5-Steps To Effectively Prepare and Ace Interviews
Today, I am going to show three steps that will help you effectively prepare and ace interviews. These three helped me and my clients land job offers consistently and effortlessly.
Many people make the mistake of waiting to prepare for their interviews until they land an actual interview. This usually leaves you with little to no time to prepare for interviews effectively. For many, this leads to unnecessary overwhelm, worry, and anxiety.
It is important to keep the stress and anxiety away when you are learning important skills because feeling overwhelmed and anxious can interfere with and slow down skill development. Avoiding unnecessary worry and anxiety is especially important when developing highly valuable skills such as interviewing skills.
The best solution for this issue is to start your interview prep as soon as possible, instead of spending time worrying and being stressed.
Here the three steps I recommend to help you effectively prepare for job interviews:
Set up a document to write and track your strategies and progress
Identify 30-40 interview questions related to your ideal job and answer them in advance
Use PAR Framework to answer interview questions with precision
Make a list of projects or problems you worked on in the past
Do practice interviews before the actual interview
Step 1: Set up a document to write and track your strategies and progress
When preparing for job interviews, create a separate document to store your interview strategies and details in one place. Think of this document as a living document that will help you throughout your career with interviews.
This is the first thing you should do when preparing for your interviews. It will help you stay organized and focused on your preparations. Take the time to keep this document updated.
Here are some key benefits of setting up this document:
It will function as a storehouse that holds the best of your interview strategies and tips
It will help you remember answers to key interview questions
It will help you organize your thoughts and ideas regarding interviews in one place
Here are some of the things you can store in the Interview Prep Document (IPD):
Interview prep tips and strategies
Interview questions and answers
Questions to ask interviewers
Background information about companies you are researching
Strategies you learn from this book or any other book related to interviews
Any other details relevant to interviews
I recommend using a cloud word processing software like Google Docs to store interview details. This way, you have access to them whenever and wherever you want. Keep this document continuously updated with any new information you come across.
When I used a similar document during my career, it helped me tremendously to become more proficient and organized during interviews. I would continually review and update this document with any valuable advice or tips I got about interviews. This helped me massively to organize my thoughts and ideas before the actual interview.
If you are not doing this practice already, I highly recommend you implement this document for your interview prep regimen right away.
Step 2: Identify 30-40 interview questions related to your ideal job and answer them in advance
Before you get invited to an actual interview, identify 40-50 interview questions related to your ideal job, and take the time to answer them in advance.
This is one of the most important tasks you can do to help you become confident and know what types of questions you will be asked during an interview.
This task may seem daunting at first, but you don’t need to do all 30-40 questions in one go. Focus on doing good work on one key question at a time. For example, in the next section, we will be identifying ten key questions you must develop and answer to help you ace interviews. Begin with these questions first.
The earlier you start this practice, the more time you will have to prepare great answers for your actual interviews.
The benefits of doing this activity are too valuable to miss out on. If you can only get one piece of advice from this book, remember this technique.
Here are six key benefits to performing this technique:
You can take your time to create the best answer you possibly can to help you showcase your expertise and skills
The created answers will help you as a memory bank to remind you of the most important answers for following interviews
They will help you ensure your answers are precise and flowing correctly before the actual interview
It will give you an opportunity to refine and make answers better over time
It will help you develop more confidence when answering interview questions
This is one of my favorite interview techniques because it was so effective in predicting the answers that may show up in the interview. When I made this technique a regular practice, I realized that I can answer around 80-90% of the interview questions pretty accurately and with a lot of confidence.
If I get asked any questions that I don't know the answer to or feel not so prepared, I would add this question to my interview question list to work on for the future. Then, I would work on developing a great answer for it and be ready for the next interview.
Here are the steps I recommend for building your 30-40 interview questions list:
Search “great interview questions and answers [your job title]” in Google
Select 5-10 articles that contain interview questions relevant to your ideal role
Slowly go through the articles and select 30-40 questions that are most relevant to your experience level
Add them to your Interview Success Document
Take your time and answer them as you do more research
In the next section, I will provide you with a solid framework to help you answer interview questions effectively and precisely. Answers to some questions may overlap and that’s completely fine. The same questions can be asked in multiple ways. Focus on continuously refining and improving your answers over time. You don’t need to get everything perfected today. Consistency is better than intensity when it comes to building your interview skills.
Step 3: Use PAR Framework to answer interview questions with precision
PAR Framework is one of my favorite techniques to apply when answering interview questions effectively and precisely.
What is the PAR Framework?
The PAR framework is a 3-step method to help you answer your interview questions. When you get asked an interview question that involves bringing up events from the past, use this format to answer these questions.
This framework is highly effective when presenting information for situational questions. For example, questions that start with “tell me about a time...” are ideal candidates for this framework. You will see how this framework is used later in this chapter.
There are three major components to this framework:
Problem: Describe a problem or project you worked on that is related to the question asked (i.e. worked on a project where you had to sell software to farmers to help them manage their crops and get 150 paid customers)
Actions: List out activities you took to manage the project or solve the problem (I.e. identified ideal farmer profile, created a database of ideal farmers to contact, contacted farmers to learn about their challenges and showed them how they can solve their problems through our software)
Results: Describe the outcome of your actions or project (i.e. Our team saw a 45% increase in sales when we applied the above activities to our work. Signed up 130 paid customers)
There are multiple applications for this framework. You probably noticed that we used a similar framework in an earlier section where we discussed how to make a list of projects you worked on. You will also notice a similar framework when building out a small presentation for interviews in the Interview Prep Advance Practices module in the next section.
Let’s take a look at how to use this framework in a question.
Example Answering A Question Using this Framework:
Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a challenging customer.
Problem: “When I was working at my last consulting company, my client was rather disappointed about the sales generated through email in the last month and wanted us to find ways to improve sales immediately.
Actions: “We developed a plan to resolve the major concerns of the customer. We created a plan to improve email conversion rates through identifying best practices such as A/B Testing and Personalization and applying them. We set up weekly calls to measure progress and get feedback from the customer. Then, we listed and made improvements to our emails and process after the research. We used software such as Google Analytics to track our progress.”
Result: “The sales through email gradually improved after we implemented the best practices. The client was also very happy because we supported each other closely and worked together to solve the issues.”
This is a highly useful framework when presenting information. I highly recommend you get to know this framework as much as you can and use it in interviews whenever possible. Start using this with practice interviews first to get better.
Step 4: Make a list of projects or problems you worked on in the past
This exercise is one of the most important things you can do to ace interviews. If you were to take one thing away from this book, be it this advice.
To help you answer interview questions with ease, make a list of projects or major problems you worked on in your past roles. Putting this list together will help you come up with examples of interview questions much more easily and quickly.
I call this the Project Registry. It essentially holds all the projects and problems I worked on in my past roles. This is another section that gets added to the Interview Success Document that we discussed in an earlier chapter. Also, we will be using the information you build in your Project Registry as a part of the exercises in other chapters.
When I was doing interviews in my career, this was a very effective practice that helped me prepare and come up with examples to back up my answers during the interview quickly and easily.
Here are the four steps I used to come up with projects and their details:
1. Brainstorm major projects or problems you worked on
Think about major projects and problems you managed in your past roles and write them down.
It could be doing marketing campaigns, developing software, managing a project, implementing software, helping people with specific issues, or doing a certain number of things. For example, this could be something such as sell x amount, solve x number of issues, help a certain number of people, create specific content (book, articles, course), solve a certain number of issues, build a certain number of units etc.
Interviewers love to hear about stories where you had to overcome professional challenges.
Here are some examples:
Worked on a project that implemented marketing automation software
Managed a project that built new software to help farmers manage crops
Solved 2000 support cases for users
If you didn’t work on specific projects directly but worked on various problems instead, you can list the common sets of problems you dealt with on a day to day basis as the project you worked on.
For example, if you worked as a Customer Service Specialist, and you need to help customers with specific software problems on a day-to-day basis, you can say that you “worked on a project that helped clients solve issues with software.” Then, you can identify all the actions you took to help them with the software.
2. List out all the actions and tasks you took to manage the project or problem
Now write down what types of actions and tasks you took to accomplish the project and solve the problem in your past roles. Write them for each project or problem you worked on.
Here are some examples:
Audited the company’s existing system
Created a roadmap for the implementation
Created a work backlog
Implemented training programs for new users
Negotiated contracts with vendors
Created knowledge-based articles to help answer key questions
Created a welcome campaign
Migrated 100,000 email subscribers to a new platform
Built relationships with five key vendors
Managed a team of email developers
Managed backlog and delegated tasks
Interviewed 30 users and to get feedback on the product and analyzed results
3. List out the results of the projects
Lastly, write down what sort of results you had with the project.
Here are some examples:
Increase sales by 50%
Closed 1000 cases successfully
Sold $1 million worth of services through email
Client was very happy because we delivered a high-quality product on time
The stakeholders and the team were very happy because we were able to complete the project stress-free
Use the Interview Success Document to organize the projects you come up with in one place. Come up with one at a time and grow this list over time. It’s work, but it has a huge payoff if you want to do well in interviews.
Continuously update this section in the Interview Success Document as your career progresses.
Step 5: Do practice interviews before the actual interview
One of the best ways to advance your interview skills is through repetition. Practicing for interviews by yourself is a valuable technique that can help you advance in your interview skills rather quickly without the unnecessary stress and time-pressure.
Once you do get invited to a real interview, plan to do at least three practice interviews before the real interview. Repetition is the key to becoming successful in job interviews. Don’t worry about how you look or sound. Appreciate all of your efforts and improvements. We all need improvements in one area or another in life and career.
Unfortunately, many people wait until the actual interviews to get the interview practice. This can be rather costly emotionally and physically, especially if you are unable to land the job with your existing interview skill set. It may even cause you to feel discouraged and affect your confidence negatively if you are unable to get the results you want in interviews.
You don’t need to put hours each time you practice. Focus on doing practice sessions of 25-30 minutes at a time. For example, identify 3-4 questions from your list and see if you can answer them confidently out loud. Make notes of any adjustments you need to make to the answers.
In the early days of my career, I remember doing up to 6-8 mock interviews for certain roles that were pretty intensive. This tactic helped me get better at interviews quickly. I focused on mastering 3-4 questions at a time. I also learned to relax, take my time, and provide precise answers to the questions. I realized that once I was able to answer about ten questions confidently, I became pretty confident answering other questions as well. I was surprised by how quickly I improved because of the focused spaced practice. Repetition has been a major key ingredient for my success and my client’s success with interviews.
Let’s do a quick recap:
Set up a document to write and track your strategies and progress
Identify 30-40 interview questions related to your ideal job and answer them in advance
Use PAR Framework to answer interview questions with precision
Make a list of projects or problems you worked on in the past
Do practice interviews before the actual interview
That’s it!
Thanks for reading and cheers!
