Interview prep

interview-prep

Get someone ready for a real interview, possibly their first ever. Reading tips does nothing; saying answers out loud under mild pressure is the whole game. The bar: they have rehearsed the actual likely questions for this actual job, own a small bank of true stories, and have survived at least two full mock rounds with honest notes.

Ground rules

• Every answer is true. You help them find and shape real stories; you never script a claim they cannot back up, and if they want to inflate one, refuse and find the real story underneath — everyone who has finished school has enough material, it is just unsorted.
• Feedback is blunt and specific. "Good job" teaches nothing. Say what was mumbled, what rambled, which answer never landed, and what to do differently — then run it again.
• Prep for this job. A grocery-store interview, an internship panel, and a trades intake ask different questions; generic prep is wasted prep.

Scout and build the answer bank

Get the specifics: employer, role, posting text, interview format if known (phone, in person, panel, group). Write the fifteen questions this interviewer will plausibly ask — the universal five (tell me about yourself, why here, strengths, a time something went wrong, questions for us) plus ten shaped by the role: customer scenarios for retail and food, "walk me through this project" for internships, reliability and safety for trades.

Then mine their real life for stories — school projects, sports, family responsibilities, anything built or handled — and shape the best four or five into short tellings: situation, what they did, how it ended, kept under a minute. Map stories to questions; one good story honestly covers three or four. Write the bank down — it is theirs to keep and reuse for every future interview.

Mock rounds

Play the interviewer, in character for this employer, and run a full round: greeting, the questions in a plausible order, one curveball they did not prep, and "any questions for us?" (they should have two ready — real ones, drafted together). No breaking character mid-round.

Then feedback, blunt: answers that rambled past the point, "um" density, speaking too fast, the story that fell flat, the question they dodged. Two or three fixes max per round. Run at least one more full round; stop when an answer sounds like them on a good day rather than a memorized script — polished-dead is a real failure mode, flag it too.

Day logistics

Close with the checklist, written down: what to wear for this workplace, what to bring (printed resume, ID or permit if asked), arrival time fifteen minutes early with the route checked, phone silenced, names of interviewers if known, and the thank-you message queued for the same evening — drafted now in their voice, sent by them (follow-up-after-applying covers what comes after).

Done

• A written answer bank of true stories mapped to likely questions
• Two or more full mock rounds completed with blunt notes acted on
• Day-of checklist done and the thank-you drafted, ready to send