What to Research for Your Next Interview

Hi friend,

Last week I wrote a blog about prepping for the interview stage, but this week we’re going to dive into preparing for a specific interview. Before you sit down to practice for an interview, you need to collect a few key pieces of information, starting with the name and title of your interviewer(s), and the length of the interview. Most of the time, that information is included with the calendar invitation or scheduling emails, but if not, don’t be shy about asking. You can use something like this to request the information:

Hi Madeline,

I’m looking forward to meeting the team and learning more about Digital Expo! As I prepare for the interview, I wondered if you could share the names and positions of the people I will be meeting with and how long I should allocate for the conversation.

Thanks,

Karissa

If you have the name of your interviewer but not the title, look them up on the company website or LinkedIn. The interviewer’s title is a good indicator of what the interview topics will cover; if you are interviewing with a supervisor or peer for the position, the interview will likely cover role-specific skills. If you are interviewing with someone from HR or People Ops, the interview will likely cover your general aptitude for the work environment and baseline professional skills.

Next, look at the length of the interview. Deduct 10-15 minutes for your questions and small talk, and then divide the remaining time by 5. That’s about how many questions you should prepare for. This means that a 30 minute interview is only likely to have 3-4 questions, and an hour-long interview may have 9-10 questions. The fewer questions you anticipate, the more broad and general they will be (though at a late stage, short interviews with a specific person may be a few target questions on their area of expertise).

Finally, review the job description requirements and responsibilities; allocate each bullet point into thematic buckets (i.e. communication, project management, and organization). Hopefully you’ve been keeping track of job descriptions and your application materials, but if not, it’s time to save a copy of the job description ASAP! If a company has a lot of great candidates, they may take it down, making it harder for you to prepare as you move through the interview process. You may be able to map one or more of these themes to your interviewer (i.e. a Project Manager will likely ask you about project management experience), which will help you focus your preparation even more. Regardless, review your notes of your past experiences and identify key projects that relate to the themes. If you’re only applying for jobs that are a great fit for you, this won’t be too hard!

At this point, you should have a solid but rough idea of what to expect in your upcoming interview. In the coming weeks I’ll cover practicing for your interview, preparing good questions, managing time and organizing your thoughts well during the interview, and using interview thank you notes for networking.

Until next week,

Karissa