7 Steps to Nail Your Next Virtual Interview

Interviews are hard. Stakes are high, you can only guess at what they’re going to ask, and you have to worry about presenting yourself as both competent and likable. Nowadays, the first few rounds of interviews are almost always held virtually. With COVID, the entire process may be virtual.

Preparing for a virtual interview isn’t too different than an in-person one, but there are still some things to consider. Do you know what’s also hard? Getting the interview in the first place, so don’t waste the opportunity to be prepared. Like an old soccer coach used to say to me, “fail to prepare, prepare to fail”.

Here’s my step-by-step process:

• 1 — Source questions that make sense for the role/company/round, using research.
• 2 — Craft your answers in an appropriate format.
• 3— Create flashcards with distilled answers.
• 4 — Practice with flashcards.
• 5 — Mock interview on camera.
• 6 — Source questions for the interviewer.
• 7 — Nail it!

Source Questions

The first step is to create a list of questions that you think are likely to be asked by the interviewer. This will be dependent on the role, the company, your experience, which round you’re in, etc. Don’t obsess over this step, you can easily over-prepare by filling your brain with too much to remember. I know it can be tempting to play it safe by googling “interview questions”, choosing 50 and going to town. Resist that urge and try to focus instead.

How many questions exactly? Again it depends. If it’s a 15-min phone screen, it’s going to be 3 short questions at most and you should know what they are. “Tell me about yourself (and your interest in this role” ), “Why this job/why this company?” , “What are your career goals” the basics.

30-min, 3–5 questions, but prepare 10–12 as the options are greater.

1 hour, 5–8 questions, prepare 20.

2nd/3rd+ interviews may be longer, but by now you should have a good feel of what has been asked, what hasn’t, what matters to them, etc. Chances are they’ve now decided that you’re qualified, but they want to know about your goals and personality. So lean towards more of those type questions.

If you’re lucky, you may be able to find interview questions on sites like Glassdoor or LinkedIn. It’s always worth a quick Google to see what you can find. One good way to prepare is to make each bullet in the job description a question. For example, “Demonstrated experience managing multiple projects in a fast-paced environment” becomes “Tell me about a time you’ve managed multiple projects at once? Were you successful? How did you do it?”

Craft answers to your questions

Now that you have a list of questions, it’s time to start crafting answers. You may already have a good idea of what to say, but putting it down in writing helps crystalize your ideas and solidify it in your memory. You don’t need to write out full prose here, in fact, that can be harmful. It’s much easier and better to know your points and how to weave them into different answers.

Make use of the job description, and the company culture page to determine what to focus on. If they’re big on collaboration, be prepared to talk about how you’ve collaborated well in the past with your colleagues. Try to sell, more than summarize. Remember, this is a sales meeting, you’re trying to sell yourself to a stranger. What people are looking for in the interview process is this, “Can I trust that this person will be able to do this job well, and reliably”. Do so by referencing past experience and discussing how you would apply it in this role. Research the company and its industry so that you know exactly where your skillset fits into the bigger picture.

For example, “At my last company, I created an email campaign that targeted inactive users and achieved a 30% CTR. For your industry that typically has a lot of churn, I would use my copywriting skills to improve your bottom line”.

Create flashcards

Distill your answers to a few key points that you can talk on. I like to break my points into 1, 2, or 3 bullets (at most) so that I can run them down in my head. For example, “Tell me about yourself” becomes “1 — My professional persona is X, 2 — My past experiences have contained Y 3 — Now I’m excited to get to work more with Z” Again, don’t memorize full answers, just points you’re comfortable with. Rehearsed answers never sound good, and it allows you to have the flexibility for when questions are asked differently. I like Quizlet for this, super intuitive and powerful free plan. Paper is fine, too, of course.

Practice!

You’ve done a lot of hard work, now comes the easy part. Get to practicing by shuffling your question cards and forcing yourself to answer in full before moving on. I know I have a tendency to start to answer before getting sidetracked in my head about it. “I would consider my strength to be the ability to get into the customer’s mindset and… wait, I forgot to read that article on customer interviews and product development”.

If answers sound awkward or empty, adjust them. By speaking out loud and in full answers, you’ll notice where you feel unconfident and need to practice more.

Mock interview yourself on camera

This may sound like an annoying unnecessary step but believe me, it’s worth it. What sounds good in your head may not sound so good out loud. Plus, practicing getting your talking points out loud does wonder for the nerves and confidence level. You may think you’ve got it down pat, but once you have to rattle it off in one go, it can come out messy as hell. Don’t get tripped up by not listening to yourself back to eliminate the low-hanging fruit. Seriously, doing this once will make you sound so much better by forcing yourself to hear how you’re coming off. You may not notice filler words (which are fine in moderation), lack of annunciation, or that you need to get more fluent with a point or two.

As important is that you’ll see how your background looks, how your environment sounds, and more. This matters a lot because it’s something you wouldn’t think about in-person. You would sit in the same room and chat, no worries. People will make their first judgment about you in the first .1 second, and before they even ask you anything they’re going to see your face, shirt, and background. This is your chance to make sure their first impression is a good one.

A quick note on appearances on camera

• Try not to be backlit. It can be distracting and make you look bad. I place two lamps on my desk, behind the computer to add light on my face. I also make sure the room itself isn’t too dark.
• Stand up. You’ll look and sound better as you won’t be tempted to slouch and give yourself more space in the lungs. Additionally, it’s a mental thing. Standing up makes you more alert and confident than sitting down. Nobody ever gave a great speech sitting down.
• Talk to the camera, not the person. This one is tricky, it’s so natural to speak to people by looking at their face. However, to them it doesn’t look like you’re making eye contact, it looks like you’re looking at their chin. Try to be cognizant of your gaze and if you can, look into the camera for the best eye-contact substitute.

Prepare questions for the interviewer

In my experience, this can be make or break. It usually comes at the end, and psychology shows us that people evaluate experiences based on the peak and the ending. This is your chance to take control of the interview, turn it into more of a conversation, and highlight anything you want them to see that they might’ve missed.

Here’s the other thing they’re looking for in the interview process — do they like you? These are going to be your co-workers, people that need to get along with you 5 days/week, 50 weeks/year. This is your chance to get the interviewer to like you a little more and you do so by doing a little research.

People love to talk about themselves and their interests. LinkedIn — what is their career history, do you two have anything in common? At the very least you could ask “How did you go from this company to that company?” or “Why did you choose this company?” Twitter — what are they tweeting about, recent news, hobbies, etc. Company blog — do they have any posts? Ask them about it.

This is also your chance to slide in anything you want to highlight that wasn’t asked by them first. If you really want to talk about your ideas for growing within the role, ask them “How do you see this role developing over time?” and insert your talking points into your comments on their response.

Some of my favorite general questions to ask:

• What is your biggest challenge at the moment?
• What are you most excited about for the future of COMPANY?
• What did you wish you knew when you started in ROLE/COMPANY/INDUSTRY?
• What do you like most about working at COMPANY?
• Is there anything about my background that would keep you from hiring me? (This one takes some bravery but can be a great chance to address their concerns on your terms)

Again, this is the interviewer tossing you a softball, so don’t whiff by not preparing at least 4 compelling questions to ask at the end (6–8 is better). The more the better because you want the interview to last as long as possible without being rude. I’ve had interviews where they’ve given me 40 minutes of the allotted hour to ask questions. Awkwardly ending with 15 minutes left is a big no-no.

Nail it!

Put on professional clothes you feel good in. Do a quick tech-check so you’re not stumped by a camera or microphone issue. De-clutter your space.

Stop preparing 10 minutes before the interview. Just like school, cramming doesn’t help, only makes you a nervous wreck. Spend those 10 minutes doing some deep breathing, getting hydrated, stretching a bit, anything that calms you down, and prepares you to be the best version of yourself.

You’ve done all of the hard work, so now all you have to do is execute.

Good luck, and remember that all interviews are practice whether you land the gig are not.

There you have it, my best tips for nailing that next virtual interview. I hope I was able to help you some today, let me know what you would add in the comments!