How to Nail an Interview (Recent Graduate Series)

You’ve networked or applied for a job and – congratulations – you’ve landed an interview. Now what?

As I mentioned in my previous article, while helping to build StackAdapt, I had the opportunity to review tens of thousands of resumes, interview thousands of people, and hire hundreds. This extensive experience allowed me to see firsthand what does and doesn’t work well for interviewees during the interview process. In this article I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned, so that you can go into your own interviews with confidence, knowing that by applying the strategies I share below, you’ll stand out from the throng of other applicants being interviewed for the same job.?

Before the Interview

The absolute best way to stand out is to come to the interview prepared. Let’s break the preparation into two categories: questions and ideas.

a. Bring Questions

At some point during the interview you will be given an opportunity to ask questions, so make them interesting and unique – make them count. Hardly anyone ever prepares good questions for an interview, so when prompted they end up asking banal, obvious questions like, “Where do you see your company in 5 years?” But that’s just lazy. Instead, take this opportunity to stand out from the crowd and research thought-provoking questions so you can challenge the interviewer. The best way to do this is to find information that interests you and then build rapport around it. To get started creating strong questions to ask your interviewer, follow these steps:?

• Go to LinkedIn and find the person who will interview you. Study their profile and note how long they have worked at the company and what other companies they worked for before. Write questions you genuinely want to know answers to. If the question you draft doesn’t spark your own interest, look for something else.?
• While still on their LinkedIn profile, click on “Show all activity” and see what they themselves write about – is there anything that catches your eye, that you can relate to, or have questions about? A good way to ask a question is not to ask it head on, but by first giving some context as to why what you’re about to ask matters to you.?
• Go to the company website and make sure you understand what the company actually does. Aside from being able to articulate what the company does, take the time to read a couple of articles on their blog from start to end. Pause to research anything that is not clear, and write down questions you can ask the interviewer. Not only will this help you better understand the opportunity presented by the company, but coming prepared with questions of this sort also shows the interviewer that you actually took time to prepare. I don’t have data supporting this, but it’s clear that an overwhelming majority of job candidates never take the time to do this.

When I was a recent graduate, all companies kind of looked the same to me. I thought to myself, It doesn’t matter … I’ll be a junior employee, and they’ll just tell me what to do. Wrong. That kind of thinking is how you end up taking the wrong job or wind up at the wrong company. While I was lucky with my first job, if I were to start over again, I’d be much more intentional as to why I want to work for a specific company, and I’d take the time to read about the industry it operates in. So, read up about the company you’re interviewing for, and when you come across something you’d like to know more about, make a note about it to ask the interviewer.?

b. Bring Ideas

The more senior the position is that you are applying for and the smaller the company is that you want to join, the more important it is to come to your interview with concrete ideas about how you can contribute to the success of the company. It’s quite likely (unless you have specialized knowledge in the area) that what you suggest has been at least tangentially explored already by the company, but that is not the point. The point is to demonstrate that you took the time to think about what challenges the company may be facing and how you can contribute to solving them. Such tactical skills aren’t taught much at universities these days, so you might find thinking this way a challenge in itself, but try to distill the job description down to its fundamentals and think of ways you can improve it.?

Suppose, for example, that you are seeking to join a sales team as a Sales Development Representative (SDR), which is generally a junior role. This job is about generating new leads for senior sales personnel, so the success criteria for the position would likely include the number and quality of leads you can generate. What would certainly stand out in your interview, then, would be if you were to demonstrate your research skills by presenting a) a sample of LinkedIn profiles along with your explanation of why you think each individual would be a relevant prospect and b) a sample email outreach or email sequence showing how you would reach out to those individuals. Since you most likely didn’t learn how to do this in school, make sure to share with your interviewer where you learned this knowledge: what websites you read, what corporate blogs you visited, what podcasts you listened to, etc. The idea here is not to be “right” but to show that you are fully invested in landing and succeeding in the job, that you don’t shy away from putting in the necessary work, and that you take initiative.?

c. Check Your Attitude?

(See item 1 here .) YOU ARE ENOUGH!?

During and After the Interview

a. Test your Technology

It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll be doing your first interview virtually. When you get the calendar invite with dial-in information, take a few minutes to note what software will be used. Here are a few tasks to complete before the interview:

• Create several notifications in your calendar of choice to make sure you don’t forget the interview appointment.?
• Do a dry-run well in advance to make sure you’ve performed any required updates and have given the software the necessary microphone and camera permissions.?
• Plug in your laptop to ensure that you won’t run out of battery during the interview. Test your internet connection, and tether from your phone if you think the connection is not fast enough.?
• Prepare your laptop: Open any documents you may need to share (samples of work or any preparation materials) and close all irrelevant documents and tabs. Your workspace needs to be tidy and entirely dedicated to a productive interview. A virtual interview can give you a huge advantage over in-person ones — you can have notes opened in front of you that you can peek at while talking, for example. Use that to your advantage.?

b. Look Professional

I can count on one hand the number of people I interviewed who wore a suit and tie for the online interview. One of them is working at StackAdapt now. It’s not about the suit per se, it’s about the effort of putting forward your best self. Nonverbal communication is more challenging virtually, but you can instantly stand out by having a clean work space, good lighting and sound, and being neatly dressed. Virtual or blurry backgrounds are perfectly acceptable. Pretend you were doing an interview on television: How would you dress, and how would you want your background to look???

c. Follow Up

Surprisingly, a lot of interviewees fail to follow up after the interview with an email to build additional rapport (our guess is that only about 15% of candidates do). Be sure to do so. Thank the interviewer for their time and make the interaction stand out in the following ways:

• Provide any supplemental information based on what was discussed in your interview. For example, you could write, “During our conversation we discussed X. Here are a few [articles/videos/podcasts] that really interested me because of Y.”?
• Don’t procrastinate. Send the follow-up email within 24 hours of the interview, and ask when the next opportunity will be to speak to the interviewer or other team members.?
• Connect with them on LinkedIn – this is totally acceptable. Even if this position ends up not being the one for you, there may be more openings down the line, or they may refer you to their colleagues from other departments. Every interview helps you build your reputation.

Lastly, let me add that the best way to stand out from the crowd of applicants is to NOT be like everyone else – which means to be yourself! To do that, emphasize the things that interest you, come to the interview prepared, and make all your interactions with the interviewer less transactional and more personal.

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Good luck! As always, I look forward to hearing from you if this advice has worked for you. And if you’re interested in learning about opportunities at StackAdapt —ping me!?