How to interview, pt 1

Greg Wyatt • May 14, 2026

Tomorrow at 1pm BST, Simon Ward and I navigate how to interview, in our LinkedIn Live. You can join us or view the recording here: The Interview Edition.

Interviews are a key area of anxiety in a tough job search - for good reason. If you've been struggling to convert applications or enquiries into interviews, the interview itself may seem an achievement. Yet for the employer, it's the 2nd step of many in their assessment process.

The assumption that you can get the job if you nail the interview can be a heavy load to carry, so it's only natural that you'll do what you can to actually nail it.

Yet, when I look at interview advice online, it's invariably of the J0b s3arch haxxor variety - whether it's killer questions you should ask at the end, the secret tricks of body language or other esoteric arts that seem to make a difference.

The irony is though that, even if there is truth to them, they are palliative rather than strategic.

Because if that's what you're relying on to change the outcome, you've missed opportunities that are in your control.

Foundational opportunities that lead to better outcome, some of which may seem unrelated to how you are on the day, while being central to better performance.

What follows is Chapter 46 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026). You can buy it for an always-current guide to navigating your jobs market - or you can read all the chapters for free here.

It's the first in a 4 part series, but next week's Chapter is on the conflicting mess of advice and how you can unpick opinion from steps that helps you.

46 - Interview preparation

I see a lot of advice on how to perform well at interview.

Typically, it relates to STAR (situation task action results), CARL (context action results learning) or another derivation of this storytelling framework.

However this advice typically stands on its own and can set you adrift if you don’t have the right anchor:

Preparation.

The what and why of interviews

The goal of any constructive interview process is to understand

How a candidate will perform in a role,
What they will be like to work with
How likely they are to stick around long enough for the employer to see a suitable return on investment

And to compare each candidate against the vacancy requirements to identify the best hire.

Every employer has different priorities in assessing these points, different ways of conducting interviews and different strategies for how the process is run.

The problem is that it’s hard to tell what to expect when all initial communications are similar.

Transparency helps and is a great way to build trust yet few employers do this well.

If you were to know in advance that you are one of 25 people being screened by a panel on Teams, how would that affect your preparation compared to being one of 3?

Gaining insight into the what and why of any interview process should inform your strategy.

Typically, employers won’t include agency interviews as part of their interview process. I’m sure you might.

An employer might feel they only do a 2-stage process that is efficient. Your experience might look like this:

Application to agency advert
Registration with agency
Agency screening
Qualification call with TA Advisor at employer
Numerical and verbal reasoning test
1st interview with hiring manager
2nd interview stage comprising 4 separate calls with stakeholders around the world
Psychometrics
Quick chat with the CEO
Debrief with the hiring manager?

A former client who shut up shop in the UK a few years back regularly used to run 7 or 8 interview stages. Is it a surprise that they are a good company to work for?

The goals of interviewers

A legitimate interview process aims to appoint the most suitable candidate.

That isn’t necessarily the goal of any individual interview or interviewer.

Goals can be dictated by a number of elements such as number of candidates or differing views of stakeholders.

These goals can be anything from:

Checking broad suitability before progressing to decision makers
Looking for reasons to discount candidates from a volume process
Wanting to look credible to higher-ups in who is presented
Assessing cultural fit or technical capability
Investigating concerns or doubts
Confirming a decision

Interviews can also move from recruitment and selection to recruitment and elimination the closer you get to the end of a process.

This is particularly the case if candidates are close in overall capability - if you can’t find a clear reason to offer one candidate are there any reasons you can discount instead?

This is one reason why industry knowledge can become a problem at final stage when it wasn’t earlier.

Given there is such a huge variety in interview philosophy, purpose, strategy, process and execution, it can be tempting to second guess everything and overcomplicate your part in it.

I’d go the other way and simplify it to what you can control.

Interviews are your opportunity to show the employer why you are interested in them, how you will contribute, how you will solve their problems, and what you are like in a professional setting.

Put your best foot forward in a way that is professionally authentic and let the rest take care of itself.

Why do you interview?

Interviews can and should be a two-way process that gives you transparent information and enables an objective decision about whether this vacancy is the right move.

Interviews aren’t always though, are they?

You might think that getting the job is your goal.

The real reason to interview is to establish as early as possible every non-negotiable reason why you shouldn’t take the job.

This means you do what you can to be the candidate of choice for the right reasons, and if there are no insurmountable problems at the end of the process you can accept the offer put forward.

You want to be able to be the person who says no if you have to rather than have them say no for you.

How you can prepare with these in mind

There are six types of preparation you can do for an interview.

The first two are ongoing preparations that serve every interview process.

The rest are mainly application specific.

1. Ensure you portray yourself in a way that has meaning to the interviewer

One pitfall in recruitment, whether you are a job seeker or employer, is the valuable information you have trapped in your head that will help the other see you as a viable match.

We aren’t mind readers. How can you give meaning about why you are a great candidate?

Read through Principles of a Good CV again.

Not because you should repeat your CV verbatim. It’s a distillation of your candidacy written for the reader. A reminder of how you can help.

You should be an expert on yourself who can draw on your achievements readily.

Get a friend to ask you questions on your CV, someone who isn’t an expert in your domain, and see how they react to your answers.

While you might hope interviewers have technical insight in your areas of specialism you will inevitably come across people in the process who aren’t.

An HR practitioner may be involved as a steward for their culture and to ensure you are interviewed fairly - should you expect them to understand jargon? And how might that work against you?

If you are fortunate enough to get interviews regularly, you can treat these as both practice and the real thing. Watch how interviewers respond to what you say and reflect on it afterwards. How can you give better meaning?

Interviewing is a skill you can sharpen over the course of your job search.

This is prep you should do before any interview. An anchor to your candidacy and a reminder of why you can be great at what you do.

2. Keep abreast of general industry and professional news related to your work

For anyone interested in continuous professional development, this should be a natural endeavour.

Yet it’s easy to fall into the trap of not doing so when you are between jobs or busy with other priorities.

Given how what’s going on in the near-outside world of your profession impacts your profession, I recommend you take some time every week to keep updated.

It may even help with interviewing showing the currency of your expertise.

3. The company, its people, its offering, its industry and its market

One of the pillars of negotiation is to gain as full an understanding of the situation as possible.

If you want to negotiate a successful interview, one where you’re seen as the right candidate, doing this is an advantage.

There are many resources available:

Their website
Their other vacancies
Their industry news
Media relations
YouTube
Endole / TechCrunch
Local resources. For example, Cambridge Network and Business Weekly (which is about the Cambridge tech scene)
LinkedIn to get a feel for their organisational structure
LinkedIn for information on the interviewers (why not connect and say hi)
LinkedIn for their content, which might give hidden insight to their attitudes
LinkedIn for past employees (what can they tell you?)
Glassdoor / Indeed / Trustpilot / Google reviews - what do trends say about customer and candidate experiences?

Every industry and company will have their own priorities in an interview - keep this in mind, particularly if you’re transitioning into a new domain.

Someone with only private sector experience might be surprised by the needs of a civil service recruitment process. Information is often available to help you prepare.

4. Give the interview what it needs

Every interview has its own priority some of which will articulate the part you should play.

If you want to stay in a legitimate interview process, give the employer what they ask for.

You may think presentations, on-site meetings, psychometrics, etc are worthless. If they are non-negotiable for the employer they are a requirement to fulfil.

You don’t have to play the game; if you choose to, play to win.

5. How you can deliver on the role requirements

Analyse what you can of their role against the achievements you have, problems you’ve solved and outcomes you’ve reached - in reflection of their needs.

It’s worth qualifying this in the interview itself to allow you to tailor your answers.

While this is role-specific preparation, it is also related to the first point above - the answers are within.

6. Why you want the job, or at least to work at the company

I expect most people who’ve been out of work for a while simply want a way to make ends meet.

Yet I wouldn’t recommend using this as an answer at an interview.

Many employers have an inclination to candidates who have reason to want to work for them specifically.

Take time to understand your reasons that relate to the job or company. What about them appeals to you?

This is the answer to give.

If the only reason you’re applying is because it is a job, how can you truthfully frame your answer to make it about them?

‘I enjoy the role of a <job title> especially around <essential requirements>‘ with examples from their job description - might be crude.

It is more effective than ‘I need to buy dinner on Friday’ no matter how true that is.

Your interest levels can be a deciding factor.

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An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026

I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network. Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026

I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.