How to succeed in a job interview: preparation, questions and method

Prepare for your job interview with a simple method: research the company, the questions that always come up, the STAR method and what to ask the recruiter.

Most interviews turn on the same handful of moments: the minute or so where you introduce yourself, the request for a concrete example, and the point where the recruiter asks if you have questions. Each of those can be prepared. Not memorised word for word, but structured in advance so you are choosing what to say rather than searching for it.

This article walks through that preparation: how to read the posting for what the recruiter will test, the six questions that come up in almost every interview, the questions an employer is not allowed to ask, the STAR method for your examples, the logistics of getting there, and what to do in the 24 hours after you leave the room.

Research the company and the role

Before the interview, take thirty minutes to understand the context. A recruiter spots a candidate who has not read the posting immediately.

Focus on a few concrete things:

1. What the company does and who it serves.
2. The main responsibilities of the role and the skills expected.
3. Recent news: funding round, new product, expansion.
4. The company's tone on its site and on LinkedIn.

That background lets you tie your answers to what the company actually needs, instead of staying general. Reread what you sent them, too: the recruiter may open with a point from your cover letter, and you need to defend it in the same words.

Read the posting the way the recruiter wrote it

The skills a recruiter tests in the interview are the ones they repeated in the posting. Instead of highlighting it by hand, paste the text into our job description keyword extractor. It groups the terms into hard skills, tools, qualifications and soft skills, plus any other word the posting repeats, and counts how many times each one appears. It runs in your browser, so the posting never leaves your machine.

On the sample posting the tool ships with (a marketing data analyst role), "dashboards" comes up three times, SQL, Python, Power BI, Looker and Google Analytics twice each, and the four soft skills (communication, attention to detail, problem solving, team player) once each. The word "data" appears six times and "marketing" five. Your preparation follows from that list: one STAR example about a dashboard that changed a decision, one about a SQL or Python analysis, one sentence per soft skill. A tool mentioned once, inside "is a plus", is not what the interview will turn on.

The questions that always come up

Most interviews revolve around a core set of classic questions. Preparing them saves you from improvising under pressure.

For each one, prepare a short answer and a concrete example. An example always beats a general claim. Three of these questions have their own guide, with worked answers: why do you want to work here, why should we hire you and what are your weaknesses.

Questions an employer should not ask, and how to answer them

Interview law is stricter than most candidates assume. In the United States, the EEOC's guidance on prohibited employment practices says the information requested before hiring "should be limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job". Its page on marital status and children lists questions that "may be regarded as evidence of intent to discriminate" when asked before hiring: whether the applicant is pregnant, "marital status of applicant or whether applicant plans to marry", "number and age of children or future child bearing plans", "child care arrangements". Under the ADA, "an employer may not ask a job applicant, for example, if he or she has a disability", nor ask medical questions or require a medical exam "before making a job offer" (EEOC, pre-employment inquiries and medical questions).

In the UK, the government's guidance for employers is blunter: "You must not ask candidates about 'protected characteristics' or whether they are married, single or in a civil partnership, have children or plan to have children." Health comes with one useful exception for you as a candidate. An employer "can only ask about health or disability if there are necessary requirements of the job that cannot be met with reasonable adjustments, you're finding out if someone needs help to take part in a selection test or interview, or you're using 'positive action' to recruit a disabled person." So you can ask for an adjustment to the interview itself, extra time on a test or a ground-floor room, without it counting against you.

When a question crosses the line, you have three options, from most to least comfortable:

1. Answer the concern behind it. "If the question is whether I can travel for the client visits in the posting, yes, without restriction."
2. Decline politely. "I'd rather keep to what concerns the role."
3. Write the question down afterwards, with the date and who asked. It matters if you later file a complaint with the EEOC or an employment tribunal.

The first option wins most of the time. It answers what the interviewer actually worries about, usually availability, without giving up information they had no right to.

Structuring answers with the STAR method

When you are asked for a concrete example, the STAR method keeps you clear without getting lost in detail. Our STAR method guide shows how interviewers rate each part, with example answers by competency.

• Situation: the context, in one sentence.
• Task: what you had to achieve.
• Action: what you actually did.
• Result: the impact, with a number where you have one.

This structure works for almost every behavioural question: handling conflict, taking initiative, working in a team or making a hard call.

Talking about your background without reciting your resume

The recruiter already has your resume in front of them. What they want in the interview is the thread: why these choices, what you took from them, and where you want to go.

Prepare a 60 to 90 second introduction that connects your experiences rather than listing them. Our guide to answering "tell me about yourself" turns that into a word budget, with four timed example answers. Highlight two or three achievements that match the role, and leave the secondary details out. It is worth checking that your resume tells the same story — the interview should confirm the document, not contradict it.

For "Tell me about yourself", a three-part skeleton is enough. Fill it in once, out loud, and you will never open an interview improvising:

The questions to ask the recruiter

An interview is a conversation, not an interrogation. Asking good questions shows your interest and helps you judge whether the role really suits you. Our guide to questions to ask an interviewer has questions by interview stage and the ones a posting already answers.

You might ask:

1. What does a typical week look like in this role?
2. What are the team's main challenges right now?
3. How do you measure success in this position?
4. What are the next steps in the process?

Avoid opening with holidays or remote working. Those are legitimate subjects, but keep them for the end, once mutual interest is confirmed.

Money follows the same logic. Salary often comes up before you expect it — sometimes in the first call — so decide your range before the interview rather than in it. How to answer the question without closing the door too early is covered in our guide to negotiating salary in an interview.

The day before and the day itself: time off, what to bring, rehearsal

A little stress is normal, and even useful. What helps is removing the unknowns around the interview, and the first unknown is usually how you get there while still employed.

Getting time off for an interview

If you are in the UK and under notice of redundancy, section 52 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives you the right "to take reasonable time off during the employee's working hours before the end of his notice in order to look for new employment", provided you will have "been continuously employed for a period of two years or more" by the end of the notice. The time off is paid at your normal hourly rate, but section 53 caps the employer's liability at "forty per cent. of a week's pay" over the whole notice period, which on a five-day week is about two days of pay, so time off beyond that may go unpaid. Outside redundancy, no UK or US federal statute gives you an hour off for an interview. Book a half day, or ask the recruiter for a slot at the edge of the day or on video. Recruiters who hire people who are currently employed are used to it.

Dress, what to bring, rehearsal

Dress one step above what the team wears day to day. Their LinkedIn photos tell you what that is. Bring two printed copies of your resume, the posting, your list of questions and something to write with. The interviewer has not always printed their copy, and you can check your own dates without reaching for your phone.

Rehearse out loud at least once. Ask a friend to put the six questions from the table above to you in a random order, or record your two-minute introduction and play it back. A chat assistant can also play the recruiter from the pasted posting, as long as you check the facts it invents about the company. The goal is not a memorised script. It is having already heard yourself say the numbers.

On the day, check the address or the video link, arrive a few minutes early and breathe calmly before you start. If a question catches you off guard, take a moment to think before answering. A short silence beats a muddled answer.

Video and second-round interviews

For a video interview, the setup is part of the answer. Put the camera at eye level, test your sound, and look at the lens — not the screen — when you speak. Test the meeting link the day before, so a login problem never eats your first five minutes.

A second round changes the questions, not the method. Expect deeper technical detail, and often a conversation with future teammates rather than the recruiter alone.

Above all, stay consistent between rounds: interviewers compare notes, and a story that shifts from one conversation to the next costs more than a weak answer.

After the interview: following up

The interview does not end when you leave the room. A short thank-you message, sent within 24 hours, leaves a good impression and restates your interest. Our guide to the thank-you email after an interview has a version for each interviewer: recruiter, hiring manager, panel.

Write down the questions you were asked, how it felt and the next steps you were told about, while it is all fresh. Those notes are invaluable for preparing a second interview or comparing several opportunities.

Using HiredFolio to prepare your interviews

HiredFolio helps you keep every application organised: the role, the version of the resume you sent, the interview dates and your next actions. With everything in one application tracker you arrive prepared for every conversation, without digging through your inbox.

You can follow the progress of each process and know exactly when to follow up or send your thank-you message.

Try HiredFolio for free

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