Interviews

before you start

If your resume and cover letter have served their purposes well, you will be invited to participate in an interview with the company or organization you’re interested in. Congratulations! It’s an exciting opportunity, and your prospects for employment are very strong if you put in the time to be well prepared. In this lesson, we look at how to get ready for an interview, what types of interviews you might need to engage in, and what kinds of questions you might be asked.

1. Preparing for a Job Interview

1a. Review the Job Description

When you prepare for an interview, your first step will be to carefully read and reread the job posting or job description. If you were careful, you either printed this off or saved it to your computer so you could refer back to it! This will help you develop a clearer idea of how you meet the skills and attributes the company seeks. If you applied for several jobs, it will also help remind you of the specifics of this one.

You should also review the cover letter and resume you sent in application for the position. This will help you recall what you said. You can also take any lessons learned about what worked in this cover letter so you are sure to do it again.

1b. Research the Company or Organization

Researching the company will give you a wider view of what the company is looking for and how well you might fit in. Your prospective employer may ask you what you know about the company. Being prepared to answer this question shows that you took time and effort to prepare for the interview and that you have a genuine interest in the organization. It shows good care and good planning—soft skills you will surely need on the job.

1c. Practice Answering Common Questions

Most interviewees find that practicing the interview in advance with a family member, a friend, or a colleague eases possible nerves during the actual interview. It also creates greater confidence when you walk through the interview door. In the Giving the Interview section below, you’ll learn more about specific questions you will likely be asked and corresponding strategies for answering them.

1d. Dress Appropriately

Interviewees are generally most properly dressed for an interview in business attire, with the goal of looking highly professional in the eyes of the interviewer. Even if the interview is virtual, wear the same clothes you would wear to an in-person interview and find a clean, quiet place to do the interview.

hint

If your home doesn’t have a good space for a virtual job interview, most public libraries have free meeting spaces you might be able to reserve for an hour or two.

1e. What to Bring and What Not to Bring

Plan to bring a copy of the job description and a few copies each of your resume, your cover letter, and your list of references to the interview. You may also want to bring a portfolio of representative work. Leave behind coffee, chewing gum, and any other items that could be distractions. Make sure your phone is muted and put away for the entire interview.

1f. Practice

In a job interview, you will have to both project confidence and be ready with answers to a variety of questions. The best way to do this effectively is to do practice interviews where friends or family ask common interview questions and help identify potential problems with posture, eye contact, or speaking clearly.

Another way to prepare and practice is to have six or seven stories from past jobs ready to tell that demonstrate your strengths or how you dealt with challenges. The stories might involve:

• Dealing with challenges
• Using communication skills
• Showing initiative
• Making tough decisions
• Working with others, especially working with difficult people
• Your biggest successes

Brainstorming these and having a few stories “in your back pocket,” can help you deal with both situational questions and scenarios that come up during the interview.

hint

A popular acronym for using anecdotes to answer job interview questions is STAR: situation, task, action, result. This helps focus on the most important elements of your story.
Situation: What happened?
Task: What was your responsibility?
Action: What did you do?
Result: What happened?
Practice using the STAR method to tell work-related stories to friends and family, or to yourself, so you can convey the most important elements in a couple of minutes.

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2. Giving the Interview

For most job candidates, the burning question is “What will I be asked?” There’s no way to anticipate every single question that may arise during an interview. It’s possible that, no matter how well prepared you are, you may get a question you just didn’t expect. But that’s okay. Do as much preparation as you can—which will build your confidence—and trust that the answers will come. However, knowing how you will answer a set of predictable questions can help you deliver confident answers.

The interview usually opens with introductions and a chance to build rapport and goodwill. They include questions and prompts such as:

• Tell us about yourself.
• Tell us why you applied for this position.

You should answer these questions in a minute or two. You may have prepared a dozen great lines for selling yourself, but you don’t have to use them all now. This is a chance to tell your story, but it isn’t your whole life story, just about your background and what led you to apply for this job.

Most interview questions also ask you to draw on past work experience to get a sense of how you rise to challenges and deal with problems. Such questions typically include:

• Tell us about an accomplishment you are really proud of.
• Tell us about a challenge you faced and how you overcame it.

These questions are so common to interviews, it would make you seem unprepared not to have a story at the ready, so have a few past experiences in mind that really demonstrated your skills or which, conversely, you mishandled but learned from.

Similarly many interview questions want to get a sense of how well you know yourself. Such questions might be:

• What is your biggest strength? Your biggest weakness?
• Why should we hire you over the other candidates?

Although not specifically asking for a story, be ready to illustrate your answers with stories that give good evidence. For example, if you state that your biggest strength is being a quick thinker and problem solver, tell a story about a time you demonstrated those skills. If you are asked about weaknesses or areas you can work on, have a similar story that shows you learned from the experience and how you took steps to improve.

Most of all, search committees want to know what kind of person you are, how you will fit with their team. They might ask questions like:

• What kind of team member are you?
• Tell us about a time you had to work with someone difficult.

As above, this is best answered with a story, even if not prompted for one. Stories give evidence for the kind of coworker you are, rather than simply making assertions.

Other questions will be specific to the job you are applying for, and may present scenarios where you have to consider how you would deal with a situation. Usually scenarios put you in a dilemma with no clear right or wrong answer. The team may be more interested in seeing how you think through the problem more than how you handle it.

• Somebody you supervise is late to work again and again. You know she is a single mother and has problems with daycare, but her tardiness affects other staff. How would you handle this situation?
• You have a big deadline coming up and one of your colleagues is not keeping up with their responsibilities. What do you do?

These can be the most challenging to respond to, but, as before, it is best to connect to past experiences. “Something similar happened to me at my last job, and this is what happened…” is a great way to respond. Even if the outcome wasn’t great, you can show what you learned from the experience and how you would handle it differently.

At the end of the job interview, there are typically a few questions that look forward.

• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• Do you have any questions for us?

Questions like these give you a chance to demonstrate that you have done your research on the organization and can speak knowledgeably about the organization and opportunities for advancement. When asked what questions you have, you can ask about projects and programs you learned about either through your research or in the interview. You might ask what they hope the new hire will accomplish in the first three months at the job, or to describe their first week on the job. This is your opportunity to leave a lasting impression of someone genuinely interested in the work the organization does, rather than someone preoccupied with personal concerns.

Questions should be focused on the work you would do, and not on matters like compensation and benefits, or on logistics like when a decision would be made, a starting date, or where the person would work. While many jobs are transparent about these in the job posting and the interview itself (and should be!), such questions can wait until later and be directed to the hiring manager after the interview, or even when you have an offer.

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3. After the Interview

The toughest time might be between the interview and the response. You should follow up in the next day or two with an email thanking everyone for the time they spent in meeting and talking with you and affirming your interest in the position. If you wait a couple of weeks without any follow-up, it is acceptable to check in with the hiring manager about their process; many times they have decided to move on with other candidates and are slow to send the bad news to everyone else. Other times the process has simply been held up, and you’ll find out you are still being considered. Either way, you won’t be penalized for asking once after a reasonable amount of time. If you get another offer in the meantime you should let the hiring manager know—and give them a chance to make a counter offer—but otherwise this is the time for patience.

One more thing you can do is assess your own performance. You probably have a good sense of which questions you answered well and which ones you didn't. You can rethink how you will answer this question next time. Although the exact same question will probably not come up again, you will be more prepared for whatever questions you are faced with.