How to Master the Art of the Interview
How to Master the Art of the Interview
Practical advice for putting yourself in the top 1% of candidates
I write a bi-weekly column on leadership, management, and the future of work. In each case, I’ll tackle the questions on the minds of first-time managers, experienced managers, and even executives. I’ll leverage my own experience as a tech leader as well as my network to answer these questions in the most comprehensive, actionable, and accessible way.
I’ve probably interviewed close to a thousand people (where does the time go?!) at this point in my career. This includes the full spectrum of role levels - from entry-level specialists to board members - as well as geographies (North America, Europe, and APAC) and while there are lots of nuances within each you would be surprised by just how much advice can apply to every interview.
The ability to interview well is an essential skill, whether you’re looking to move internally or you’re looking to land a new role at a new company, it has a huge impact on your future career progression and earnings.
The below is an effort to distil some of the lessons I’ve gleaned over the years into practical advice that can help set you apart in an interview process.
Before we dive in, I wanted to give a special thanks to the following who graciously offered their time, insights, and recommendations: Kathryn Cant, (Talent Operations Lead, StackAdapt), William Laporte (Director Employee Experience at Trackforce Valiant + TrackTik), Amanda Nagy (Global Total Rewards and Benefits Manager at Tailscale), Justin Krulicki (People Business Partner, Masterclass), Joyce Wallace (VP Human Resources, Unchartered Software), and Roland Mascarenhas (Consultant).
It’s not about you.
The most important thing to remember when you’re interviewing is it’s not about you. This might sound like odd advice, but bear with me for a moment.
To perform well in an interview you need to understand the context behind why someone is hiring in the first place. If a company is hiring they in all likelihood have a problem (or problems) that they could not solve internally with their existing resources. The more you understand what those problems are and who they impact the better you can prepare and the more you’ll be able to tailor your responses.
By far the most common approach I’ve come across - which you should avoid - is to approach an interview as an opportunity to simply go through your resume and academic experience point by point. As you can imagine, this will rarely if ever touch on the specific problems the company and the hiring manager are trying to solve.
Instead, when you’re preparing for an interview you’re interested in try answering the following questions:
Why are they hiring for this role (e.g. team bandwidth, outside expertise needed)?
Why now (e.g. new funding, geographic expansion, sales growth, customer feedback)?
Who benefits the most if this hire is successful (e.g. hiring manager, department lead, CEO, investors)?
The information you need to help fill in these blanks is hiding in plain sight. For example, you can glean from LinkedIn how big the team is today and how many people work in a respective function. It will also tell you how many people the company has hired over the last 6 months.
What’s more, you’ll be able to get context from reading any press releases, media spotlights, or customer reviews online to get a sense of why now.
You don’t need to be right but by simply asking yourself these questions you will start to empathize with your interviewer and it will give you a better base through which to both ask and answer questions.
Go out of your way to try the product.
This will be much harder if you’re interviewing for a B2B role, but there are always two types of candidates that stand out early on in an interview:
The candidate who has made 0 effort to try the product
The candidate who has made every effort to try the product
Who do you think is the more compelling one?
When you interview a lot of what drives decision-making from an interviewer is credibility. Do I believe this person not only can do this role but will thrive here long-term?
If you position yourself as someone passionate about the company’s mission - say, helping solopreneurs build their business online - but you haven’t signed up and explored the company’s product that does that very thing then you don’t sound very credible. This lack of credibility significantly hurts your ability to move forward in the process.
Several years ago I was hiring an entry-level role on our growth team for an app that made it easier to group funds online together. We had an overwhelming number of applications - somewhere in the region of 100 - but there were two that stood out right away.
Which ones? They had started their own campaigns using the platform and were actively using the product. This meant that when we interviewed them they already had a keen understanding of the advantages of the product and the areas of friction that would need to be overcome to grow it. In other words, they were credible. One of the two ended up landing the gig.
While there will be plenty of instances where you won’t necessarily have ready access to the product or service, there are many ways around this (e.g. talking to your network) that will help give you some powerful insights and help you stand out.
In fact, the harder it is to get access to the particular product or service the more you’ll stand out if you come to the interview having done some background research already. However, the reverse is also true: if the product or service is readily accessible, it is even more imperative to have tried it.
Solve a problem before you’re hired.
Firstly, I don’t think you should do “free” work for a company as part of the interview process nor should companies expect you to.
What I do encourage - within reason and commensurate with the role you’re looking to get - is to build credibility with the hiring manager (or team) by identifying opportunities to improve their product, service, or process. For instance, if you’re looking to join the Talent Acquisition team do you have any suggestions on how they currently write their job descriptions or where they typically distribute them? Do you even have specific profiles of people from your network you could refer?
Several years ago, as we ventured into a new market and sought a Country Manager to lead our expansion, one candidate stood out. During the interview, he presented a concise list of 'keys to success' in that new market, highlighting the differences from our existing markets. While we had considered many aspects, his insights offered fresh perspectives. We left those interviews impressed with his ability to grasp our goals even before joining. Unsurprisingly, he got the job.
The more you can translate your innate skills into practical and tangible examples in an interview, the more it goes a long way in building credibility with a hiring team. What’s more, it starts to showcase a whole series of skills that most teams highly prize, including the ability to move with urgency.
Understand what your future workplace values.
“I think it’s important for candidates to understand the company’s values and be able to articulate how their values align with that of their prospective employer.”
~ Joyce Wallace, VP Human Resources at Unchartered Software
One prominent factor that hiring teams will screen for - sometimes at the very top of the list - is how well your values align with those of the company. While the term “values” is sometimes used interchangeably with others - for instance, they’re called Leadership Principles at Amazon - the intention is still the same: understand how you get work done. It’s less about what you’ve done (that comes later) and more about how you’ve gone about doing it that’s of interest.
This part of the interview often puts candidates at a disadvantage. Companies have had ample time to think through their values, iterate on what works and doesn’t work, and codify processes for scalable hiring. In contrast, a single individual will have had exposure to only a fraction of this.
Despite this, it's crucial for you to take the time to reflect on what you genuinely value—not just to secure a job, but to find the right one. The 'values fit' question is significant for employers as it aids them in determining whether you'll thrive in the long term or if you might leave within a year. This aspect holds just as much impact on you as the candidate.
I recall making a values-based mistake early in my hiring career. We were establishing a new customer service organization and searching for senior leaders to guide junior employees through the myriad of requests. I had someone fantastic recommended to me, but while we highly valued speed in response, it became evident she was more of a perfectionist, preferring to take the time to ensure everything was right before sharing a response. Despite recognizing this misalignment, I still hired her. Unfortunately, she left within three months because she wasn't comfortable responding quickly and encountered conflicts with her peers.
In reality, some companies prioritize the quality and accuracy of a response over the response time. That's where she eventually worked—and was very happy! Meanwhile, we found someone who preferred to move quickly and address any discrepancies afterwards. It's a subtle difference, not a matter of right or wrong, but it significantly influences how work is executed. The truth is companies can differ significantly in their preferred approaches to getting work done.
Be clear and succinct in your communication.
If you ask Talent professionals where candidates start to go off track in interviews, one of the single most common responses is a lack of clear communication.
Here’s just a few quotes when I recently asked the question to my network:
“I find one of the areas people go off track is their communication when answering questions.”
~ Kathryn Cant, Talent Operations Lead at StackAdapt
“The candidates I am most likely to move forward are direct and clear. They're willing to take a minute to pause before responding to think about their answer instead of immediately saying whatever comes to mind first”
~ Amanda Nagy Global Total Rewards and Benefits Manager at Tailscale
“If candidates want to improve by at least 50% they should practice clear and succinct communication. An answer should be no longer than 30 seconds unless it’s a more complex question, then it should be a max of 1 minute. Make sure to sense what the interview is asking and answer clearly.”
~ Roland Mascarenhas, Consultant
This of course is easier said than done. However, the good news is there are some great tools and frameworks you can use to address this.
One of the most popular behavioural interview techniques used in recruiting is called the “STAR Method” which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. It’s designed to help interviewers get specific answers from candidates, but it can just as easily be reverse-engineered by candidates as a way to practice clarity in their responses.
For example, think about the kinds of questions you’ve been asked in interviews (or are likely to be asked) and practice going through them using the following prompts:
What was the situation?
What were you tasked with?
What actions did you take?
What was the result?
When done well, you’ll leave the interviewer with a clear description of what you did, how you did it, and the result in a fraction of the time it would typically take.
Proactively address any gaps in your experience or resume.
Your career will be filled with experiences, yet when you're interviewing for a new role, it's highly probable that your background won't perfectly align with every aspect of the job description. Few hiring teams expect a perfect match; that's why they're interviewing you! However, what can set you apart is being self-aware enough to recognize potential gaps and proactively address them during the interview:
“The best advice I ever got is to be … self-aware, auto-identify your opportunities and where an interviewer might have a question mark on your application and paint a story where you can demonstrate how you overcame that opportunity”
~ William Laporte, Director Employee Experience at Trackforce Valiant + TrackTik
When done well, you can transform a lack of experience on your resume into a strength. For instance, if the role prefers prior management experience, which you don’t possess, you can emphasize experiences where you gained indirect management skills, preparing you for a direct management role. Furthermore, it might have been the case that you weren't ready for managerial responsibilities before, but now you are.
Lastly, few careers follow a straight line and are often intertwined with personal experiences at the time. For instance, you may have taken a break to start a family or needed to step back to care for a loved one, or even for yourself.
These real-life stories may not neatly fit into a resume, so take the time to narrate your experiences in your own words. The best companies to work for understand the twists and turns of a career and won't hold these things against you. If they do, it reflects more on the company than on you.
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