Nailing The Interview
Introduction
It is an inconvenient truth that while strong interviewing skills can sometimes make the difference between an offer and a rejection email, few of us are masters of interviewing. This is not our fault. Unlike our chosen profession, we are not honing this skill routinely through practice and research. But it would be a tragedy if you were well qualified and a good fit for an opportunity only to miss out because you just didn’t communicate that effectively in the interview.
In this article I will explain everything you need to know to nail the first interview. We will start with the fundamentals, that interviewing is about assessing fit and effective communication of knowledge. Next, we will cover the philosophy of effective interviewing: Confidence Through Preparation, Synchronization, Counter Interviewing, and Selling Yourself. I will then go through all the common parts of an interview, what to expect, how to prepare, and how to execute. By the end, you should have a comprehensive understanding of how to nail the first interview that will ensure you maximize your chances to land your next dream job.
Fundamentals
Finding Fit and Effective Communication are the two core elements necessary for successful interviewing. Simply put, both the company and the candidate want to discern if this opportunity will be a strong, long term fit, and to do that, good communication will be essential.
Interviewing Is About Fit
While we may often think of the job interview as simply assessing the ability to do a job, aspects outside of the candidate’s skill set need to be considered to ensure a good fit. Additionally, assessing fit is a two way street: not only does a candidate need to bring the skills and abilities to the table that a company needs, but a good job opportunity needs to fit the candidate’s goals as well. Ultimately, if there is a good fit from both sides, this is much better for companies as hires will be more productive with longer tenure, and for candidates, as they will be more satisfied in their work.
Good Hires Fit on Multiple Dimensions
What is important to consider here is that ability to do a job is not the only predictor of success. Not only does a company need someone capable of the work, but ideally fits with the work environment and culture. A good candidate might also need soft skills like communication, organization, or ability to think creatively and take risks. Experienced hiring teams know these other elements of fit are important to assess to make a successful hire, so make sure to figure out what these are and be ready to talk about them.
Candidate’s Goals Need to be Considered
A good fit for both company and candidate will mean more productive, happier, and longer tenured employees, so it would make sense that interviewers need to understand what a candidate is looking for in their ideal next opportunity during the interview process. Just like you would want a romantic relationship with a partner who cares about what you want, you should be looking for a company that cares about your goals and helps you achieve them. Good hiring teams will really care about what you want in a role and it should be a red flag if they don’t.
Knowing What You Want
Considering a good interviewer will ask about what you are looking for, you should have a good answer to this question. Not only so you can nail the interview, but for many other reasons, not least of which is that having a clear goal for what you want means you will be much more likely to find the job you actually want!
Knowing what you want from your career is so important, I wrote a whole article about it called Solving The Work Problem. I would highly recommend you read it if you are new to this concept as I think this is the very first step to a successful career search and it will be hard to do well through any interview process without understanding what you are looking for first.
Good Hires Have Long Tenure
Another benefit of finding a good fit between a company and a candidate is longer tenure. If a recruiter hires a candidate, but they leave in a few months, the company has probably lost productivity in the time and energy spent interviewing, onboarding, and training that hire. And with long tenure, employees can become deep subject matter experts and drive value in ways that consultants, or more recent hires cannot. Bottom line, you want to find a role you can see yourself at for a long time.
Knowledge But Also Communication
We might have the skills, abilities, and experience necessary for a position, but if we can’t communicate that qualification to the interviewer, it won’t matter. This means that not only knowledge of your work, but also the ability to communicate that knowledge effectively is essential to successful interviewing. There is really not much more to this idea, it just comes down to proper execution, which is what this article is about! Most of the following points in the philosophy of interviewing are meant to improve your ability to communicate and sell yourself as a strong fit.
Philosophy
Here I will cover the philosophy that underlies an effective approach to interviewing. If you understand these concepts, you should be able to answer many of the “how to” questions yourself.
Confidence Through Preparation
We all get a bit nervous when we need to perform under pressure and interviews are no exception. Important to any successful performance is finding a way to quiet those nerves and there is no better way to do this than preparation. The more we research, strategize, and practice, the more confident we will be in our ability to perform. And while the content of your answers is important, a confident demeanor will also go a long way to convincing your interviewer that you know what you are talking about. My hope is that this article will give you a comprehensive understanding of what to expect and how to prepare such that you can go into your next interview with confidence.
Synchronization
Having a conversation is like dancing with a partner. Good dancers know how to find a mutual rhythm, respond to each other's moves, and show off their abilities. An interview is no exception. But instead of a casual conversation with a friend, an interview has a clear purpose to share and obtain specific information. And since the interviewer knows what they are looking to cover in the interview, you can think of the interviewer as the lead in the dance. As the interviewee, your job is to pick up on their lead and do your best to synchronize with their rhythm and respond to their moves.
To this end, let the interviewer drive the interview. Do not jump right into telling them your back story or suggest what to talk about. The interviewer knows what they need to ask, what information they need to cover, and will want to move efficiently through it all. Keep your answers succinct and to the point. If need be, an interviewer can always ask for more information, so it is better to err on the side of brevity than to risk rambling. This also means focus your answer to what was asked. If you work in a bunch of superfluous information that wasn’t asked for, this often wastes time and shows poor communication skills. One of the biggest red flags for an interviewer is a candidate who hijacks the interview, rambles on their answers, and doesn’t really answer questions. Find a good conversational rhythm, and let the interviewer lead.
Counter Interviewing
As I mentioned earlier in fundamentals, interviewing is about fit, but it is important that this goes both ways. Just as much as the company is assessing your candidacy, the interview process is your opportunity to learn about the company as well, both by listening to how the interviewer sells the opportunity and from the answers to the questions that you ask. This means it is important to know what you are looking for coming into the interview. Any questions that don’t get answered naturally you should make a point to ask.
This philosophy of counter interviewing is important for two reasons. First and most obvious is you should want to be selective about the company you accept an offer from. While we might not always have the luxury of being picky, especially early in a career, it is often better to say no to an offer from a bad company and continue your search, than to end up in a bad situation at a bad company. A company that is not exciting, doesn’t have a strong interview process, or doesn’t sell itself well is probably going to have trouble attracting top talent. If you are not impressed by your interview process, neither will other candidates. And if a company can’t impress, the candidates they hire might not make for the best coworkers.
The second reason is that selectivity sends a strong positive signal to the interviewer. By being selective, you signal you are both thinking critically about your career, which is a strong indication of good problem solving skills, and you are implying that you have other options to choose from. Interviewers take this as a signal you are a good candidate who they will have to compete with other companies to successfully hire.
Selling Yourself
One of my favorite pieces of sales wisdom is that “people don’t buy products, people buy people.” In the case of interviewing, no matter how qualified you might be for the role, if you rub the interviewer the wrong way, you might find yourself receiving a rejection email. It is important that you are personable, pleasant, and positive. If the interviewer enjoys speaking with you and sees you as someone they want to work with, this will increase your chances of landing an offer. Ideally, companies are assessing based on ability, but in a close battle with other qualified candidates, personability and a good connection can go a long way to helping you stand out.
The Interview
Now that we understand the fundamentals of an interview and the philosophy behind our approach, next I will break down all the parts of an interview and how to approach these specifically. Not all interviews will touch on every part and it might not be in this order, but if you read through this list, nothing in the interview should be a surprise. Plus, an ideal interview covers all of the following parts and if your interview leaves anything out, you know to ask.
Small Talk
Every interview typically starts with some small talk. Besides establishing you are personable, having strong communication skills, and can make a good first impression, small talk is a chance to give the interviewer a glimpse of you as more than just a candidate. Whatever they ask, you can usually slip in a brief mention of a hobby, interesting book, or fun plans you have for the weekend. It is not that you need to start a whole conversation, but even a short chat about a mutual hobby or a good restaurant recommendation can really help sell yourself as multidimensional and build rapport.
Overview
A good recruiter will always take a little time at the beginning to lay out the plan for the interview so you have a good sense of what to expect. This is a bit of a courtesy and shows that the interviewer is organized, but is also helpful for you to get a sense of what needs to be covered and how the interview will flow.
Discussing Interest and Fit
Typically one of the first questions a good recruiter will ask is something along the lines of “Why did you apply to our company?” or “What are you looking for in your next opportunity?” Just like a good salesperson figures out the needs of their client before selling them a product, a good recruiter should figure out the interests of their candidate before trying to sell them on a role. This way, the recruiter knows what is important to the candidate and can make sure to cover those topics when they talk about the opportunity.
I know I have expressed this idea multiple times already, but I want to emphasize that your answer to this question is one of the single most important answers of the interview. Your career is something you should care about and that effort should come across in the level of detail for your reasons for being interested in the role. The effort you put into your career search is typically a strong indication of the effort you will put into your work. So a weak answer is not a strong signal for a hard and thoughtful employee.
Selling the Company and The Role
Typically early on in the interview, the recruiter will give a pitch on their company and the position. The idea here is that every recruiter is just as much a salesperson as they are an assessor. If you want to land the best candidates, you need to get them excited about your company so you should always have a great pitch for why the company is awesome and why they should be a part of your team. If you find the pitch weak, it might be a sign that the company is not great. And as we talked about in counter interviewing, you can infer that a bad interview process means a smaller chance the company is hiring top talent.
You can also learn a lot from what the recruiter says while they are selling the company and the role. Are they focusing more on company fundamentals or work culture? Are they selling it as a great place to learn or a place to tackle interesting problems? This is also a good time to be aware of any questions that come to mind you can ask later.
Your Career History
It is typical in the first interview for the interviewer to ask you to tell them a little bit about yourself or walk you through their resume. When going through your story, it is important to be clear and succinct and progress chronologically from past to present. Important elements to talk about are what pulled and pushed you from and to opportunities, your responsibilities, achievements, and growth at each stage, and the goals you followed along the way.
The idea is to show progression toward a goal through your education and career, and it is common for this goal to change as you learn and experience more about the job market and update what you are looking for. Push and pull should reveal what you like about job opportunities and what you don’t. Your achievements, responsibilities, and growth should communicate to the interviewer the type of work you were doing and your proficiency.
Considering how much information is embedded in a career walkthrough, it is essential to know what you are going to say and practice it beforehand if you want to really nail it in the interview. I suggest keeping your story to somewhere between 2-3 minutes. If it goes on too long, and gets too much in detail, that can be a bad sign you either didn’t prepare or you are not very aware of the importance of an efficient answer.
A few tips to consider when walking through your career history: First, it is ok for your story to have failures and mistakes. The important thing is you own it and show how you learned from it. Second, don’t talk about other peoples’ failures. If you had a bad boss, talk about how you learned to more effectively deal with the situation, not complain about it. There is no bigger turn off than a date complaining about an ex, and the same idea applies to recruiting. Finally, it is ok and even expected for you to talk about your achievements, but always be humble. Don’t try to be pushy or oversell yourself. You are looking for fit and the best fit will happen when you are most honest about who you are and what you can do. If you are clear about your strengths and your weaknesses, the job that accepts you will do so because you really are a good fit.
In the service of assessing fit, it is a good practice to wrap up your story with a few sentences of what you are looking for in your future opportunities if you haven’t already. As a recruiter, I want to make sure what we are offering in the role aligns with what the candidate is looking for. I also want to see that the candidate is well oriented and realistic in their goals. If they are early in their career and talking about the importance of having a big impact and don’t mention learning, to me, that means they are not well oriented.
Questions
After you share your work history, the recruiter will usually get into the questions they need to cover. As we talked about earlier in synchronization, you will want to give clear and efficient answers to the recruiter's questions, erring on the side of being too short, and let them ask you follow up questions if they want to go into more detail. Most of these questions will be focused around further explaining your interests, goals, work history, or knowledge of your work.
When answering questions, if you have to take a little time to think about the question, that is completely acceptable. In that case, you can either ask for a little time to collect your thoughts, or try thinking out loud. I would say something like “That’s a good question. Off the top of my head, I would expect x because of reasons y and z.” Basically explain your logic and reasoning as you work through the problem. There is nothing wrong about not immediately knowing an answer, and you can even backtrack once you said something if you think it is wrong after you think about it. The important thing in this case is how can you think your way through the question.
One good trick is to finish your answers with a single sentence summary. “So X, Y, and Z are the reasons I think Q.” This will help your answer really hit home and make the interviewer feel like you are making a clear effort to answer their question directly.
Logistics
As you near the end of the interview, the recruiter should start to cover some of the logistics around the role and the recruiting process. These include things like expectations for being in the office, working hours, travel, availability off the clock, compensation, and a summary of what the rest of the interview process looks like and how long it will take. Let me dive a little into some of these that require a little more explanation.
Compensation
Compensation can be a bit of an elephant in the room, but the more experienced I have gotten as a recruiter, the more I feel like it is important to make sure budget and expectations are roughly aligned in the first interview. If the recruiter doesn’t talk about compensation, I would encourage you to simply ask “what is the budget for this role?” If they won’t say, you have every right to politely push. Tell the recruiter you want to make sure there is alignment and just need a rough range to get an idea before commiting more time.
Negotiating compensation is not easy, and there is a lot of knowledge out there if you want to be prepared and give yourself the best chance to land the best offer possible. I would recommend starting with Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.
Interview Process Timeline
A recruiter should always give you an idea of what the rest of the interview process looks like and how long it should take. This is important so if they don’t tell you, you should ask. Apart from it being considerate of your time and giving you visibility into the process, there are two points I want to make about this.
As far as the interview process, it should give you the chance to meet enough of the team and learn enough about the company to make an informed decision on whether this is a job you want to take. Remember that a company needs to sell just as much as assess and you should feel entirely justified in requesting a chance to chat with more people if you think it will help you make a decision.
In regards to timeline, your ideal career search strategy is to interview at multiple companies and get all the offers around the same time so you can compare and choose the best one. As soon as possible, you want to have clarity around when each process will wrap up and ask recruiters to speed up or slow down processes so you can wrap them up together. Good recruiting teams are used to doing this for strong candidates and it is just a matter of communicating. You do not want to find yourself in a situation where you feel like you have to take your first offer because it will expire before you recieve offers from other companies.
Your Questions
At some point in every interview, the interviewer should ask you if you have any questions for them. As we talked about in counter interviewing, you should have a clear idea of what you are looking for in your next opportunity and your questions should be aimed at discovering if this company is a good fit for you.
Recruiters will also assess you by the questions you ask. Being selective and asking questions that are important to you shows that you take the question of fit seriously and have high standards. I highly recommend avoiding cliche questions like “what do you like about your company” as this often comes across as a filler question and might indicate a lack of good questions.
Wrap Up
At the end of the call, you should have a good understanding of the role, the company, and next steps. I would recommend thanking the interviewer for their time, confirming that you are still interested and excited about the role, and clearly state your understanding of the next step to make sure you are on the same page.
Conclusion
So if you want to really nail the interview, be prepared to talk about why you are a fit, learn how the opportunity is a fit for you, and make sure to communicate clearly. The better you can talk to fit and explain your work experience, the more likely the interviewer will see that fit in the interview.
I hope you found this information helpful. I am an avid believer in always seeking to improve my ideas and would sincerely appreciate any feedback or thoughts. I plan on writing more about the recruiting process and will certainly use that feedback to improve and decide what topics I will try my hand at next. And please feel free to reach out if you have any questions! I am always happy to share what I know to those who are curious enough to ask.
