of a feel of the type of people they want working at the company and the type of people they want to hire.
You can also look at the About page, which can often be a way to find out some of these same things.
You can look at their Careers page, because a lot of times, aside from just having jobs listed, they will have some descriptions about the type of people they want to hire.
You can also look at their Media / Press / In the News page which will show you the types of things that company is putting out, because those are going to be things that they’re typically proud of and that are important to the company.
You can even look for any new developments going on for the company. Anything that will help you get a better feel for what type of person they want to hire.
All of this can help you figure out how you can present yourself as closely to that type of a person as possible.
Other sources of info include the company’s social media presence. Learn what subject matter they post about so you can get a better feel for topics of conversation and/or ways that you can align yourself with the company.
You can also just go straight to Google and do a Google search for the company’s name. You will often find pages from the actual company first, but if you go through to the second or the third page of search results from Google, you’ll start to see things that come from news outlets or press or or other 3rd parties.
All of this stuff is going to inform the way you answer interview questions.
It’s all about just finding as much as you can about the company that can potentially help you answer questions in the interview.
You can also look at online reviews for the company. Glassdoor.com is a really well-known website that has a section where actual employees from companies can come in and leave reviews about what it’s like to work there.
While this can be a great resource, always take reviews with a grain of salt – especially if you find just 1 that’s awesome and the rest are bad, or vice versa.
You really want to look at the bulk of what’s out there and get a feel for sort of the overall reviews that are coming in about the company.
You can also identify a competitive advantage or disadvantage that the company has by taking a look at their competitors in the space and seeing what you can find.
It can be a great way if you find a competitive advantage and come into the interview and able to say something like, ‘I’m really excited about this company, because I noticed they have a competitive advantage in blah, blah, blah…’
Immediately, the interviewer can tell you did your homework and looked into this company.
On the other hand, if you find a potential competitive disadvantage, this can be something that might help you to brainstorm ways that you can bring unique value to improve that area.
The next area to research is the role.
Get really familiar with the job description. Read through it several times to get a feel for what the most important skills and strengths are that they’re asking for, and also what type of person they’re trying to hire.
Often, there are words in the job description intended to describe both the technical aspects of the job and to describe the type of person they’re looking for.
Make sure that you really pay attention to both sides.
Researching the role also includes understanding salary expectations by looking up the average salary for that role in your area. The data you find should only be used as a guide, so be careful not to get too attached to any one salary figure you find in your research.
You can also research comparable roles in other companies to get a feel for their differences or similarities to the role that you were looking at.
Finally with research, you can research the people that you will be interviewing with.
You usually will get at least one name of someone you’ll be interviewing with, and hopefully you’ll get their job title/role, too.
You can use LinkedIn to research their background and look for similarities that you have or some other way you can show alignment with them or maybe flatter them in some way.
Anything you can do to set a positive rapport is going to be helpful.
All of this research goes to help you establish a foundation for success in the interview. If you do the proper research, it’ll all be sort of knocking around in your head when they’re asking questions and you can pull whatever you need to that benefits you in the moment.
Compiling Content
This is another really important piece of the preparation process.
Anybody can say that they have certain skills, but without proof, it really doesn’t mean much.
So, compiling effective content for your interview will help you showcase your skills and demonstrate their real-world applications.
The first piece of content I’ll recommend having (even though it will seem obvious as soon as I tell you) is your resume.
During the interview process, whether it’s in person, over the phone, or via video call – have you resume available to reference if you ever need to.
This is helpful if someone asks about something specific from your resume, because you can look back at those words on your resume and go, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I want it to say.’
This will help you to make sure you’re staying on brand and staying on message.
I also recommend to strategically stockpile stories.
This is a really helpful way to go beyond what your resume says and actually prove that you have the skills and/or experience the resume says you have.
If you have a short anecdote or example from a real experience in your career (even potentially in your personal life, depending on what it is), those stories can go so far in helping to demonstrate that, yes, you actually do have those skills and they have real-world applications.
Try to stockpile stories to go along with each of the main skills you highlight in your professional brand. This will help you stay on message and be prepared for as many interview questions or scenarios as possible.
You can even create a spreadsheet that aligns your stories with their relevant matching skills, to make it as easy as possible for you to prep for interviews. (This idea came from a recent client of mine, and I thought it was brilliant!)
Another piece of the stockpiling puzzle is a portfolio.
I’ve talked about this previously (it’s way #3 in 3 Ways to Level Up Your Job Search), so I won’t go too deep into it, But, basically a portfolio is a compilation of projects, achievements, successes, articles, or other specific content that helps demonstrate your skills and experience. It’s anything that further goes to demonstrate what you’ve done, and the fact that you do have the skills you say you have.
Finally, compiling effective content also includes practicing answering common interview questions.
While you’re not usually going to be able to predict what questions you get, but if you know some of the most common ones, you can practice answering those from the perspective of what you’ve learned from your research and make sure that you’re answering those questions in a way that really aligns with and speaks to the things you know company is wanting out of hiring someone.
Asking the Right Questions
Asking the right questions in an interview can go a long way in helping you to decide whether you want to work there.
It can also go a long way in helping the interviewer to better see your value.
It’s good to have a specific question or a couple of specific questions that really dig into the role itself that weren’t asked (or answered) during the interview.
Another thing to think about when it comes to asking questions is you can ask questions that subliminally tell the interviewer that you’re a serious candidate, and that you’re the type of person who goes above and beyond.
One great question you can ask is, ‘What are some of the core challenges of this role and what resources are available to help overcome them?’
The first half of this question helps you to get a read on what the challenges really are and whether or not you’re ready to meet those challenges.
The second half of the question is an excellent way to help you gauge what kind of company it is; are they the kind of company that helps provide resources to overcome challenges or are you just in it on your own and you gotta figure it out?
Another great question is, ‘What pains could I alleviate by coming on board?’
This question was shared with me by another colleague of mine, Kate Pozeznik. One of the things she mentioned about this question and about the interview process in general is that it’s sort of like selling, and part of that selling process often is bringing out the pain of the buyer and how you can help alleviate that pain.
So by asking this question, you’re basically putting the interviewer in the situation of having to sit in that pain and think about what it is that they’re struggling with because of not having someone in that role, which can be really helpful from the perspective of you, the candidate.
Another great question is, ‘What makes someone successful in this role?’
This answer will often will come down to personal soft skills or things that really are innate within a person, and that can help you figure out if that’s a good fit for you.
It also can just be helpful to hear that person describe those things and make sure that they’re hitting on things that are important to you. If they’re only talking about working overtime or dealing with high-stress, you can decide whether or not that’s a good fit.
Often it comes down to listening to what’s not being said or ‘reading between the lines’ that helps you assess them and also helps them assess you through this question-asking process.
Another really good question is, ‘What types of support and resources has the company aligned to employees since the beginning of COVID?’
Again, that’s helping you to understand whether or not this company is someone who cares about the employees or not.
You can also ask things like, ‘What does the company do to encourage diversity? And how does it support employees from marginalized social communities?’
If you have specifics, if you want to ask about the LGBTQ community and how they support that or how they support their BIPOC employees, all of these things are fully valid questions.
You have every right to ask them.
And if it’s important to you that you work for a company that values these things, then I would say it’s pertinent to ask this question, because that will give you the answer on that subject.
Beyond getting their answers to questions like this, you also want to do your own research and make sure they are walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
You can research who their leadership is to see if it’s diverse, you can research who’s on their board, you can research what types of community activities / support / initiatives they do, and then make sure that aligns with whatever answer they give you to that question.
In total, you should probably ask 3 to 5 questions. No more than that.
And you want to end it with a question about what the rest of the interview process looks like, what the next steps are, or when you should expect to hear from them.
This will, again, put you in the driver’s seat and give you the power to understand what the process is and/or what the next steps are.
For more insights about asking the right questions in interviews, check out this article from my Colleague Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill entitled, What the Questions you Ask in Interviews Reveal About You.
Digital Considerations
When it comes to digital considerations, you want to make sure technical difficulties don’t stand in your way, and that you can even use the technology to your advantage as much as possible.
For example, one of the aspects that I mentioned in the Compiling Content section of this blog is a portfolio. Many of you may be wondering how to showcase your portfolio during a virtual interview.
I think it depends on what platform you’re using, but there are definitely ways you can get some of this information in front of your interviewers.
For starters, you can mention at the beginning of the interview that you compiled some potentially helpful information for them and that you might refer to throughout the interview. You can ask if you are able to share your screen, or if you can send a quick email to them containing this content.
Another way to leverage technology during an interview to showcase unique content is a tactic that was first introduced to me by Austin Belcak, which is to create your own virtual background to use in Zoom (or other platforms) calls.
You can use Canva to create the digital background, and you can include major concepts or pieces of your brand right on the image. You can even match the colors in this image to any used in your resume, portfolio, or personal website.
(Remember not to add too much to the background image, because that will make things look busy. And avoid including any content in the space where your body will be.)
Another important factor with technology is to make sure you test it all ahead of time.
Even if you do test it all ahead of time, you may still have some technical difficulties, but at least you can say you did everything you could to prepare ahead of time.
And if technical difficulties do arise – try to stay calm! IT’s a great way to show how you perform under pressure. 😉
Another digital consideration is your lighting.
Some of the best advice out there says to find natural light as much as possible. So, if you’re able to set up in front of a window and the light is shining on your face, that’s fantastic.
If not, you just want to make sure there’s a lot of light (more than you probably think) to light your face, that you’re not too backlit (so you look like a silhouette), and that you don’t have a lot of shadows on you.
For your audio, you should consider your audio equipment, and also your surroundings / environment. If you are in a room that’s very ‘live’ (which means there are a lot of hard surfaces for the sound to echo and bounce off of), that could be distracting in your interview.
You may want to figure out a way to either pad parts of the room or find a different location so things aren’t so echo-y.
If you don’t have a virtual background you’re going to use, there’s a couple of things to think about in your actual background.
Mostly you want to make sure it’s not too messy or distracting. You also want to make sure there’s nothing ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unprofessional’ that would distract from you and the value you bring.
You want everything in your background to be a nice supplement to give a little visual intrigue, but that your interviewer can still really focus on you.
And finally, with your virtual interviews, you want to make sure that you are really emphasizing your interpersonal skills.
It is harder to make a connection virtually because you aren’t actually interacting with anyone in-person. It’s all just you in front of a camera and a computer screen.
So, you gotta learn to treat the camera like it’s a real person, because honestly there are real people on the other end.
As you’re practicing your interview, make sure you’re looking into the camera, make sure you’re smiling. If you’re a person who talks with your hands (like me), you can feel free to do a little bit of that, too. You don’t want to force yourself to sit too still and feel too stifled.
Make eye contact with the camera, pretend it’s someone you like.
I say that about in-person interviews, as well as looking at the camera for digital interviews. One of the things that has really helped me is to pretend that the person I’m talking to is someone I really like. I don’t think of a specific person, though you certainly could, if it helps you.
For me, it just helps to pretend there’s someone I like and get excited to see on the other side.
When I’m recalling those feelings of seeing a person that I really like, that makes me happy to be around, it can really make my smile more genuine and can make it feel warmer when I’m talking.
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