Interview coaching: turn nerves into your competitive edge

Know what you want them to remember

Before any interview, choose three points you want the panel to leave with. Every answer you give should connect back to one of them.

This stops you rambling and gives your nerves something useful to hold on to.

Build a bank of stories

Most competency questions are really asking for an example. Prepare five or six short stories from your work that cover leadership, conflict, delivery under pressure, a mistake and a result you are proud of.

Structure each one simply: the situation, what you had to achieve, what you did, and what happened.

Prepare for the questions people dread

Plan an honest answer for the usual difficult ones:

• “Tell me about yourself”: a short, relevant summary that leads to why you are here.
• “What is your biggest weakness?”: a real one, and what you are doing about it.
• “Why are you leaving?”: positive, truthful and forward-looking.
• “Where do you see yourself?”: the direction you are heading, tied to this role.

Manage nerves rather than fight them

Nerves are energy. Slow your pace, pause before answering and breathe out longer than you breathe in. It is perfectly fine to say “let me think about that for a moment”.

Practise out loud. Reading your answers in your head is not the same as saying them.

Ask questions that show you’ve thought about the job

At the end, ask what success looks like in the first six months, what the team is working on and what the biggest challenge in the role is. Good questions are part of the assessment.