Your interview playbook: Lessons from an expert

Mhorag: How do you approach interviews?

Alastair: As a coach, I see interviews as opportunities to build relationships and mutual understanding, and see what it would be like to work and breathe together. As a consultant, I see them as ways to analyse what is most relevant about a role, an organisation and the criteria being used by interviewers, and identify how best to map your experience, expertise and passions against them. As a conductor, I see interviews as performances where you have an opportunity to communicate, engage and radiate who you are, what you bring, and what you think and feel.

How should interviewees prepare?

Preparation is essential to ensure you are present, flexible in the moment, and on point. Prepare with three lenses in mind:

What are your overarching messages?

What do you want interviewers to remember about you? Memorise a set of 5–10 clear, concise, compelling messages you want to communicate about yourself and have interviewers remember –which will define your candidacy in the interviewer’s eyes. These include your passions and sources of energy; your inner and externally facing qualities; your impact and growth to date; the impact and working relationships you would seek to have in the role; and key enablers for your success. It’s important to iterate, practice and refine the messages so that they flow through the way you walk into the room, how you engage with your interviewers, and the way you respond to questions.

How should you prepare questions and answers?

Invest the time to develop an understanding of the role, organisation and your fit, and identify likely questions you will be asked in each of these areas. Then draft, rehearse and refine short, memorable answers that convey who you are (professional and personally), demonstrate the depth and clarity of your thinking, and provide evidenced, contextualised examples of your personality, skills and impact. The aim is to provide answers that not only give you a mark of 10/10; but are so clear and compelling that interviewers will find it hard to mark any other candidate as highly.

How do you want to present yourself beyond the content you share?

This is about how you present; in the same way that a conductor prepares for how they walk onto the stage, radiate their presence to fellow performers and the audience, and create the space for collective experience and endeavour. Consider how you walk into a room or dial into a call; how you listen, think and breathe; and how you allow your character, energy, insight, experience, personality, professionalism and passions to shine through.

How should interviewers prepare?

Your primary goal is to get a sense of whether the interviewee will have impact, fulfilment and continuing growth in the role in a way that works for the organisation and the people they will be working with. Underpinning this is a sense of what the priorities and culture are for you, your team and the organisation, so that you can communicate and evidence them clearly in the interview – and use this as a way to inform and inspire the interviewee and help them decide if it’s the right role for them.

And, as with any other conversation, it’s important to come to the interview with an open mind and your full attention. Remember also that the way you present, engage and are present in the interview is as important as the questions you ask to identifying the right person – and their wanting to join you.

How do you structure questions to elicit genuine and insightful responses?

Keep them simple. Focus them on what it takes to succeed in the role and its evolving organisational and external context. And phrase them so they bring to fore the examples and evidence of interviewees’ insights, capabilities and impact, and their intrinsic personality and drivers.

What role does listening play during interviews?

Effective listening is the foundation for any successful interaction. The heart of this is about trust. By giving your full attention to the interviewee, you are best placed to gather the insight you and your organisation are looking for to assess their fit for the role. This includes listening to the content of what they say, observing their body language, and sensing what it feels like to engage with them.

Listening is also about avoiding interference, and – in a way familiar to anyone who practices yoga or meditation – letting thoughts about your next question or meeting (or other things in your life) float away. This type of deep listening is not just consistent with seeking and recording information you need to score candidates against criteria for the role; it is what ensures that your assessment is based on a rich level of insight, rather than a more formulaic approach to ticking the boxes.

How do you balance sticking to a script while allowing the conversation to flow?

Some organisations require that all interviewees are asked the same questions, or that questions are shared in advance. This balance is best achieved when interviewer and interviewee see the questions as a structure around which conversation evolves. In some instances, a direct answer to the question can be all that’s needed. In others, in can be helpful to broaden out through follow-on questions before coming back to the original question or a new one. The ideal outcome is that the interview feels like an open, thoughtful exchange of ideas, with a foretaste of what it would be like to work together, not a performative exercise.

How do you create a safe, trust-based environment?

This is a two-way responsibility for interviewer and interviewee, starting with allowing yourself and the person or people with whom you are speaking space to think and breathe. For interviewers, it’s about coming to the conversation with genuine interest in the person you are interviewing, being open-minded about who they are and what they can bring, and allowing space for them to think and express their thoughts and feelings.

For interviewees, it’s about building during an interview the open, collaborative, trust-based relationship that you would want to have with colleagues at the organisation, were you to join them.

What strategies are there for addressing sensitive topics or areas of personal growth in leadership interviews?

This goes back to grounding interviews in the impact, fulfilment and growth of the interviewee. If this is clear, whether implicitly or explicitly, it enables both interviewer and interviewee to explore the latter’s ‘fit’ in terms of experience, actions and choices to date, the culture of the organisation, and what matters most for them to thrive.

What advice do you have for interviewees who feel overwhelmed or nervous?

First, prepare in terms of messages, questions and answers, and how you present. Simply feeling prepared can help you feel more grounded and confident going into an interview. Second, recognise that it’s natural – and in the right degree can be helpful – to feel nervous and that your interviewers may do so, too.

Third, centre yourself ahead of an interview in whatever way works best for you. Finally, during the conversation, remember to listen, think and breathe – and see it as an opportunity to engage with another human being (or bot!), rather than submitting yourself to the judgment of others.

How can you navigate tough or unproductive interviews?

Keep in mind that tough interviews do happen, but that you will learn something nonetheless and that the extent to which the interview feels tough is not necessarily correlated with a more positive or negative outcome. And during the interview, stay centred on who you are, keep breathing and trust yourself to give the best answers you can on the day.

Is there one question every interviewee should prepare for?

If you’re asked at the end of the interview if you have any questions, it’s not always essential to have any, but it is good to have a brief, positive way to say ‘no’ if you don’t, so the conversation comes to a close in a positive way.

How should you deal with a ‘red flag’ in an interview?

If, as either interviewer or interviewee, you have a ‘niggle’ about any aspect of the meeting, it’s important to recognise and address it; whether in the interview itself, in further interviews or conversations, by seeking more information, or reflecting by yourself or with others. Otherwise, you risk creating waving though a concern in the interests of getting a hire in place (or avoiding challenging conversations), which may ‘come back to bite’ later on, with material implications for the role and the candidate.

How do you know if an interview has gone well?

The best you can aim for is a shared sense on each side of the table or screen that it would feel natural for the interviewee to stay behind and get started.