Know what you are walking into.
Preparation should make you more comfortable, not more rehearsed. The aim is to arrive knowing enough about the business and the role to have a proper conversation.
Before any interview we arrange, you will know who you are meeting, how long it will take and what format it takes.
Preparation that helps
An hour, sensibly spent, is usually plenty.
Understand the brief
Read the role properly and work out which parts of your experience speak to it. If something is unclear, ask us rather than guessing on the day.
Look the business up
What they do, roughly how large they are, anything recent worth mentioning. You do not need to have memorised their history.
Have examples ready
Three or four situations you can talk through: something you improved, something that went wrong, something you handled under pressure, something you were trusted with.
Prepare your own questions
Two or three that you genuinely want answered. Questions about the team, the work and what good looks like in the first six months are always fair.
Sort the logistics
Route, timing, building entrance, who to ask for. Arriving unhurried changes how the first five minutes go.
Prepare enough to be comfortable. Not so much that you sound rehearsed.
Interviewers can tell the difference between someone who has thought about the role and someone reciting answers. The first is reassuring; the second is hard to read.
If it is a video interview
Test it in advance
Camera, microphone, the link and the platform. Five minutes beforehand rather than at the start.
Somewhere quiet
A plain background and no interruptions. Nobody minds a normal room; they mind not being able to hear you.
Look at the camera
It feels unnatural and it reads as eye contact at the other end.
Speak to us
If you want to talk anything through beforehand, ask. That is part of the job.