Interview day

Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2024

Last week’s article was about interview preparation and now I’ll share my best advice on the interview itself.

Or rather the day of the interview, because that’s just as important as what’s in the interview.

This is mainly about in-person interviews; however, I’ll add a section on video interviewing at the end.

Today we’ll cover:

  1. Moving from preparation to interview

  2. Interview pre-flight checklist

  3. How to give a good non-interview interview experience

  4. Managing interview nerves

  5. How to sell yourself, and why that’s the wrong way to think about it

  6. STAR and CARL, why and why not

  7. Answering questions through relevant stories

  8. The questions you should ask and why they matter

  9. On video interviews

Next week is on what happens after the interview.

  1. Moving from preparation to interview

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” Mike Tyson

Preparation is key, for sure.

But as soon as the interview starts, you can only influence how you are perceived.

Sometimes a decision may have nothing to do with your efforts, and everything to do with what’s happening elsewhere in process.

There’s a lot stacked against job seekers, which is why it’s so important to focus on the steps and processes you do have control over.

That’s one reason why this series is called Jobseeker Basics.

As complex as it can be to find a job in this market if you get the basics right, you give yourself the best odds.

  1. Interview pre-flight checklist

  • Set your clothes out the night before - use your smartest clothes, unless they’ve said otherwise, and have them presented as well as possible, whether ironed, cleaned, polished

  • Plan out your route to the interview allowing you to arrive 10-15 minutes early

  • Make sure you’ve read through all the documentation and done suitable preparation

  • Prepare killer questions (this gets its own section)

  • If possible, print them out with you, together with two copies of your CV (one for and one for them), and notes on where to go / who you are meeting

  • Good night’s sleep with little to no alcohol, and a healthy meal

  • Wake up at a normal time (unless the interview dictates otherwise)

  • Allow time for solitary activity, like a walk or Sudoku

  • Check traffic reports / public transport delays early and leave with plenty of time

  1. How to give a good non-interview interview experience

When does the interview start?

Is it when you are greeted by your interviewer?

Perhaps; however, I’d treat the interview as starting the first time you engage with the employer.

How you apply, how you respond to invites, how you confirm your availability, all contribute to influencing a process in which flawed humans have biases caused by our experiences.

Perhaps not if it were fair and even, yet your responsiveness won’t work against you, and may help.

A key element in any interview is to understand what you are like to work with.

It goes to follow you should show your best self at interview.

Yet, interviewers are canny to this and will find ways to find out what they believe your real self to be.

This means you have to be canny to their canniness.

Where you can, win over:

  • The security guard who lets you in the gate

  • The receptionist

  • The HR admin team that arrange the interview

  • The person who brings you through to interview

  • The interviewer’s first impression of you

  • Their last as you say goodbye

  • The person who lets you out the door when you leave

Perhaps it’s unfair for employers to ask what the receptionist thinks of you, in their effort to find out the ‘things unsaid’ part of an interview.

But if you know it can happen, make it work for you.

  1. Managing interview nerves

Nerves can be a problem for many at an interview, even affecting how you prep, your rest and your sustenance.

Now, I am not a medical professional and you should seek advice reflective of your circumstance, such as if you have high blood pressure.

However, I recommend reading into:

  • Mindfulness meditation for better sleep. Example.

  • Box breathing. A proven technique used by the Navy Seals to centre them in times of stress. It may even, over time, change how your body reacts to stress:

    • 4 seconds in through your nose

    • hold for 4

    • 4 seconds out through your mouth

    • hold for 4

    • rinse and repeat.

  • Take a breath, or a sip of water, to centre yourself before answering a question.

  • Regular exercise, if you can, to manage stress levels

I haven’t interviewed for some time, as a candidate, but I don’t mind saying that I sometimes have anxiety, occasionally panic attacks, and difficulty getting to sleep during times of stress.

The meditation technique is so effective at bedtime, when I need to use it, that I’m often out like a light moments after thinking I’ll never get to sleep. Really useful for ‘big day’ nerves.

These techniques have been helpful for me over the years, and I hear they help many job seekers too.

  1. How to sell yourself, and why that’s the wrong way to think about it

Interviews are fundamentally a negotiation, where you propose your value in exchange for the value offered by a job.

The give and take of an interview has a large part in the outcome.

I mentioned Chris Voss, and ‘Never Split the Difference’ in last week’s article, which gives great insight into negotiation.

A key element of negotiation is deep listening. Listening to understand and respond, more than listening to answer.

Getting to the root of what an interviewer wants is key to giving them a suitable answer.

You can read more about this here.

While some employers do have tricky interview processes, most just want to find the most suited person for their role.

Most hiring managers are busy people who aren’t trained in recruitment, so flaws in their approach often aren’t down to intent, more down to habits and practice.

Think about when you were hiring - did you deliver the perfect interview? What were you looking for in your candidates?

It’s often said by jobseekers that “I don’t know how to sell myself.”

I suggest selling is not a skill you need at an interview (unless it’s a commercial role, of course) - mainly you need to be the version of yourself that is good at your job, and how you are at work. Professionally authentic, rather than your unvarnished self.

Focus on listening to understand, then talk about how you can help solve their problems like you would in a constructive meeting at work.

Which is good sales, ha!

  1. STAR and CARL, why and why not

You’ve no doubt read about STAR (situation task action result) and CARL (context action result learning).

They are helpful to understand, especially for competency questions, because they allow you to convey your answer in a way that has meaning for an interviewer.

Situation : the background to the example you are sharing, as it relates to the question you are asked (similar to context)

Task : what you had to do to solve the problem alluded to in the question

Action : the steps you took to achieve this

Result : what actually happened

( Learning : how you’d improve next time)

However, it’s a mode of thinking, NOT a framework to apply rehearsed, monotonous answers to every question.

The words have to be balanced with how you say them naturally.

A robotic, over-practiced answer will only be memorable for how you said it, not for what you said.

Indeed, these are better described as storytelling frameworks, than interview answer frameworks.

Learn how to tell your story with STAR and CARL.

Listen to what the interviewer wants, and give them what they need to see you as a viable future colleague.

Oh and if they go bananas and ask what fruit you’d be, forgive them and play the game.

I’d be an orange because nothing rhymes with orange.

  1. Answering questions through relevant stories

Ensure you understand how your skills, achievements and experience will fulfil the role you have applied for.

Something talked about in last week’s article - here’s the link again

Often the criteria to demonstrate are set out in the job descriptions.

Often by the challenges facing a business, which you might glean through research.

Often through the gaps in between - context that may be missing from visible evidence, but you might understand through the listening principles above.

If you’ve prepared fully, understand what they are looking for and know how to access the knowledge you have: answering questions is simply about interpreting how you can help, in a way that has meaning to your audience.

This is where STAR is useful, as a way of interpreting your story. If you don’t have sufficient information to convey answers clearly, make sure to clarify.

Think of your story as a short snappy tale.

To the point and told in under a couple of minutes.

Audiences remember good stories; few remember dry statements, told through waffle.

Tell your story in the right way.

  1. The questions you should ask and why they matter

If you were to ask me the one common element that I find memorable in candidates, it’s the questions they ask me .

If you are allowed to ask questions, it’s a chance for you to change the narrative.

You can do so at the start of an interview:

  • before we start, may I ask what outcomes you want from this role? I’d love to hear your priorities, so I can show you how I can help

You can do so at the end of a question:

  • could I confirm my understanding? Do you mean….

You can do so at the end of an answer:

  • does that answer your question?

You can do so at the end of an interview, by asking questions to help learn if the role is right for you.

If employers aren’t willing to answer questions, there’s a snapshot of their culture.

What I wouldn’t ask is questions that leave you memorable for the wrong reasons.

[Try not to put interviewers on the back foot with questions like “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy?”]

The benefit of questions, for me, is that it moves the interview to more of an unrehearsed conversation.

Interviewers know the questions they want to ask, and if they work to a robust framework, you’ll be measured fairly from your answers against other interviewees.

But you can stand out through how you take control of the interview, appropriately with questions.

When I think back on most of my business wins, from client meetings, it’s been from the questions I’ve asked - not how I’ve pitched my services.

What kind of questions would I ask?

I’d want to know about the outcomes they want to reach, the problems they want to solve.

The structure of the team, and how the role has come about.

Their culture and how their teams experience it.

What challenges the hiring manager has, and how this role might help.

How this role might develop over time, and what my future might look like.

How they measure and reward success.

The challenges the company has, or any recent wins.

How things are changing, and how that might affect the role.

I’d want to understand their time frames and who else they are interviewing.

Everything that would help me make an objective decision.

  1. On video interviews

Many companies rely solely on video interviewing, especially since the pandemic. Convenient, easy to arrange, people can interview from different locations. Great!

They do invite a more casual approach to interviewing for better or worse, and while your interview might reveal things they didn’t mean to through their background, that’s not something in your control.

Consider:

  • check you have good, stable connectivity, where you intend to make the call. Any issues? How about interviewing from a friend’s if your internet access is poor?

  • try out their system beforehand. Make sure you won't have access issues on the day

  • practise with friends. See how you come across on a call, where interviewers are more reliant on the tone of voice than body language to gauge your personality

  • ensure your lighting is adequate with a suitable background

  • frame your head and shoulders centrally on-camera

  • look at the camera for a semblance of eye contact

  • use sticky note reminders around your screen - your interviewer can’t see them

  • treat it as a formal interview. Attend as you would in person, with a suitable dress code and presentation

That’s it for this week. No doubt I’ve missed something - feel free to reply if you have any questions, and I can work on improving the article.

Note - I haven’t included elements like presentations and tasks. These are so contextual, that you are better off researching elsewhere on the internet for specific preparation.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).