AI-Powered Interview Prep Tips from a Professional Interview Coach
AI-Powered Interview Prep: Save Time and Focus on What Really Matters
Preparing for interviews can feel like a full-time job, and oh yeah….you already HAVE a full-time job.
Here, I share my favorite AI tools to help you breeze through the basics, leaving you time to focus on what really matters - telling your stories and building your confidence so you can nail your interview.
Let’s dive in!
1. Understand What the Company Actually Does—Fast!
Ever found yourself on a company website, trying to figure out what they do, only to get lost in buzzwords and corporate speak? Phrases like “We increase ROI for clients using industry-leading best practices” sound impressive, but they don’t really say anything. What clients? What industry? What investments? Pleeeease, just tell me what you sell and who you sell it to.
Enter ChatGPT, your personal translator for corporate jargon. Here’s how I recommend using it to quickly get clarity:
Prompt #1: What does [company name] do?
If the first response still feels like a jumble of buzzwords, try this:
Follow-up Prompt: Please explain as if you're talking to a 6th grader.
Boom. Clear, concise, and in plain English. You’ll understand the company’s core business in seconds instead of spending hours combing through pages and pages of their website.
For even more insight, ask ChatGPT how the company makes money:
Prompt #2: How does [company name] make money?
This simple question often uncovers key details about the company’s revenue streams, helping you understand what’s truly important to them. Especially for big companies, this can quickly break down the various divisions and profit centers.
2. Identify Key Job Skills in Minutes
I recommend beginning with reading a job description thoroughly on your own first to comb through and identify key technical, functional, experiences, or soft skills. Yup, this is still manual. I recommend copying and pasting into your own doc so that you retain the job description even when a company pulls the post because job posts are being taken down SO quickly these days, (like sometimes 1 day after it’s been posted because now AI bots are applying to jobs for people. That’s a whole different topic).
After you do this, use NotebookLM to give you another perspective on those key skills.
[If you haven’t used Notebook LM yet, give it a try - it’s awesome.
To me, it’s like ChatGPT in that you can ask it questions, but the key difference is that YOU feed it its source information. NotebookLM is an experimental AI-powered notebook that allows users to upload Google Docs, Slides, PDFs, text files, Web URLs, or copied text as sources. Currently, you can upload up to 50 sources per notebook.]
You can then ask questions and organize ideas based on the uploaded sources. This is the cool thing about it. It focuses its answers from the sources YOU feed it. This makes it accurate, personal, and therefore, really powerful.
Here’s how to use it to help you identify key job skills in minutes.
Copy and paste the job description text into Notebook LM, or upload the document if you have it saved.
For extra context, you can also search LinkedIn for a few people from the same company with the same job title, or in the same department and input those URLs too. You could also include the company website URL, or the company’s Careers page, or “culture and values” type page. Then, ask Notebook LM the following prompts:
What are the top 3 technical skills this person needs?
What are the top 3 soft skills this person needs?
How does this job make the company money?
These quick prompts will surface the most important aspects of the role, giving you a solid foundation for focusing your prep. Take a look and pick the ones that most line up with your strengths and voila you have info to weave into your “tell me about yourself” answer, or “What made you interested in this position” or “What would you say your strengths are” questions.
3. Get to Know Your Interviewer—Quickly
Here’s another good way to do a little research on commonalities or things a person cares about. Let’s say you’ve found out who’s interviewing you. Normally, you’d spend time scrolling through their LinkedIn profile, searching for commonalities or shared interests. With Notebook LM, you can speed up this process.
Find your interviewer on LinkedIn and paste in their URL. Then include YOUR resume and/or LinkedIn profile. If they’ve written articles, you could also include those links. Then, ask Notebook LM to highlight anything you have in common with them. Whether it’s shared connections, similar educational backgrounds, or mutual interests, you’ll have personalized talking points at your fingertips.
4. Prepare Personalized Interview Questions Based on Your Resume
This is where things get really cool. With your own resume as an additional source in Notebook LM, along with the company and job description. Ask:
What questions would you ask this candidate (that’s you) in an interview?
Notebook LM will cross-reference your resume with the job description, creating personalized interview questions that align with both the role and your unique experience. When I tried this out, it gave me questions in three categories: Questions related to the Role & Company, the Team and Collaboration, and ways to highlight my strengths and address potential gaps. I even liked the way it phrased some questions: For instance, it suggested “Are there specific leadership styles or approaches that are particularly valued within the company's project management culture?” I liked that it was specific enough while also being open-ended enough.
5. And Don’t Forget the Olide, but Goodie—Glassdoor for Sourcing Real Interview Questions
This isn’t AI, but it’s still making use of curated info. Glassdoor is a website where people can self-report their salaries and the questions they’ve been asked during their interviews. I like to see the real-world interview questions people are saying they’ve been asked. When you get to Glassdoor, search for the company name you’re interviewing with, then click on “interviews.” I find the search feature within the “interview” tab lacking, so I often just end up scrolling through what’s there, even if it’s for unrelated roles. Sometimes you can easily spot a theme that pops up again and again as you scroll—sometimes companies have standard questions like “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” or “Of our company products, which is your favorite?” it’s often just a few basics, but still a valuable clue as to what to expect so you can prepare accordingly.
Congrats! You just streamlined your interview prep.
Now Focus on What Only YOU Can Do
Now you’ve just bought yourself time to focus on what only you can do: tell your story. Think about a story that highlights those skills that you identified during your prep and consider how you’ve made an impact.
And if as you’re preparing, you’re noticing some thoughts come up like:
“I just want to bury my head in the sand and avoid this unpleasant task”
Or “that achievement wasn’t actually that great/important”
Or maybe the pleaser in you knows you’re actually pretty good at interviews because you’re going to morph into the person they want you to be (but that’s not who you really are!), and you want to work on ways to make sure you’re presenting your real self and getting the info YOU need to determine if this is right for you at the moment.
Or maybe that imposter syndrome is creeping in. What am I even doing? I’m a fraud.
If any of these sound familiar, I’d love to connect because those are wonderful topics for coaching. Book an interview mindset session here!
The stories, experiences, and insights you bring to the table are what will make you stand out. Use AI to speed up your prep, so you can focus on human connection and storytelling during your interview.
Good luck, and go crush that interview!
