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

Introduction to personal branding

By Greg Wyatt • March 30, 2026
What follows is Chapter 39 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's 10 months old, so surely the algorithm has moved on right? Indeed, my own content performance has tanked if you compare 2026 to 2025. Around 12 million views of my content last year, while if I extrapolate my year to date performance, it looks like a little shy of 640,000 views. My LinkedIn feed is quieter, yet real life relevant conversations go from strength to strength, many of which stem from my content. Look, I don't love the term, but I am a fan of putting your message out there, across multiple means, so that your most relevant audience might become aware of you. And perhaps your relevant audience is an audience of one, a person who can put you nearer that job. Which is the only algorithm you need. This is a three part series, with part 2 on " Content strategy and philosophy " and part 3 on " A flair post ". Click on the links for the unedited versions on Substack. 39 - Introduction to personal branding Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a free marketing platform, where you can build a reputation through the words of your posts, comments and messages. Personal branding is a viable tactic as part of a multi-channel approach to your job search and it can bring opportunities to you. I'll start off by saying I'm not a fan of the term personal branding. It can lead to make-work which can even get in the way of what you should be doing. Writing and using content to create experiences that support a job search is a great idea and calling it personal branding - as a discrete activity - isn’t a bad thing. I expect there are many mediums through which you can build a personal brand. I'll focus on LinkedIn because of how entrenched it is in other job search activities. What a personal brand is For businesspeople the idea is that by building awareness of your personality, lifestyle and what you're promoting, you also build trust. So that when people are ready to buy, they'll buy your products. The brand might be personal. The goal is sales. When you see personal branding on LinkedIn it’s often a business that promotes their services through the account of the author. ‘Here’s my puppy, buy my stuff.’ Take note that the target audience for these advice posts is the businesspeople above. And these posts often seek to part them from their money. Your goals are similar. If there’s a commercial outcome you want, it’s likely a single job, not a throughput of leads. You’ll also see that controversial content gets huge engagement and can also repel readers. If you need a job, what’s the danger of writing overly spicy content? Could a reader make a decision against you based on your words? How much you need any job should inform the experience you want to create for your readers. How it sits in your wider job search Publishing content is about raising awareness and starting conversations with the right people. This can be your profile, written posts, newsletters, (bestselling) career breakdown kits, videos, you name it - anything you can become known for. In many ways the hierarchy of relationships your content appeals to is the same as with networking. Content can be publishing posts, commenting on the posts of others, sending direct messages. I’d argue even your applications and interviews are part of your personal brand. I think of LinkedIn posts like a plumber’s van driving around town. Most of the time you’ll disregard the van unless it cuts you up with noxious fumes. When you have a leaky pipe, you’ll surely take note of their number. It can support an application if a hiring manager decides to surreptitiously stalk your profile. And it can work against you if it suggests problem behaviour. A good balance for content is the poster in my daughters’ primary school from a few years back: THINK. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Achieve those five points and content will rarely work against your job search. Content should be consistent with your wider activity. Which means that everything people (potential employers) experience of you is a complementary and non-contradictory message. Content that contradicts your CV or cover letter may lead to red flags, whether that’s fair or not. Content should be intentional. HOW TO GO viral, and why you shouldn’t Anyone who writes content will enjoy the sweet, sweet flow of dopamine when you see reactions and comments trickle in. Such as that first flair post announcing you are available to help your next employer with examples of your achievements and what you are looking for. Do that and you’ll get loads of engagement. Why haven’t you done it yet? Tag me in and I’ll support you. Or you can do what most people do and say, ‘I’m sorry to announce I’ve lost my job, please help’ and that will get loads too. Because it is relevant and relatable to fellow job seekers, recruiters and sympathisers. Then you feel the soul-crushing defeat of a well-thought-out post, highlighting a problem in your industry, with tumbleweed to follow. Both types of content have a place. That tumbleweed post is relevant and relatable to a niche audience. I try to take a land and expand approach to content - job seeker advice, recruitment advice and stories, ponderings and satire, which I use to tackle topics from different directions. Over the past three years I’ve had between 3m to 11m views of my posts and I’ve gained a bit of business through them too. What I don’t do is try to go viral anymore. Because when I have gone viral with a few 1m impression posts, it’s taken weeks to extricate myself from them and there hasn’t been real benefit. I find my tumbleweed posts start better conversations from lurkers - those that never engage publicly. I promised you I’d show you how to go viral. Here you go. Relevance + relatability + readability + entitlement. Maybe add a selfie. If that seems too simple, search for this sentence on LinkedIn: “An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently.” You’ll need to use the double speech mark to search on the phrase, and rank by Posts. ‘Does it really work?’ asked Charles. I told him to try it as an experiment. He rarely got more than a few hundred impressions per post. 170,000 impressions, 2,000 reactions. Pretty viral for a first timer. It is the wrong path. What do these posts actually say? Who are they aimed at? And if they don’t appeal to people who can help you reach your objective, what’s the point? 

Nothing but the truth. Innovation from Iteration, pt 4

By Greg Wyatt • March 26, 2026
I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: - commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support