Job Seekers

Preparing for Interviews

You cannot prepare for every question. You can prepare a small set of real stories that answer most of them.

The short answer

  • Prepare six to eight real stories rather than answers to specific questions. Most behavioural questions are asking for one of the same few things.
  • Interviewers probe for detail. A story that gets more convincing as you go deeper is worth more than a polished one that thins out.
  • Research the work, not the company history. Reading the posting closely and having a view about the problem beats reciting a founding date.
  • Your questions are part of the assessment, and they are also how you find out whether you want the job.

Prepare stories, not answers

Behavioural questions look endless and are not. Nearly all of them ask about one of: something you delivered, something that went wrong, a disagreement, an ambiguous situation, something you learned, or something you led.

Prepare six to eight real situations, one for each of those, and know them properly: the context, what you specifically did, what happened, and what you would do differently. Then most questions become a matter of choosing which story to tell rather than inventing one under pressure.

Choose recent and relevant examples where you can, and be honest about scale. A well-told small story beats an inflated large one, because the follow-up questions will reach the truth either way.

Expect to be probed

A good interviewer will not accept the first version of an answer. They will ask what exactly you did, what other people did, why you chose that approach, and what you would change.

This is why real examples matter. A genuine experience gets richer under questioning because you were there. A borrowed or embellished one thins out, and that thinning is precisely what the interviewer is testing for.

If you do not know something, say so and say what you would do to find out. That answer scores better than a confident guess in almost every structured process.

Research the work

Company facts are the least useful preparation. Nobody is hired for knowing a founding year.

Spend the time on the posting instead. What problem is this role solving? What would the first three months plausibly involve? What is likely to be hard about it? Arriving with an informed view about the work signals more than any amount of background reading, and it makes the conversation better for both sides.

If the process includes a practical exercise, that is where the real weight sits. Treat it as the main event rather than the preliminary.

Ask real questions

Your questions are assessed, and they are also your only chance to find out what you are agreeing to.

Useful ones are specific: what does success look like at six months, what is the hardest part of this role, what happened to the last person in it, how are decisions made when people disagree. Each has an answer that tells you something, and evasiveness on any of them is itself informative.

Video interviews are now standard and are the norm on GigFinder, which runs them in the browser. Practically that means checking your setup beforehand, and remembering that a short pause to think reads as considered rather than as a connection problem.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Prepare six to eight real situations rather than answers to specific questions: something you delivered, something that went wrong, a disagreement, an ambiguous situation, something you learned, and something you led. Nearly all behavioural questions ask for one of those, so preparation becomes choosing a story rather than inventing one under pressure.
Say so, then say how you would find out. In a structured process that answer scores better than a confident guess, because the interviewer is assessing judgement rather than recall. Pretending is also risky given that a good interviewer will keep asking follow-up questions.
Less than most people think, and in a different direction. Company history is rarely useful. Spend the time on the posting: what problem the role solves, what the first three months would plausibly involve, and what is likely to be hard about it. An informed view about the work signals more than background facts.
Specific ones with real answers: what success looks like at six months, what is hardest about the role, what happened to the last person in it, and how decisions get made when people disagree. They are assessed as part of the interview, and they are also your only chance to learn what you would be agreeing to.

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