Interview preparation
This page lists the fifteen questions that come up most often in interviews, each with what the interviewer is actually looking for and a framework for your answer. The material is tailored to your country, because expectations about structure and candour differ. Reading it costs nothing.
The fifteen most common questions
Grouped into behavioural (“Tell me about a conflict in your team”), technical and cultural (“Why us?”). Each question comes with the information the interviewer is really after and an answer framework you fill with your own examples.
The answer framework: STAR
Situation, Task, Action, Result. Four sentences, in this order, and a vague memory becomes a story that can be checked. Once you have run the method through three examples of your own, you no longer need to apply it consciously in the interview.
Practise the STAR method with your own examplesCase interviews in consulting
At consulting firms, the interview is a task: a business problem, thought through out loud and structured in fifteen minutes. What is assessed is not the answer but whether your structure holds, whether you name your assumptions and whether you calculate without losing the thread. What counts: a structure of your own instead of a memorised framework, saying the numbers out loud, asking clarifying questions.
Panel interviews and multiple interviewers
When three to five people sit across from you, each has a different question in mind: specialists test ability, managers test fit, HR checks the formalities. Answer the person who asked, then look around the panel at the end. Noting their names at the start helps more than any answering technique.
Practise, do not just read
Answers you have read sound different in an interview from answers you have spoken. In the practice interview, the AI asks questions about your target role, you answer, and you get feedback on structure and content.
Go to the practice interviewFrequently asked questions
How long before the interview should I prepare?
Two or three evenings are enough if you use them well: one for the company, one for three STAR examples of your own, one for saying them out loud. More time adds little if the examples are missing.
What helps with nerves?
Nerves drop with repetition, not with relaxation techniques. Tell your three core stories out loud three times and you will stop stumbling over the wording. A practice interview beats rehearsing in the mirror.
How do I answer the salary question?
With a range, not a number, and only once the role is clear. Give the range, justify the lower end with what you bring, and ask what the role is budgeted at.