One of the key factors you can control about the interview process is the amount of preparation you do before any interview takes place – this preparation is as relevant for telephone interviews as it is for face to face meetings.

Research has shown that over 80% of candidates do little or no preparation before an interview, which means that by spending a little time researching the company, and considering what you could be asked in the interview you are already going to be giving yourself a huge advantage over the competition.

This guide will endeavour to help you with your preparation. I’ve no doubt that some, maybe all, of what I will cover you will already carry out before interviews. Even if you make use of one point or technique raised here that could mean the difference between an offer or no offer as a result of your interview.

Take notes as you work through this process. Candidates often ask if it is the right thing to take notes into interviews and the simple answer is yes. By arriving with notes and questions in a smart presentation folder, or a new jotter / pad, you are reinforcing the fact that you have done your homework. Take a copy of your CV for everyone who will be interviewing you – they may already have one in front of them but if not again you are showing how serious you are taking the interview, and that you are ready to work for them !

Company research

Your Recruiter should have provided you with significant information about the company you are interviewing at, so you should know about the sector they work in, what their company culture is, location of offices and what sort of person really stands out for them. If you have any questions about the company do ask your Recruiter, but nothing is going to match the research you are able to do.

You should ensure that you have spent time reading up on the company – their web page is an ideal place to start. If they are a multinational, then a brief read about the company structure, and any other divisions, is good background reading. You should also spend a little time on more general web research – search engines, technical web pages, LinkedIn etc will all be able to assist you in this.

Any general notes you can take at this stage are going to help you in the interview. I would be very surprised if you start being asked about company turnover, number of staff / offices worldwide, any recent company announcements but by having these sorts of facts & figures at hand in the interview again are going to show how serious you are taking things, and by having them written in front of you for easy reference saves embarrassment by quoting incorrect figures.

Interview format

You should be able to walk through the door of the company you are interviewing at knowing exactly what you are likely to face, who you are meeting, and how long you can expect to be there – all this information should be provided to you by your Recruiter. This of course is the ideal situation.

There are times when you are not going to have the luxury of having all of this information. The bare minimum you will have is who is going to interview you, the stage of the interview, and of course the position you are going to be interviewed for.

Have a look on LinkedIn to find out more about who is going to be interviewing you. You could find similar backgrounds, common acquaintances, or you could even have worked at the same companies in the past. You don’t want to come across as a stalker so I’d be classing this information as “good research” and possible talking points if the interview allows that sort of discussion.

What sort of interview formats can you expect?

• Telephone interview – chances are these are going to focus on your technical skills, or a discussion about your CV. Telephone interviews are often considered easy and candidates can be blasé about them – this can be a mistake. Give yourself the best possible chance of being called into the next stage by treating this stage as any other. Ensure you can be somewhere quiet, that you are not going to be disturbed, and that you can give the interview your full concentration.
• Face to face interviews – they can be broken down into two distinct parts.
• Technical interview - Your suitability for the position will be further assessed, chances are in a great deal more detail than any telephone interview you may have had. You may be presented with a scenario, a whiteboard discussion, or any other technical test. Your interviewers are also likely to be seeing if you are going to be a good fit for their team.
• HR Type interview, often paired with a Senior Manager / Director to confirm team and company fit. HR interviews are focused on if you are going to be a good fit for their company. You will also be asked about your salary expectations, and about what you could expect if successful.

At all stages you should be prepared to answer questions about yourself, and why you have moved from your previous jobs – knowing your work background is often assumed but having a read through your CV again is essential.

What questions could you be asked about your background, and what answers would you give?

You can also expect to be asked about why you are looking for a new job, and what it is about their company that interests you. Your research should have given you more than enough reasons to give.

Again, what answers would you give to these questions?

Answers to be prepared

Again, you are likely to face distinct types of questions

• Technical questions – do you have the right skills for the job?
• Tell me about yourself?
• What sort of projects have you been involved with?
• What have you done during the last 2 years that has really made a difference to your current employer?
• What have you done has made you most proud?
• Specific technical questions relevant to the role

You may have a technical test to complete, and your preparation in this area can be linked to the specification for the role
A note about Job Specs. You will often find that they can be very aspirational, and can sometimes be classed as a tick list for non-technical people involved in the recruitment process. While they are good reference material, they should be used as a guide only.

• Suitability for the team – do you fit?
• Why are you looking to change at this point in your career?
• What motivates you?
• What interests you about this company?
• What sort of team do you flourish in ?
• What do you look for from a Manager?
• If I were to speak with your colleagues, what would they say about you?
• Describe a situation where you have had a design disagreement with your team?
• Why did you move from this job? What about this one?

You should remember that it is you that are being interviewed, not the team you worked for – the answers that you give should reflect this ! You should avoid too many “we developed......”, “we were able to..........” and instead be sure to stress what your involvement was, and what you specifically achieved.

When you are asked about why you moved from job to job it is wise to have clear and concise reasons to give – the chances are these companies would be called for a reference if you are successful and are offered the job at the end of the process. If you moved for a better salary then you want to be able to demonstrate you were also looking to further your career and not just your bank balance, as a purely money driven candidate could be tempted to move again by competitors just as easily.

The final sort of questions are the ones you are likely to face from HR, and can be the hardest to prepare for.

• What are your strengths?
• What are your weaknesses?
• Where do you want to be in 5 years time?
• What sort of companies do you like working for?
• If you were a colour, what colour would you be and why?

OK the last question is unusual but certainly not unheard of. All of these you should have at least thought about beforehand – again research on interview questions online will help you.

At the very least you need to have answers ready for the strengths / weaknesses question – if you are put on the spot in a tough interview you may give a weakness that would rule you out. The best approach you should take is to be able to spin your weakness into a positive – the best way to describe would be by using the following example.

Mr Software Engineer is asked what his weakness is.

I’m not the fastest coder in the world, as I ensure that I double, sometimes triple check my code as I work. I know there are others out there who can complete their work faster, but because of the extra care I take as I work I am confident my code is as good and as robust as possible. Because of this extra care I take I have discovered problems early on in the development lifecycle that at latter stages would have been very time consuming and problematic to resolve.

A bit of a cop out I suppose, but I am sure you would be able to find a similar sort of weakness that you could use in such a situation.

Questions to ask

At the end of every interview you are always going to be asked if you have any questions, and from an interviewers point of view there is nothing worse than seeing a candidate look at the sky, or their feet and umm and ahh before saying no. The person who is going to be offered the job is the one who not only has demonstrated that they can do the work, but also someone who is interested in joining the company.

Again, questions can be classed in 2 categories.

Personal questions – what’s in it for you

• How big is the team I am going to be working in?
• What projects am I going to be working on?
• What training can I expect to receive if I were to join you?
• What makes a candidate stand out for you?
• How has this vacancy arisen?
• How long have you been looking for?
• Why should someone join you?

Impersonal questions – what you want to find out about the company

• What new products am I going to get the chance to work on?
• Is the company going to be moving into other sectors?
• Why should someone come to join your company?
• Why do you stay?

Even if everything has been answered, then you want to make them aware that you had questions prepared for them

• I was going to ask you about your product development but you’ve already told me everything about that.
• I was going to try to find out more about what makes you stand out from your competitors – you’ve gone into a lot of details about this already thanks.

Why do you want to be asking questions about the company?

You will often find that the person who gets offered the position isn’t always the one who has the best skills, but the one that shows the most enthusiasm about joining the company. Ensuring that you ask unselfish questions helps to reinforce your enthusiasm.

The Money Question

Out of all you could be asked the question about what salary you are looking for, and what package you would want, is one of the trickiest you are likely to get asked. You don’t want to price yourself out of the market, but also don't want to sell yourself too cheaply. In an ideal world your Recruiter should handle all of your salary negotiations on your behalf. They will have had comprehensive training to ensure that they can get you the best possible salary, and will have knowledge and experience of working with the client that you may not have.

It is highly unlikely that you would be asked about salary during a telephone interview, and often the initial face to face interview is again going to concentrate on your skills and team fit, so you may not get asked this until a final stage / HR type interview. Until then, your Recruiter would have been ensuring the client is aware of what they would need to be offering you.

So, how to answer “what salary are you looking for”?

During the early interview stages if you are asked the best answer is as follows.

At this stage I want to find out as much as I can about the opportunity you are offering – if you think I am the right person for the job I am sure you will offer me a salary I couldn’t refuse.

An answer like this will probably raise a smile or two. Of course, if you are pressed for a figure then you have to give them an idea of what you are looking for, but again you want to avoid specifics. A great way is to detail what you are on before giving a salary range you would hope for.

• I’m currently on a salary of £35,000, and with that I get a pension, healthcare, gym membership – the usual sort of corporate benefits. I also get a company and personal bonus. In an ideal world I would be hoping to achieve a salary of around the £40,000 mark with benefits.
• My package is worth about £50,000 – I get a base of £40,000, with a car allowance and bonus, and also your usual benefits. I would like to think I could better that.

Again, you should have a discussion with your Recruiter to be sure you are giving the right level of answer. No doubt you will already be aware of what salary the company is looking to pay, and by working with your Recruiter you would be able to maximise the salary you could achieve.

The biggest no-no at this stage is to use the phrase “at least”. There are companies out there who would be more than happy to take your salary expectation of “at least £35,000”, or “at least what I am on at the moment” and pay you exactly that. You are giving yourself no room to manoeuvre and while you may not achieve much more than your “at least” figure you could get several thousand pounds more. You will be far better served using phrases like

• In the high £30s per year.
• As close to £40k as possible

Realistically, you can expect to be able to increase your salary by 5% or so each time you move jobs – if you are going to lose benefits (for example if you are not going to get health cover) then of course your base salary could rise even more. By the same token, if your bonus or commission scheme is going to up earnings considerably then it will be a decision for you to weigh up if you could live with less basic when you start.

How to finish the interview

So you’ve passed any technical test, you’ve got on well with the people who have interviewed you, and you are confident you have shown that you are going to fit with the team and the company, is there anything else you could do to ensure that you beat the competition and get the all important offer?

Making a good impression at the end of the interview is going to ensure that you stand out from the crowd. All too often this stage of the interview is neglected as we can be a little reserved at showing how keen we are on the job. There are 2 main things you want to do.

Use the names of the people who have interviewed you – if you can show that you have remembered their names then they are more likely to recall your name when they review all the interviews that have taken place.
If you liked the sound of the position, and you really think that this is the job for you – Tell Them!

The second point will not come naturally to many people, but it really can make a huge difference. By confirming how interested you are in the position, and leaving your interviewers in doubt of this, you are going to stand out for them.

Thanks Dave, Thanks John, I’ve really enjoyed finding out more about your company and your development team, it sounds like a fantastic place to work – xxxx Ltd is exactly the sort of company I’ve been hoping to find, I’d love the chance to join you!

Finally, get back to your Recruiter!

As soon as you have left the interview you need to call your Recruiter !

By giving your feedback as soon as possible you are going to provide not only your immediate impressions of how things went at the interview, but also to help your Recruiter effectively manage the process. They will be able to pass on your interest to the Managers you met with, and will reinforce why you feel you are the ideal candidate for this position.

If you were aware of any slip ups you may have made in the interview this can be addressed straight away – “I’ve just had a call from Steve you’ve just met with and he’s kicking himself as he realised that one of the answers he gave you was wrong, in the heat of the moment he .......”

By giving your Recruiter this level of feedback it also helps us in getting an immediate impression from the company of how you performed, which again is priceless in managing the process.