Good interview preparation is not memorising perfect answers. It is arriving with your own history organised, so that whatever you are asked, you have a real example ready to talk about.

Days one and two: study the job, not the internet

Start with the posting and your own application, not with lists of clever answers. Read the posting again and pick out the five or six things the role actually involves, then note which parts of your experience speak to each one. Reread the resume you sent, because interviewers ask about what is on it, and a claim you wrote a month ago can catch you out if you have forgotten writing it. Check the practical details too: who you are meeting, where, how long it is expected to last, and whether there is a task or a test involved.

Days three and four: build your examples

Prepare four or five short stories from your real history: a problem you solved, a time something went wrong, a piece of work you are proud of, and a time you worked with a difficult person or a tight deadline. For each one, be clear about the situation, what you personally did, and how it ended. Practise saying them out loud, ideally to another person, because examples that read well in your head often ramble when spoken. Keep each answer to a couple of minutes. You are not scripting sentences to recite, just making sure the facts come back in the right order under pressure.

Days five and six: practise the likely questions

Most interviews return to a familiar set of themes: why this role, why this employer, your strengths, a weakness you are working on, and how you handle pressure or disagreement. Prepare an honest answer for each, tied to your examples rather than to phrases you have borrowed. Research the employer enough to speak about their actual work: what they make or provide, who for, and anything recent they have announced. Write down anything in the posting you do not understand, because asking about it in the interview is normal. The night before, lay out clothes, documents and the route, then stop working.

Questions worth asking them

An interview is also your chance to check the job, and thoughtful questions show how you think. Ask what the first few months would focus on, how the team is organised, who you would report to, and how success in the role is judged. Ask what happened to the last person in the post, and what the next steps and rough timings are. Avoid asking about pay, hours or leave in a first conversation unless the employer raises them, and never ask something the posting already answers clearly. Write your questions down and take them in. Nobody minds, and it saves the blank moment at the end.

Try it in the tools

Put this into practice with the free resume review or the resume builder. Both run in your browser and keep your information on your own device.

This is general guidance from our own experience of the application process, not an employer policy or a hiring guarantee. Follow the requirements in your actual application.