Interview techniques

Make sure you have good knowledge about the role, department, and your interviewers. This will help you present yourself as the best fit for the position and will often make or break your interview — it’s also the part most people either skip or don’t do properly.

Nothing says "I want this job" like a candidate who has done their homework. If you need info on what a certain team does specifically, you can ask HR or the hiring manage if they have some time to discuss the role before your interview.

There are standard questions you will hear in almost all interviews. Anticipating them and knowing why interviewers ask them is the only way to give high-quality answers. The most common questions include: 

“Tell me about yourself”  

You don’t want to give a one sentence answer here, but you also don’t want to share your whole life story. Instead, prepare a brief summary on what you do, your achievements, and tie it into the role.

“Why did you apply for this role”  

Be specific – what is it about the role that calls to you? What aspects of the work feel exciting to you? Being able to communicate this succinctly and with a positive attitude will go a long way.

“What are your strengths and weaknesses”

Focus on difficult questions - don’t ignore your weak areas hoping interviewers won’t probe at them.

Create an engaging story around each failure to show that you recognised the failure and its impact, managed to learn something from that situation, and prevented it from happening again. Someone who has failed, perhaps not only once, and learned from those failures is more valuable than someone who never stepped outside of their comfort zone throughout their career.

Make a list of your achievements, failures and relevant/transferrable skills, and think of stories that demonstrate them. Then, practice answering the questions using these stories. Write down concrete examples that demonstrate how you saved time, money, or resources; it will help you remember them better.

Whenever possible, use the STAR method (Situation-Task-Action-Result). It proves you’ve got the skills needed to excel in the position you applied for — based on a story about how you used those skills in the past. 

Usually, you will need to use the STAR technique when answering competency based interview questions, which begin with:  

“Tell me about a time when…” 

“Give me an example of a time when you…” 

Now, think about typical skills that competency questions tend to explore. These are usually: 

• Communication

• Teamwork

• Problem-solving

• Decision-making

• Initiative and ownership

Asking interesting and informed questions at the end of the interview will show that you did your research, are confident and able to think critically, and have a genuine passion for learning more about a certain area of the business. Here are a few examples:

• Why is this position open?

• What are some of the challenges of this role?

• A year from now, when you're looking back on this hire, what would I have done to exceed every expectation?

• What qualities do you believe set apart the most successful members in your team? 

• What are some of the most interesting projects you’ve worked on here?

• How does this team support DS Smith's current goals?

Make sure you ask questions you actually want the answers to, and not what you think will impress the interviewers. Imagine it's your first day in the job, and think about what questions you might have.