Preparing for an interview in ninety minutes

Interview preparation expands to fill whatever time it is given, and most of the expansion is re-reading: the posting again, the company's about page again, the same three answers rehearsed until they sound recited.

A fixed block forces the useful order — context, then material, then your own questions — and it ends. What follows is one way to spend it that covers the three things almost every interview actually tests.

What does the company sell, who to, and what changed recently? Enough to ask one question nobody else asks.

Concretely: the product or service, the customer it is sold to, how the company makes money, and one thing that has happened in the last year — a launch, a funding round, a new market, a public change of direction.

Then go back to the posting and re-read the accountabilities with that context in mind. They usually make more sense the second time, and the reason a role exists is often visible in the gap between the two. How to read a job description is about getting that reading right.

Stop at thirty minutes even if it feels unfinished. Beyond that you are learning things you will not be asked about.

Prepare four examples you can adapt: a hard decision, a failure you owned, a result you drove, and a collaboration that was difficult.

Four adaptable stories beat twenty rehearsed answers, because the questions will not be the ones you predicted and a story you know well can be pointed at several of them.

For each one, be able to say, without notes:

• The situation, in one sentence — enough for a stranger to follow it.
• What you specifically did, in the first person singular. Not what the team did.
• What happened, including the part that did not go well.
• What you would do differently, which is the half most people leave out.

Choose them from the work your CV already evidences. A story about something the document does not support is a story you will be asked to substantiate.

Ask about how the team measures success and what the first ninety days look like. The answers tell you whether the role is real.

Two more worth having ready: what happened to the person who did this before, and what would make the first year a disappointment. Both are polite, both are answerable, and both produce information no careers page contains.

Write the answers down afterwards. If you are running more than one process, this is the material you will compare them on, and you will not remember it accurately in a week. The Interview Guide covers what happens across a longer process.

Check the practical things the day before rather than ten minutes before: the joining link and whether it needs an application installed, who you are meeting and their role, how long it is scheduled for, and where you will sit.

This is not preparation in any interesting sense. It is the category of problem that consumes the first five minutes of an interview when it goes wrong, and those five minutes are expensive.