How to Prepare for a Job Interview (With AI Prompts and Expert Tips)

While landing a job interview is exciting, preparing for it can be stressful. To make the process smoother, we talked to tech and business professionals — from software engineers to recruiters — who shared insider tips on what to do before, during and after a job interview. Who knows? Their advice may just help you land your dream job.

How to Prepare for a Job Interview

1. Research the Company

Before your interview, look for information on the company’s products, services, values, mission, management team, board members and recent company announcements. Those can be found on company blogs, white papers, news articles and podcasts.

“If you spend an hour or two reading these, it gives you an idea of who we are and it goes a long way to show you’re interested in us,” Dermot Williams, senior director of engineering at cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust, told Built In.

Reading company reviews on Glassdoor is another way to prepare for a job interview. That may offer information on what prospective and current employees have to say about job interview questions the company may ask.

Review a company’s website and social media posts. That may give you ideas of how you fit in or add to the company’s culture, Leena Macwan, a principal recruiter at Zynga, told Built In.

2. Examine the Job Description

Carefully review the job description and start thinking of ways your experience and skills align with it.

“Memorize a couple of bullet points from the job description and match that to your experience, where you can connect it to a strong example that demonstrates that skill,” Rachel Amos, director of career services and employer relations at Carnegie Mellon University, told Built In. 

For example, a startup notes in its job description it’s looking for a software engineer who is comfortable working in an ambiguous environment with a lot of demanding deadlines. Let’s say you worked in that type of environment in your previous job and thrived. Point that out to the interviewer and provide data or information to back it up.

3. Learn About Your Interviewer’s Background

If you know who is interviewing you, look up their LinkedIn profile, read their blogs and social media posts.

“Use that information as an ice breaker to start the conversation when you meet them,” senior Amazon AWS in-house recruiter Zafar Choudhury told Built In. “You can say, ‘I read you did a TED talk last year or I saw you did a cybersecurity presentation.’ Hiring managers love it because it shows you’ve done your due diligence and homework.”

4. Practice the Required Hard Skills

LeetCode and HackerRank were among the tools Bill Bruschi used to prepare for his job interview at Amazon, where he was hired as an AWS software development engineer. He said the examples used were very accurate to what they found in the coding tests he took.

“It’s important to think out loud so the interviewer can hear your thought process and you’re encouraged to ask questions,” Bruschi added. “You’re really working with the interviewer to solve the issue at hand.”

5. Prepare Answers to Common Interview Questions

In the course of an interview, you’ll be asked several questions about your experience and skill set. Here are some of the most common interview questions to think through ahead of time:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• Tell me about a challenge you encountered and how you solved it.
• What’s something you worked on that you’re proud of?

When considering your responses to interview questions, use the STAR method to structure your answers:

• Situation: Set the scene.
• Task: Describe what you had to do.
• Action: Explain what you did.
• Result: Discuss the outcomes of your actions.

6. Consider Questions to Ask the Interviewer

“When a candidate has no questions ... it says they’re not curious,” Marvin Lopez, director of student programs for the University of California at Berkeley’s engineering student services department, told Built in. “It tells me they haven’t thought about the organization, haven’t thought about the position, they’re just going to come in and do what they’re told.”

Below are a few good questions to ask the interviewer:

• What are the day-to-day responsibilities of this role?
• What are some traits that a candidate needs in order to be successful on this team?
• Can you tell me about the team’s culture?
• Can you tell me about this specific company value?
• How does the company recognize these values?

7. Conduct Mock Interviews

Find a friend, family member or colleague to do a mock job interview and rehearse answering questions on why a company should hire you.  Conducting a mock job interview provides an opportunity to receive feedback on your body language when answering questions. Do you fold your arms across your chest, or avoid eye contact in an in-person mock interview? Or are you constantly looking down in a virtual mock interview, rather than looking into the camera at the interviewer?

8. Practice Active Listening

To prepare for your interview, work on engaging in active listening when responding to an interviewer’s questions. 

“I’ve had cases where I asked a question and the candidate will go on to a whole other place I didn’t ask about,” Santina Pitcher, associate director of counseling and programs at the University of California at Berkeley, told Built In. “In my head, I’m thinking maybe they just pivoted because they had no idea how to answer the question or, on the flip side, they weren’t listening.”

9. Print Copies of Your Resume

Print two or three extra copies of your resume to bring to the interview if you’re going in person.

“I’ve seen this happen on multiple occasions where the interviewer may suddenly want to loop in someone else for a second opinion,” Choudhury said. “Wouldn’t it make you look more professional to pull a second resume from your folder and give it to us? That makes you look prepared and ahead of the game. These are leadership things we look for.”

10. Sort Out Travel or Computer Set-Up Beforehand

How to Prepare Travel for In-Person Interviews

Before an in-person interview, make sure you:

• Know how to get to the interview location and prepare your travel route.
• Know how long it will take to arrive at the interview location.
• Have transportation prepared to help you arrive at your interview location on time (whether by car, train or on foot).

How to Set Up for Virtual Interviews

Before a virtual interview, make sure you:

• Have a stable internet connection.
• Have a working camera situated at eye level.
• Have the correct interview meeting link ready to access.
• Have any necessary meeting software downloaded before the interview. 
• Have properly updated your computer to handle any virtual meetings without issue.

11. Select Your Interview Outfit the Night Before

It’s best to pick out your outfit the night before an interview so you have ample time to get ready and focus on the interview itself. 

Here’s what to keep in mind when choosing your interview outfit:

What to Wear for In-Person Interviews

For in-person interviews, opt for a neat and clean appearance that is business casual or business professional, depending on the company environment. 

Sometimes, interviewers will provide information on an interview’s dress code before the meeting time for candidates to reference, so ensure to follow these instructions above all if provided. 

What to Wear for Virtual Interviews

For virtual interviews, the same outfit rules apply as if it were an in-person interview. Dress neatly and cleanly for the occasion, with a business casual or business professional outfit in mind depending on the company. 

Ensure your meeting background is also clean, professional and well-lit before the meeting time. 

12. Be Ready to Ask for Next Steps

When the interview is over, you’ll want to ask the interviewer how soon the company anticipates hiring for the position, rather than putting them on the spot by asking “What’s the next step?”

Within the next day, email a thank-you note to your interviewer.

How Can I Use AI to Help Prepare for a Job Interview?

Artificial intelligence can serve as a personalized career coach, helping you determine how your resume fits with a job description and how to prepare answers for interview questions. Remember, it can be helpful to use AI to help you prepare, but avoid using it to answer questions during your interview.

Here’s a few ways AI can be used to help prepare for a job interview:

1. Use AI to Generate Tailored Practice Questions

Instead of practicing generic interview questions, feed an AI tool the specific job description and your resume. Then, ask it to identify the most likely technical and behavioral questions you will be asked based on that specific role.

• Prompt example: “I am interviewing for [job title] at [company]. Here is the job description: [job description text]. Here is my resume: [resume text]. Based on the info in these, list 5 behavioral questions and 3 technical interview questions I should prepare for.”

2. Use AI to Conduct Interactive Mock Interviews

AI can be used to roleplay as the interviewer, which can help you practice answers for interview questions in real-time. You can even ask the AI to adopt a specific persona, such as a “tough technical lead” or a “supportive HR manager.”

• Prompt example: “I want you to act as a hiring manager for [company]. Interview me for a [job title] position at the company. Ask me one question at a time, wait for my response and then provide constructive feedback on how I can improve my answer using the STAR method.”

3. Use AI to Refine Your STAR Method Responses

If you have a suitable story to use for job interviews but struggle to make it concise, AI can help you structure it. Share a personal career-related experience, and ask the AI to format it into a clear situation, task, action and result to fit within the STAR method response.

• Prompt example: “Here is a story about a time I solved a difficult problem at work: [story text]. Please rewrite this using the STAR method to be concise and impactful for a job interview.”

4. Use AI to Research the Company and Identify Talking Points

When researching a company and reviewing its website and blog pages, AI can help summarize these materials quickly to help you find talking points about the company’s mission that you could bring up in the interview.

• Prompt example: “Based on recent news and the official website for [company], what are the top three challenges this company is currently facing, and how can a [job title] help solve them?”

Frequently Asked Questions