Preparing for Interviews: A Strategic Approach

You have an interview scheduled (or are hoping for one soon): congratulations! You have survived the obscure robots who screen your resume, or at least plan to sometime soon, and you have now made it to a real human being. I've been asked a number of times for my interviewing tips, so I decided to compile them here.

I want to present my gathered resources on interviewing in two buckets: strategy and tactics. Strategy is the long-term vision – that is, the overarching goals and clear signposts for where you want to go – and tactics are the short-term actions that you take to reach that vision.

I find people are familiar with the more tactical methods for interviewing, like using the STAR and SEAT methods, but the strategy can be harder to prepare for.

Just so it's perfectly clear: I'm not a hiring manager, and I've never been one. I'm confident in sharing my own advice, however, because I've gathered this information from people who have been, and I've had enough interviews where I can speak to what I have found to be useful.

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Strategy 1: Communicate a clear message about who you are, what you value, and what you have accomplished.

It's difficult for many people (myself most definitely included) to talk about themselves in a way that feels true and authentic without feeling either too boring or too sales-pitchy. Once you've made it past the first screening, it's hard to know what to expect for the interview.

Let's start with the goal first: be memorable. You want your interviewer to learn just enough about you that you stand out among the candidates and they feel there is a gap that you are going to fill. The way to do this is to be clear about who you are and what you bring to the table.

So, how do we get there? This is where the tactics come in.

Tactic: Define 4-6 key points about yourself that you want to communicate.

I got this tip from a pre-podcast audiobook called "Nailing the Job Interview Freeway Guide" by Susan Leahy that I found through Libby. Its format as a CD that you pop into the car may be charmingly dated, but the tips within are evergreen.

The most valuable lesson I learned from the audiobook is to prepare 4-6 key points about yourself before each interview that address the job description. To come up with these points, ask yourself this question: What do I want the interviewers to walk away knowing about me? 

There are two ways to write your key points: you can work bottom-up by writing your key points and then comparing them to the job description, or you can work top-down by reading the job description and company materials and coming up with aligning key points. The key points don't need to be unique for every interview, but make sure they're aligned with the job you're interviewing for.

Tactic: Use your key points to prepare for behavioral questions.

You should be able to back these key points up with concrete examples and evidence. Not only do these examples strengthen the message you are conveying about yourself, but they also serve as your answer repository for answering behavioral questions.

Maybe you have unique skills from a previous career or college classes outside your major, or maybe you've completed some interesting projects. Perhaps you want to communicate your enthusiasm for your field or show off some accomplishments or artifacts from past projects. This is your place to do it!

Optional Bonus Tactic: Provide concrete examples for your key points, as well as anything else you think is relevant to show off.

The audiobook I mentioned earlier recommended compiling an 8-15 page paper binder to bring to interviews that include tangible artifacts to support your key points. I personally haven't had an in-person interview since before the pandemic, but the advice to come prepared with evidence to support your points still stands.

By having artifacts to present on request, you do the following:

1. You demonstrate that you can deliver.

2. You show that you're prepared and that you've anticipated possible questions.

3. You show that you're qualified without the interviewer having to take your word for it and color in the lines of what's on your resume.

Here are some examples of what to include in this mini-portfolio:

1. Documents from previous projects you've worked on, with confidential data scrubbed. If you've built something like a complex Excel document or project timeline, great: delete the information you can't share and present just that.

2. Writing samples, whether it be something from school, a mass email sent to your company, or a blog post about something you're passionate about.

3. References, ranging from letters of recommendation to nice thank-yous coworkers or colleagues have sent you.

4. Pictures of things you've done or built outside of work. Volunteering, personal hobbies and projects, and photos of you at work all qualify.

I should note that I haven't created a literal repository like this tactic suggests, but I have integrated the advice to save different things I do and view them as supporting my argument that I'm the best person for the job. If you want to create a digital or physical folder of these things for yourself, great; otherwise, integrate the lesson and move on.

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Strategy 2: Demonstrate that you are prepared, reliable, and communicative.

These tactics are more conventional interview advice. Here is my own take on them.

Tactic: Do your research on the company and your interviewers.

You wouldn't believe when I was helping conduct interviews at a previous company how many people didn't read our website.

To go beyond the website, research the company's long-term strategy as much as you can. Read their most recent annual report. Check the news for any acquisitions, product recalls, legal battles, etc. that inform long-term strategy. Read online forums. Any and all intel is helpful for you to have something to talk about with your interviewer or to just keep in your back pocket, especially if there are red flags. A great place to start is this resource on strategic corporate research by the Corporate Research Project.

If you have your interviewer's name, get their basic information from their LinkedIn profile. See what you have in common and if you have any mutual connections, whether they be people or institutions.

And if you find their wedding website, like I often do, just pretend you didn't.

Tactic: Come prepared with questions.

Source: Emmett Shear on Twitter

Asking good questions isn't just about looking prepared: it's about understanding a company's culture. You can get an idea of what a company says their culture is from marketing, but you won't actually know until you talk to someone who works there.

To discern the difference between stated culture and actual culture, as well as to align on expectations, here are some of the interview questions I draw from, organized by goal, with credit to Javier Andrés Bargas-Avila and Reno Perry on LinkedIn.

Sample Interview Questions

• Clarity of success metrics and progression

  • What does success look like in this role after 6 months?

  • What's the most important thing I should accomplish in the first 90 days?

• Alignment on job description

  • What skills are you looking to fill with a new hire?

  • Do you expect my main responsibilities in this position to change in the next six months to a year?

  • Is there anything I can clarify for you about my qualifications?

• Managerial competence and communication

  • Could you tell me about your management style and experience?

  • What do new employees typically find surprising after they start?

• Strategy and goals

  • What are the current goals that the company is focused on, and how does this team work to support hitting those goals?

• Professional growth

  • How does the team I will be part of continue to grow professionally?

  • Where have successful employees moved on to? (Disclaimer: I've personally actually asked this one. I personally avoid implying that I'm trying to use a job as a stepping stone.)

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Strategy 3: Remember that, if you were invited to interview, then you deserve to be there.

In her autobiography, comedian Leslie Jones shares the story of her experience auditioning at SNL. The show was actively looking to hire a black female comedian, but even in the all-black, all-female group she was auditioning with, she was an outlier: her peers were all young actors who looked like models, and she was a tall women in her forties whose experience was primarily in stand-up comedy, not sketch comedy.

One by one, she observed the women go in the room confident and leave quiet and defeated. Sometime while waiting, she decided she was simply going to go in and have fun, even though she was certain she wouldn't be picked. She performed the stand-up set that she knew best, which she had been perfecting for years, and she walked out of the room feeling like she had least made her judges laugh.

She got the callback that evening and, to her disappointment, was later offered a writing position. Lorne Michaels told her that he didn't know how much he needed her for the show until he met her. The offer wasn't a cast position, but she accepted, and as a writer, she advocated for herself enough to make the cast.

My point with this story is that none of it looked like what Leslie expected: she assumed that she she lacked the necessary experience and didn't fit a specific mold, but she ended up leaving such an impression on the judges that she shone a spotlight on a Leslie-Jones-shaped gap on the staff. Neither her nor the SNL staff knew what they needed until it became a dialogue.*

Hiring may look like a science for hiring the person with the most skills, but it's actually far more complicated and, fortunately, human than this oversimplification. Once you're in the interview process, you're now dealing with people with unpredictable preferences, priorities, and styles. This can be scary, but this can work in your favor, provided you know you deserve to be there.

Tactic: Never sell yourself short. Frame your weaknesses as areas for growth.

More likely than not, there is going to be at least one part of the job description where you may think you don't measure up. This is totally normal. What you are or are not capable of shouldn't stop you from being who you are.

I'm not going to say "Don't talk about your weaknesses." In fact, I believe it shows humility and integrity when you communicate clearly what you don't know. But instead of thinking about what you lack as a defect, frame it instead as somewhere you want to grow.

Should the interviewer confirm your worst fears and start talking about X skill you don't have, reframe your "I don't know anything X" mentality as "I'm looking forward to growing more in my knowledge of X."

With this reframing, you're doing three things:

1. Most important, perhaps, might be what you're not doing, which is giving your interviewer the impression that you are deficient in something.

2. You're highlighting your growth mindset without selling yourself short.

3. You're being honest about your weaknesses while acknowledging they are part of the job description.

Who knows: maybe the icky part of the job description isn't even important to the job or even your interviewer. What's important to other stakeholders in the hiring process may not be a priority for the people who will actually hire you.

Tactic: You never know what is going to make you memorable, so don't try to be anyone other than yourself.

In college, I was getting ready to interview for a co-op position at an innovative defense research lab. The position was going to involve work on cognition and human performance that I was really excited about, and I was hoping I would have the right skills to get the job.

An onsite team member showed me around the office before we sat down for a conference call with the team manager, Bill, who was calling in while driving for a work trip. Bill, as it turns out, was previously a philosophy professor at the Air Force Academy, and he had locked into the line on my resume where I indicated that I was the secretary of the Drexel Philosophy Club. The call ended up being a casual phone call about the club, and I got the co-op offer a few days later.

This was college, of course, so there wasn't any expectation that I would have years of experience under my belt and therefore needed to show off any skills. Still, I have found that more interviews than not end up being more of a human-to-human conversation like this one than a methodical, goal-oriented interrogation. Giving your interviewer something small and memorable about yourself in addition to your qualifications can bring depth to an otherwise two-dimensional resume.

You really never know what is going to set you apart from other applicants, and you won't know until you try.

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Note

The anecdote about Leslie Jones' SNL audition is written as an anecdote that, in a vacuum, can be read as a "pull yourself by your bootstraps" story – be yourself, be the best, and it will work out, etc. – but it's worth noting that it took a lot of people to call out the lack of black women on the SNL cast in the first place. It's difficult to talk about "being yourself in an interview" without acknowledging that people of marginalized identities, whether it be related to ability, race, gender, etc. find it hard to be themselves when their identity is stereotyped being unprofessional or otherwise something they are not.

When Leslie Jones got to that audition room, her presence convinced the panel that they needed her skills, but getting to the room took a lot of work on its own. The judges just as well could have dismissed her for being something they hadn't seen before and therefore not worthy of attention. Doing good work always means taking on risk, and you're worth that risk.