Interview Preparation Guide

Before the interview.

Book three 30-minute blocks across the three days before the interview. One for the company, one for your own stories, one for the questions you are going to ask. Then find out who is actually in the room, because that decides what you ask each of them.

Preparation is the one variable you control completely. It is also the thing most people do at midnight the night before, which is why it does not work. Ninety minutes, split across three days, beats four hours the night before, because the gap between the blocks is where you remember the story you forgot.

Block 1: the company, 30 minutes

• Read the About page, the pricing page, and the last three posts on their blog or newsroom. Pricing tells you who the customer is faster than anything else on the site.
• Open the product the team you are joining actually owns. Use it if you can. Write down one thing you liked and one thing that confused you. Both are usable in the interview.
• Skim recent employee reviews on Glassdoor or Blind. You are not looking for a verdict. You are looking for the same complaint said three times by three people.
• Finish this sentence in writing: “This company makes money by ___.” If you cannot finish it, keep reading until you can. Several of the questions further down this page depend on knowing the answer.

Block 2: your stories, 30 minutes

You are going to be asked to describe things you have done. Write six of them down before anyone asks, so you are picking your best material instead of whatever surfaces under pressure.

• One thing you shipped.
• One thing that failed.
• One disagreement you worked through.
• One time you had to learn something fast.
• One thing you fixed that nobody asked you to fix.
• One number you moved, with the before and the after.

Six stories cover almost every behavioral question you will get, because most behavioral questions are those same six situations approached from a different angle.

Block 3: your questions, 30 minutes

Pick three questions per interviewer from the list further down this page and write them somewhere you can see them during the call. On paper, or in a second window. Not in your head. The last five minutes of an interview is the worst possible moment to improvise.

Find out who is in the room

For every name on the invite, spend four minutes: their title, how long they have been at the company, what they did before, and whether they would be your manager, your peer, or your skip-level. That last one decides which questions you ask them, and it is the difference between three useful conversations and the same conversation three times.

If the invite carries no names, ask the recruiter. Word for word:

Could you send me the names and titles of everyone I will be meeting, and roughly how long each conversation runs? I want to come prepared for each of them.

Recruiters answer this. Coordinating the panel is their job, and asking reads as organized rather than demanding.

The day-before checklist

• Open the video link in the browser you will actually use. Some links only work in one.
• Test the camera and the microphone inside that app, not a different one.
• Save the recruiter’s phone number so you can text if the link dies two minutes before.
• Plug the laptop in. Charged is not the same as plugged in.
• Put your notes on paper or a second screen. A notes window on top of their faces means you read instead of talk.
• Water within reach. You will talk more than you expect to.
• In person: the address, the parking, the floor, and the name of whoever is at the front desk.

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The questions they will ask.

There is no secret list, but there is a short set of questions common enough that being surprised by one is a preparation failure rather than bad luck. Write an answer to each. Say it out loud once. Keep every story under two minutes.

Use STAR, and keep it under two minutes

Situation, Task, Action, Result. One sentence to set the scene. One sentence on what you were responsible for. Then most of the answer on what you personally did, and a clear ending on what happened because you did it.

Two failure modes are easy to catch in your own draft. The first is ninety seconds of background before anything happens. The second is an answer with no ending, where you describe the work and never say how it turned out. Read your six stories back and check for both.

Give a number in the result when you have one. When you do not, say “I do not have the exact figure in front of me” and describe the change in plain terms. Never invent the number. Interviewers ask follow-up questions, and invented numbers do not survive them.

The nine to write out

Each one below is followed by the shape of a strong answer. Not a script to memorize. The structure, so you can fill it with your own material.

• “Tell me about yourself.” Not your life story. Three parts, about ninety seconds: what you do now, one or two things you have shipped that matter for this specific role, and why this role is the next step. End on the job you are interviewing for, not on where you grew up.
• “Why do you want to work here?”Name something only this company has: a product decision, a market, a constraint the team works under. Test it by imagining the same answer pasted into a different company’s application. If it still fits, it is not an answer yet.
• “Why are you leaving?”One sentence, forward facing, no blame. “I want to work on X and there was no path to it there.” If you were laid off, say so plainly and keep going. Layoffs are common, and stumbling over the answer costs you more than the fact does.
• “Walk me through a project you are proud of.” Pick one where you can explain a tradeoff, not just an outcome. Why that approach and not the obvious alternative. A strong answer includes one decision you would make differently today.
• “Tell me about a time you failed.”A real failure with a real cost. Say what you got wrong in plain words, without hedging, then the specific thing you changed and how you know it worked. “I care too much” is the answer every interviewer has already heard.
• “Tell me about a conflict with a coworker.” Describe the disagreement on the merits, never the personality. What you did, what you conceded, how it ended. They are deciding whether you will be easy to work with, so the version of this story where the other person is the villain always loses.
• “What is your biggest weakness?”One real weakness plus the mechanism you use to contain it. “I lose track of small commitments in long meetings, so I write every action item into my own list before I leave the room and send it to the group the same day.” The mechanism is the part they are listening for.
• “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Answer in skills and scope, not titles. The same title means different things at different companies. “I want to be the person the team asks about X” travels anywhere and is easy to believe.
• “What are your salary expectations?”Ask first: “What range has been approved for this level?” If they insist you go first, give a range and say what it is based on, never a single number. The offer stage has its own playbook in the job offer guide.

When you do not know the answer

Say so, then keep talking. The sentence is short and you can use it verbatim:

I have not worked with that. Here is how I would approach it.

Then actually approach it out loud. What you would read first. Who you would ask. What you would try. How you would know whether it worked. Guessing confidently is a thing interviewers screen for, because it is expensive on a real team. Not knowing is not.

Say it out loud, once

Record yourself answering three of the nine. Play it back. You will hear the problems immediately: the answer with no ending, the story whose result you cannot actually remember, the filler word you did not know you use. Fix those and stop. An answer rehearsed twenty times comes out sounding rehearsed, which is worse than coming out slightly rough.

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The questions you ask.

Bring three questions per interviewer, written down, and match them to who you are talking to. The recruiter, the hiring manager, a future peer, and the skip-level know completely different things. Asking all four the same question wastes three of them.

What you are doing in this part of the interview is interviewing them. Take the answers seriously. A vague answer to a specific question is information, and it is usually the most reliable information you will get all day.

Ask the recruiter

• “What does the full process look like, and where does this conversation sit in it?” A good answer is specific: how many rounds, who is in each, roughly how long between them. A vague answer usually means the process has not been designed yet, so plan for delays.
• “Is this a new role or a backfill?” If it is a backfill, ask where the last person went. If it is new, ask what changed to create it. Either answer tells you what you would be walking into.
• “What range has been approved for this level?” A good answer is two numbers. “It depends on experience” is not a range. Ask once more, politely, then move on and revisit it at offer stage.

Ask the hiring manager

• “What do the first 90 days look like for whoever takes this role?” A good answer is concrete: a named project, a system to learn, a person to work with. If they cannot describe 90 days, the role is not scoped and you would be scoping it yourself in month one.
• “How will you know, six months in, that hiring me was the right call?” A good answer names outcomes you could actually influence. A description of a personality is not a good answer, and it usually means success on this team is decided by vibes.
• “What is the hardest problem the team has right now?” A good answer is real and a little uncomfortable. If everything sounds smooth, they are either selling you or not close enough to the work to know.
• “How does work get prioritized here, and who decides?”A good answer names a person or a specific process. “We are all pretty collaborative” means nobody knows, which means you will spend your first quarter finding out.

Ask a future peer

The peer round is where the honest answers live. Peers are not the ones who have to sell you the job, and they are the ones who will know within a week whether the pitch was accurate.

• “Walk me through what you did yesterday.” The single most useful question on this page, because it is hard to answer in marketing language. You want the real shape of a day: the meetings, the interruptions, what actually took the time.
• “What would you change about working here tomorrow if you could?” Everyone has one. Someone who says nothing is either very new or is not going to be candid with you, and both are worth knowing before you sign.
• “How long was it before you shipped something on your own?” This is a question about onboarding, documentation, and how much help is really available, and it gets a much more honest answer than asking about onboarding directly.
• “When something breaks, what happens?” Ask for the last real example. You are listening for whether the story is about fixing the system or about finding the person.

Ask the skip-level or the executive

They see budget, headcount, and strategy. Do not spend them on questions about the day to day, which they probably cannot answer accurately anyway.

• “What has to be true in twelve months for this team to count as a success?” A good answer connects the team to how the company makes money. If they cannot make that connection out loud, the team is exposed at the next budget cycle.
• “Where does this team sit in the priorities for next year?” You are asking, politely, whether the team is growing or being maintained. Listen for whether more headcount is planned after you.
• “At a private company: what was the last round, and what has to happen before the next one?” A founder or executive who will not answer this at final round is telling you something. You are being asked to take equity in exchange for salary, so you are allowed to ask about the equity.

Ask everyone, in the last two minutes

• “Is there anything about my background that gives you hesitation?” This is the only question that gives them a chance to say an objection out loud while you are still in the room and can answer it. Ask it, then stop talking and let them think. If they name something, answer it once, briefly, without arguing.
• “What are the next steps, and when should I expect to hear from you?”Get a date, not “soon.” The date ends the ambiguity, and it is what tells you later whether a follow-up is due or pushy.

Questions not to ask

• Anything answered on the careers page or the About page. “So what does the company do?” is a preparation report, not a question.
• Vacation, hours, and remote policy before there is an offer. Those cost you nothing to ask at offer stage, when you have leverage and they have already chosen you.
• “How quickly can I get promoted?” It reads as leaving before you arrive. Ask “what does the path from this level to the next actually look like” instead, which gets you the same information.
• Any question you do not want the answer to. Every question you ask is also a statement about what you care about, and they are reading it that way.

After the interview.

The interview is not over when the call ends. Two jobs are left and both are yours: write the debrief while you still remember the exact wording, then send a thank-you note the same day, under 150 words, one per interviewer.

The ten-minute debrief

Before you text anyone, before you check your phone, open a note and write down:

• Every question you were asked, in their words, not your paraphrase.
• The name and title of everyone you met, spelled correctly.
• Anything they said about the team, the timeline, or the role that was not in the job description.
• The one answer you wish you had given differently, and what you would say instead.
• The date they told you to expect news.

This takes about ten minutes and it is the file you reread before the next round. It is also where the specific detail in your thank-you note comes from, and the reason you can follow up later without guessing at a timeline.

The thank-you note

Same day. Under 150 words. One per interviewer, written separately, never one email forwarded to everybody. Here is the whole thing:

Subject: Thank you, [role] conversation

Hi [name],

Thanks for the time today. [One specific thing they said that you actually found interesting, in your own words.]

[One sentence connecting it to something you have done, or the short version of an answer you did not get to finish.]

Happy to answer anything else that would be useful. Looking forward to the next step.

[Your name]

The second sentence is the one that does the work. It has to be something only someone who was in that conversation could have written. If you could send the same note to a different company, delete it and write it again from your debrief.

The follow-up, when the date passes

They gave you a date. If it passes, wait two business days, then send one short email. One sentence of context, one question, nothing else:

Hi [name], following up on the [role] conversation from [date]. Are you still on the timeline you mentioned, or has it moved? Happy to wait either way, I just want to plan around it.

If there is no reply after another week, send one more. After that, mark it stale and move your time to live leads. Never send an angry follow-up. The people in that room will still be in this industry in ten years.

When it is a no

Ask once for feedback and expect not to get it. Many companies have a policy against giving it, so silence is not a verdict on your performance. Word for word:

Thank you for letting me know. If there is anything specific I could have done better, I would genuinely value hearing it. Either way, I would like to stay in touch about future roles.

Then open your debrief, find the answer you flagged, and fix it before the next interview. That is the only part of a rejection you can act on.

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The informational interview.

Not every interview is scheduled by a recruiter. An informational interview is one you ask for, where the only thing on the agenda is your questions. It is how you research a team before you apply, and how you hear about roles that were never posted.

Some roles are filled before they are ever posted, through exactly this kind of conversation. That is what people mean by the hidden job market. It is not a secret club. It is one person remembering your name on the day a role opens.

The ask

Fifteen minutes, one specific reason, and no request for a job. That last part is what makes people say yes:

Subject: 15 minutes about [team] at [company]?

Hi [name],

I am a [what you do] looking closely at [company] for my next role. I read [specific thing they wrote or shipped] and had two questions about how [team] actually works.

Would you have 15 minutes in the next two weeks? I am not asking for a referral, I just want to understand the team before I apply.

Thanks either way, [Your name]

What to ask in one

Use the peer questions above. They work here unchanged, and this time nobody is evaluating the way you ask them. Add two that only work in this format:

• “If you were me, what would you be doing differently in this search?” People give real advice when they are not grading you. Write down the answer even if you disagree with it.
• “Who else should I be talking to?” This is the entire mechanism. One conversation becomes two. Ask for a name, then ask whether they would be comfortable introducing you.

How to end it

Watch the clock and end at fifteen minutes even if it is going well. Offering the time back is the thing people remember. Say what you are going to do with what they told you, send a thank-you the same day, and then send them one short update about a month later whether or not anything came of it. That last message is what turns a favor into a relationship.

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