Interview Ready

• 0:00What this is, and what it is not
• 0:04An interview is a conversation with a purpose, not an interrogation. What the person opposite is actually deciding
• 0:12What loses the room. Four ways good candidates talk themselves out of a job, including the AI-polished answer they cannot explain
• 0:22Your first ninety seconds, using C.E.R.F. You write it, then you say it out loud
• 0:40The Evidence Bank. Five kinds of story, and where to find them when you are sure you have none
• 1:02Turning a job description into evidence, even when your experience is not like-for-like
• 1:16Your prep sheet, and what to do in the seven days before an interview
• 1:24Questions, including the ones people are embarrassed to ask in public

• An introduction you can give in ninety seconds without recitingWritten, then said out loud at least once while someone is listening
• Three evidence stories written properly, and the method for the restThree done well beats five half-finished, and the method is what you keep
• A way to read any job description and know what to say to itIncluding when your background is not an obvious match
• A one-page prep sheet for your next interview

"But I don't have any experience."

Almost nobody who says this is right. What they mean is they have no job title that matches the one they are applying for, which is a different problem and a much smaller one.

An internship. Part-time work. A group assignment where somebody stopped replying and you covered it. A final year project. Running a club. Volunteering. The family business. Something you taught yourself because nobody else was going to. Every one of those contains evidence of solving a problem, working with people, handling pressure, making a mistake, or learning fast. Those are the five things you are being asked about.

Most of this session is spent finding what you already have and making it usable. If you genuinely arrive with nothing, you will leave having found three things you had forgotten you did.

I graduated with a 2.3 CGPA and English I couldn't rely on under pressure. In 2011 I walked into an interview at Royal Bank of Canada having prepared entirely the wrong things. They hired me anyway. I left RBC as an Associate Director, and today I hold a regional leadership role at a global bank running operations across five markets with a team of around 110.

Which means I have sat on both sides of this. I know what it costs to be capable and unable to show it, and I know what it looks like from the chair opposite when someone finally does.