How to Prepare for a Job Interview

The first ten minutes carry about half of it

I have spent about ten years in HR and recruitment, and if I am honest about how these conversations actually go, roughly half the decision is made in the first ten minutes.

That is not a comfortable thing to admit and it is not how anyone would design a fair process. People do recover. Someone can turn a slow start around with one genuinely good answer later, and someone can talk themselves out of a job they had already won. But the battle is mostly fought early.

What wins those minutes is not polish. It is honesty and personality. An enormous number of people come through the process, and for better or worse the ones I remember are the ones who were distinctly themselves, not the ones who performed the smoothest version of a candidate.

The question that sorts people fastest

One line of questioning separates candidates more quickly than anything else I ask. It usually runs something like: what do you do when you are under pressure, how should the people around you be able to tell, and how should they help you.

It is really three questions wearing one coat. The first is about behaviour. The second is about whether you can see yourself from the outside. The third is about whether you can ask for what you need before things go wrong.

You do not need a heroic answer here. You need a true one. Something specific about how you behave when the load goes up, what that looks like from the outside, and what actually helps when it does.

What is actually being scored

Most candidates prepare as if an interview rewards the most impressive-sounding answer. In a structured process, each question maps to a specific competency, whether communication, ownership or judgement under pressure, and the interviewer is listening for clear evidence of it, not polish.

That reframes what "a good answer" means: not the best-told story, but the one that hands the interviewer a specific, verifiable example of the exact thing they are assessing.

STAR: a structure for any answer

STAR works because it forces specificity, which is the one thing a vague answer always lacks.

1. Situation: one or two sentences of context. What was happening, and why did it matter?
2. Task: what were you specifically responsible for?
3. Action: what did you actually do. Spend the most time here; most candidates rush past it.
4. Result: what happened because of it. Quantify where you honestly can; describe the concrete outcome where you cannot.

Prepare four to six stories before any interview, each flexible enough to answer several questions. A strong story about resolving a conflict can usually also cover communication, difficult feedback, or pressure. You do not need a unique story for every possible question.

The questions no one warns you about

• "Tell me about a time you failed." The trap is a fake-humble non-failure ("I work too hard"). Pick something real, own it plainly, spend most of the answer on what changed afterward.
• "Why is there a gap in your CV?" Answer directly and briefly, then move on. Over-explaining is more uncomfortable than the gap.
• "What is a weakness of yours?" Same principle: a real weakness with evidence you are managing it, not a disguised strength.
• "Tell me about a conflict with a manager." This checks maturity and self-awareness, not who was right. Show you understood their side, not just yours.
• Silence after you finish. Some interviewers pause deliberately to see if you keep talking and undercut yourself. If you have answered, it is fine to let the silence sit.

What to prepare in advance

• Research beyond the homepage: recent news, the product, who you are meeting if you know their names, how the role fits the company's broader goals.
• Four to six STAR stories covering achievement, conflict, failure, initiative, and pressure.
• Three to five questions to ask them, genuinely useful ones rather than ones the website already answers.
• For video interviews: test camera, microphone, and lighting the day before, not five minutes before.
• Arrive, or log on, five to ten minutes early. Not more, because excessive earliness puts pressure on their schedule too.

The assessment stage

A growing share of processes include a cognitive test, a situational judgement test, or a personality assessment. In most cases it does not run before anyone has spoken to you, which is the common assumption. It usually sits between the first and second interview, which means the result arrives with someone who has already met you and will shape what the next conversation is about.

These cannot be crammed for the way a knowledge exam can. They measure how you reason and respond, not what you memorized. But the format itself can absolutely be prepared for, and format familiarity has a measurable effect under a timer. Meeting a data interpretation table for the first time during the real thing means fighting the format and the clock at once.

The questions you ask them

When an interviewer asks if you have questions, treat it as part of the evaluation, because it is one. Weak or absent questions read as low genuine interest. Strong ones signal engagement and give you real information for deciding whether to accept an offer.

• What does success in this role look like after the first six months?
• What is the biggest challenge someone in this role is dealing with right now?
• How would you describe the team's working style?
• What made you decide to join, and what has kept you here?

Save salary, vacation, and benefits questions for later in the process, once an offer is genuinely on the table.

One question I still remember, years afterwards, was a candidate asking how quickly they could be promoted. It is a good question asked badly, and the difference is worth understanding because plenty of people make the same mistake in gentler wording.

The better version is simply: what are the opportunities to grow here? That matters because growing inside an organisation means giving to it as well as getting from it, and the first phrasing only covers the second half.