Interview day

Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2024

Last week’s article was about interview preparation and now I’ll share my best advice on the interview itself.

Or rather the day of the interview, because that’s just as important as what’s in the interview.

This is mainly about in-person interviews; however, I’ll add a section on video interviewing at the end.

Today we’ll cover:

  1. Moving from preparation to interview

  2. Interview pre-flight checklist

  3. How to give a good non-interview interview experience

  4. Managing interview nerves

  5. How to sell yourself, and why that’s the wrong way to think about it

  6. STAR and CARL, why and why not

  7. Answering questions through relevant stories

  8. The questions you should ask and why they matter

  9. On video interviews

Next week is on what happens after the interview.

  1. Moving from preparation to interview

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” Mike Tyson

Preparation is key, for sure.

But as soon as the interview starts, you can only influence how you are perceived.

Sometimes a decision may have nothing to do with your efforts, and everything to do with what’s happening elsewhere in process.

There’s a lot stacked against job seekers, which is why it’s so important to focus on the steps and processes you do have control over.

That’s one reason why this series is called Jobseeker Basics.

As complex as it can be to find a job in this market if you get the basics right, you give yourself the best odds.

  1. Interview pre-flight checklist

  • Set your clothes out the night before - use your smartest clothes, unless they’ve said otherwise, and have them presented as well as possible, whether ironed, cleaned, polished

  • Plan out your route to the interview allowing you to arrive 10-15 minutes early

  • Make sure you’ve read through all the documentation and done suitable preparation

  • Prepare killer questions (this gets its own section)

  • If possible, print them out with you, together with two copies of your CV (one for and one for them), and notes on where to go / who you are meeting

  • Good night’s sleep with little to no alcohol, and a healthy meal

  • Wake up at a normal time (unless the interview dictates otherwise)

  • Allow time for solitary activity, like a walk or Sudoku

  • Check traffic reports / public transport delays early and leave with plenty of time

  1. How to give a good non-interview interview experience

When does the interview start?

Is it when you are greeted by your interviewer?

Perhaps; however, I’d treat the interview as starting the first time you engage with the employer.

How you apply, how you respond to invites, how you confirm your availability, all contribute to influencing a process in which flawed humans have biases caused by our experiences.

Perhaps not if it were fair and even, yet your responsiveness won’t work against you, and may help.

A key element in any interview is to understand what you are like to work with.

It goes to follow you should show your best self at interview.

Yet, interviewers are canny to this and will find ways to find out what they believe your real self to be.

This means you have to be canny to their canniness.

Where you can, win over:

  • The security guard who lets you in the gate

  • The receptionist

  • The HR admin team that arrange the interview

  • The person who brings you through to interview

  • The interviewer’s first impression of you

  • Their last as you say goodbye

  • The person who lets you out the door when you leave

Perhaps it’s unfair for employers to ask what the receptionist thinks of you, in their effort to find out the ‘things unsaid’ part of an interview.

But if you know it can happen, make it work for you.

  1. Managing interview nerves

Nerves can be a problem for many at an interview, even affecting how you prep, your rest and your sustenance.

Now, I am not a medical professional and you should seek advice reflective of your circumstance, such as if you have high blood pressure.

However, I recommend reading into:

  • Mindfulness meditation for better sleep. Example.

  • Box breathing. A proven technique used by the Navy Seals to centre them in times of stress. It may even, over time, change how your body reacts to stress:

    • 4 seconds in through your nose

    • hold for 4

    • 4 seconds out through your mouth

    • hold for 4

    • rinse and repeat.

  • Take a breath, or a sip of water, to centre yourself before answering a question.

  • Regular exercise, if you can, to manage stress levels

I haven’t interviewed for some time, as a candidate, but I don’t mind saying that I sometimes have anxiety, occasionally panic attacks, and difficulty getting to sleep during times of stress.

The meditation technique is so effective at bedtime, when I need to use it, that I’m often out like a light moments after thinking I’ll never get to sleep. Really useful for ‘big day’ nerves.

These techniques have been helpful for me over the years, and I hear they help many job seekers too.

  1. How to sell yourself, and why that’s the wrong way to think about it

Interviews are fundamentally a negotiation, where you propose your value in exchange for the value offered by a job.

The give and take of an interview has a large part in the outcome.

I mentioned Chris Voss, and ‘Never Split the Difference’ in last week’s article, which gives great insight into negotiation.

A key element of negotiation is deep listening. Listening to understand and respond, more than listening to answer.

Getting to the root of what an interviewer wants is key to giving them a suitable answer.

You can read more about this here.

While some employers do have tricky interview processes, most just want to find the most suited person for their role.

Most hiring managers are busy people who aren’t trained in recruitment, so flaws in their approach often aren’t down to intent, more down to habits and practice.

Think about when you were hiring - did you deliver the perfect interview? What were you looking for in your candidates?

It’s often said by jobseekers that “I don’t know how to sell myself.”

I suggest selling is not a skill you need at an interview (unless it’s a commercial role, of course) - mainly you need to be the version of yourself that is good at your job, and how you are at work. Professionally authentic, rather than your unvarnished self.

Focus on listening to understand, then talk about how you can help solve their problems like you would in a constructive meeting at work.

Which is good sales, ha!

  1. STAR and CARL, why and why not

You’ve no doubt read about STAR (situation task action result) and CARL (context action result learning).

They are helpful to understand, especially for competency questions, because they allow you to convey your answer in a way that has meaning for an interviewer.

Situation : the background to the example you are sharing, as it relates to the question you are asked (similar to context)

Task : what you had to do to solve the problem alluded to in the question

Action : the steps you took to achieve this

Result : what actually happened

( Learning : how you’d improve next time)

However, it’s a mode of thinking, NOT a framework to apply rehearsed, monotonous answers to every question.

The words have to be balanced with how you say them naturally.

A robotic, over-practiced answer will only be memorable for how you said it, not for what you said.

Indeed, these are better described as storytelling frameworks, than interview answer frameworks.

Learn how to tell your story with STAR and CARL.

Listen to what the interviewer wants, and give them what they need to see you as a viable future colleague.

Oh and if they go bananas and ask what fruit you’d be, forgive them and play the game.

I’d be an orange because nothing rhymes with orange.

  1. Answering questions through relevant stories

Ensure you understand how your skills, achievements and experience will fulfil the role you have applied for.

Something talked about in last week’s article - here’s the link again

Often the criteria to demonstrate are set out in the job descriptions.

Often by the challenges facing a business, which you might glean through research.

Often through the gaps in between - context that may be missing from visible evidence, but you might understand through the listening principles above.

If you’ve prepared fully, understand what they are looking for and know how to access the knowledge you have: answering questions is simply about interpreting how you can help, in a way that has meaning to your audience.

This is where STAR is useful, as a way of interpreting your story. If you don’t have sufficient information to convey answers clearly, make sure to clarify.

Think of your story as a short snappy tale.

To the point and told in under a couple of minutes.

Audiences remember good stories; few remember dry statements, told through waffle.

Tell your story in the right way.

  1. The questions you should ask and why they matter

If you were to ask me the one common element that I find memorable in candidates, it’s the questions they ask me .

If you are allowed to ask questions, it’s a chance for you to change the narrative.

You can do so at the start of an interview:

  • before we start, may I ask what outcomes you want from this role? I’d love to hear your priorities, so I can show you how I can help

You can do so at the end of a question:

  • could I confirm my understanding? Do you mean….

You can do so at the end of an answer:

  • does that answer your question?

You can do so at the end of an interview, by asking questions to help learn if the role is right for you.

If employers aren’t willing to answer questions, there’s a snapshot of their culture.

What I wouldn’t ask is questions that leave you memorable for the wrong reasons.

[Try not to put interviewers on the back foot with questions like “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy?”]

The benefit of questions, for me, is that it moves the interview to more of an unrehearsed conversation.

Interviewers know the questions they want to ask, and if they work to a robust framework, you’ll be measured fairly from your answers against other interviewees.

But you can stand out through how you take control of the interview, appropriately with questions.

When I think back on most of my business wins, from client meetings, it’s been from the questions I’ve asked - not how I’ve pitched my services.

What kind of questions would I ask?

I’d want to know about the outcomes they want to reach, the problems they want to solve.

The structure of the team, and how the role has come about.

Their culture and how their teams experience it.

What challenges the hiring manager has, and how this role might help.

How this role might develop over time, and what my future might look like.

How they measure and reward success.

The challenges the company has, or any recent wins.

How things are changing, and how that might affect the role.

I’d want to understand their time frames and who else they are interviewing.

Everything that would help me make an objective decision.

  1. On video interviews

Many companies rely solely on video interviewing, especially since the pandemic. Convenient, easy to arrange, people can interview from different locations. Great!

They do invite a more casual approach to interviewing for better or worse, and while your interview might reveal things they didn’t mean to through their background, that’s not something in your control.

Consider:

  • check you have good, stable connectivity, where you intend to make the call. Any issues? How about interviewing from a friend’s if your internet access is poor?

  • try out their system beforehand. Make sure you won't have access issues on the day

  • practise with friends. See how you come across on a call, where interviewers are more reliant on the tone of voice than body language to gauge your personality

  • ensure your lighting is adequate with a suitable background

  • frame your head and shoulders centrally on-camera

  • look at the camera for a semblance of eye contact

  • use sticky note reminders around your screen - your interviewer can’t see them

  • treat it as a formal interview. Attend as you would in person, with a suitable dress code and presentation

That’s it for this week. No doubt I’ve missed something - feel free to reply if you have any questions, and I can work on improving the article.

Note - I haven’t included elements like presentations and tasks. These are so contextual, that you are better off researching elsewhere on the internet for specific preparation.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

How to doorknock

By Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2026
What follows is Chapter 43 from A Career Breakdown Kit. Is it a magic salve guaranteed for success? No of course not. But much like anything in a job search, nothing is guaranteed. What we do is identify which avenues can be effective for your context, and form an appropriate strategy. LinkedIn optimisation is great if people search for you on LinkedIn. Except speaking to my recruitment peers, fewer and fewer rely on it. Would it surprise you if I told you I rarely invested in at all before 2019? I've been working in recruitment since 1996 including at CEO level. Applications, networking, referrals, content, CV databases. All have a place and a purpose. Doorknocking on the other hand - some would tell you it has no place in the modern job search. If my daughter*, her friends and other 18 year olds can get a job from an old school technique, while those employers say "only through Indeed" then that might be a hint it still works. Some of whom are socially anxious, but then it's a replicable process, not a cult of personality. Or the periodic messages I get from CxOs who made their own jobs from direct outreach. Not forgetting Granovetter's seminal research and recent LinkedIn-specific studies in Science journal showing weak ties drive more job mobility than strong ties. And why wouldn't doorknocking work on LinkedIn, when you have a weak tie that suggests a viable employer? But no, it's not a guarantee. It's just an arrow in the quiver of a multichannel job search. 43 - How to doorknock Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a salesperson with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider. My wife even once bought from exactly this scenario. While it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security. Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn: You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity. This isn’t an approach for everyone and requires chutzpah. If you are used to a high failure rate in applications - what do you have to lose by being proactive? More than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search. It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward. While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out. If you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’, pay attention. My own career of looking for work includes many non-transactional approaches: Walked into the local Cinema and asked for a job Walked into Office World and asked for a job Worked for Dad Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work Temped through an agency Walked into an Inn and asked for a job Referred to a publishing, training & consulting company In managing their small-scale recruitment alongside my day job I got to know the MD of a recruitment firm as a supplier. I went to work there Tapped up to return to a more senior role Started my business upon being given the boot - thanks Dave! It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies. It’s mainly through my own means that I have secured my employment. *My daughter even tried doorknocking for her first job in our local town last summer. It didn’t work for her - she found a nice retail job through an application on Indeed. Her experience was positive enough that she helped a friend do the same - who got a job at the first shop they tried. Doorknocking is about approaching companies by category not because they are recruiting. These categories can be: All the employers in your local business park (often they have websites, with directories and job adverts) Companies listed in local newspapers, directories or platforms (local to me this could be Cambridge Evening News, Bury Free Press, Cambridge Network or Business Weekly) Top 100 employers in your domain Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale Doorknocking companies you’ve come across through networking and its resulting market map Make contact and make a case for yourself on the principle of the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. There’s an element of luck involved for these elements to all come together. A disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting or ever have a need to employ you and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit. That means a logically low hit rate. Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you. The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume-based application versus the ‘personal rejection’ from your direct outbound approach. Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. Let’s reorder and examine this marketing principle: Right Place Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind if you are a bold prospector or research them in advance. ‘site:’ is a useful command in Google. You can search on specific websites: ‘site: linkedin.com ACME jobs’ Right Person Typically this will be the ‘next one up’ - Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner. Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are prospects. Look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out? Right Time While time can be happenstance, can timed factors create opportunity? What might be a hiring trigger? Perhaps you could contact a list of companies that have recently announced funding or a big win - news that may lead to hiring additional people. Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave. If their process isn’t time-bound, can you make it time-bound? ‘We aren’t hiring right now’ might mean they’ve run out of headcount in the January to June period and may have a new budget in July. What can you learn that helps you both? If you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months? Think about how you buy. If you don’t need something how likely are you to respond to a message no matter how well crafted? If you do need something you might think first of someone who keeps in regular touch. Right Offer You have more opportunity for career creativity in being unemployed than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job. What problems can you fix for a company in a non-traditional employment capacity? Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now. It isn’t burning enough to seek professional help and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job. What if you caught them at the right time? An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process. A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website. A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown identified by your expertise. A swamped team that could benefit from their admin burden being reduced. An orchard that needs pickers at harvest time. What starts out as a short-term, project, or part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. While rare, I know a few people whose permanent full-time jobs have come about this way, including at a senior level. Right message This is both specific and crude. It’s specific because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message may miss. It’s crude because sometimes you can catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is. This is the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by calling at the right time. ‘I’m glad you called Greg, I’m starting to think about my maternity cover in June.’ Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with. If you have a strong hook in your message - such as a key area of rare expertise or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - go in with that. If you don’t - done is better than procrastinating: ‘Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point. If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?’ Right price I’ve left this until the end because much of this is variable and subjective. What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be? Research will help if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through Indeed, Glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies that are advertising will pay. One approach might be to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there. Doorknocking can sometimes give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. It’s a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation. It’s worth persevering. Otherwise, it’s too easy to think after 10, 20, or 100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault. There is always an element of luck in any activity. This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow. The only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit.

Root Canal - No problem, pt 2

By Greg Wyatt • June 4, 2026
Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. I do find it interesting go through my older articles. How has my thinking changed? Has it improved? How was I so cringy? Looking at this article in its August 2023 form, I hadn't yet focused on Candidate Resentment as an opportunity to improve how we recruit. Not because it's decent to treat people better, but because that is a happy byproduct of strategically assessing our work as it supports our goals. Whether that's filling vacancies or finding people that meet our goals long-term and flourish doing so. Root canal If you recognise that speaking to the potential problems of the people you want to engage is a good idea, you may also recognise why you shouldn't create any problems that push them away. Engagement is an ongoing process that carries through every stage of recruitment, even into employment. Yes, bring your candidates forward, in part by showing how you solve their career problems. But, don’t throw up unnecessary issues that undo your good work. Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. Why did that candidate proceed? Why did another withdraw? What raised concern? What about the potential candidates we don’t even know about? What influenced their decisions? I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of candidates, prospects, applicants, and everything else, during my career. Out of curiosity, I’m always interested in what influences their decisions in their pursuit of a new career. What fascinates me is that these are the Gemba , the unknown unknowns that we can extrapolate into our own recruitment processes. What problems do they encounter elsewhere, that discourage them from applying, that encourage them to withdraw, and why? And how might we be guilty of the same? While if we are guilty, how can we fix these problems, so that the objection never comes up? Imagine that - the reader that might have walked away, who instead chooses to engage. This may seem an unknowable unknown, but one of the benefits of my job seeker work is hearing about the issues they encounter on their side of recruitment and how that may influence their decisions. Considering these are people that are very problem aware, their appetite for bullshit is in some ways higher than the problem unaware (passive in old speak). While in others, what you may consider normal behaviour, they consider red flags. While we can’t control the behaviour of candidates, we can learn what influences their behaviour and form a process that nudges, draws forward or mitigates when needed. What are we accountable for that might present a problem for a candidate we want to employ? Especially when, in normal life, moving jobs is one of the biggest stresses? How might we unnecessarily cause scepticism or anxiety? Auditing your own recruitment process as a mystery candidate is one opportunity. As is surveying your staff for their experience - with the caveat they are happy to be working for you, skewing their perception. Or perhaps they're terrified of losing their jobs. Do they really want to rock the boat with criticism? But it’s the candidates who withdraw, who hesitate, who object that can be the source of the biggest improvements. What would you say their common complaints are? You can look to LinkedIn for the answer, in their high-engagement posts. Salary on the job description (they mean the advert) ATS data duplication Responsiveness and transparency Tardy, bloated and unnecessary recruitment stages A robotic process that forgot they are human Which becomes your choice. Do you look within and challenge yourself with 5 Whys to see how you can improve? Do you take away problems before they can occur? Saving your candidates unnecessary toothache? Or do you lay blame on the areas you can’t control? Those are the questions. Regards, Greg p.s. I’m available for interesting work - UK key hires, fractional talent acquisition and recruitment writing. Maybe we can talk. p.p.s. A Recruitment AiDE is out now - the discipline for UK key hire recruitment