Checklist

Your Interview Preparation Checklist

Fresno Summit Advisors · 10 min read · By Chenée Robbertze

Interview preparation doesn’t have to mean spending hours memorising answers or trying to predict every question you might be asked. Some of the best advice I’ve received recently has been much simpler: prepare enough that you can walk into the conversation feeling confident, informed and ready to have a real conversation. And that last part is important. In my experience, the more natural the conversation feels, the better the interview will be. You want to be prepared, but you also want to be yourself. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to sit with the founder of Fresno Summit Advisors, my boss, and learn from his experience across health tech, fintech and several other industries. A lot of those conversations have changed the way I think about interviews and what actually makes someone stand out. Every candidate who gets to the interview stage has already stood out on paper. This is your opportunity to think outside the box and set yourself apart from the rest of the candidate pool. So, if I were preparing for an interview today, this is the checklist I’d use.

The quick takeaway

You don’t need to prepare an answer for every possible question. Know the company. Understand the role. Know your own experience. Prepare a few real examples. Most importantly, be ready to have a conversation.

1. Know the company

Reading the job description is the obvious starting point. But don’t stop there.

Take some time to understand what the company actually does, who they serve, what problem they’re solving and where they fit within their industry.

Look at their website. Read their LinkedIn page. Understand their products or services. If there are recent company announcements, take a look at those too.

This helps you understand what you’re actually walking into.

You don’t need to become an expert overnight. You just want to show that you’ve taken the time to understand where you could potentially be working.

2. Understand what the role is really asking for

Go back through the job description and think about what they actually need from the person joining.

What are the key responsibilities? What experience are they looking for? What problems might this person be expected to solve? And most importantly, where does your experience connect?

You don’t need to meet every single line of a job description. What matters is understanding where you bring value and being able to explain that clearly.

3. Prepare your own examples

One of the biggest things I’d recommend is going into an interview with a few real examples from your experience that you can draw from.

Think about situations where you:

Solved a problem
Learned something quickly
Took ownership of a project
Worked through a difficult situation
Made a mistake and learned from it
Worked successfully with a team
Adapted to change
Achieved a result you were proud of

You don’t need to memorise a script. This isn’t a movie role.

Know your stories well enough that you can talk about them naturally.

Your examples should also give the interviewer a chance to see both your strengths and how you handle situations when things don’t go perfectly.

4. Know your resume

This sounds obvious, but it’s easy to overlook.

Read through your resume before the interview. They will ask questions based on the information you’ve provided, so make sure you’re comfortable talking about your previous roles, responsibilities, achievements and any changes in your career.

If something on your resume might raise a question, think about how you would explain it.

Your resume tells the interviewer where you’ve been.

The interview gives you the opportunity to give context to that story.

5. Prepare questions of your own

This is crucial.

An interview isn’t just the company deciding whether they want you. You’re also trying to understand whether the company and role are right for you.

You could ask about:

What success looks like in the role
The biggest priorities for the person joining
How the team works together
What challenges the person stepping into the role will face
How performance is measured
What the first 90 days might look like
What training and onboarding look like

You don’t need to ask every question on your list.

Have three priority questions ready, then listen to the conversation and ask questions that naturally build from what you’ve already discussed.

6. Think about your personal brand

Your personal brand isn’t just your LinkedIn profile or the way your resume looks.

It’s the impression people get from how you communicate, how you show up and how you talk about your experience.

Before an interview, think about what you want the interviewer to remember about you.

Are you someone who learns quickly? Are you highly organised? Are you adaptable? Are you someone who takes ownership?

Whatever those qualities are, make sure your examples and the way you communicate reinforce them.

You don’t need to announce your personal brand.

Let your experiences demonstrate it.

7. Research the people you’re meeting

If you know who you’re interviewing with, take a few minutes to look them up.

You may find something you have in common, understand their role within the company better, or simply have more context going into the conversation.

Again, this isn’t about stalking someone’s LinkedIn profile for three hours.

It’s about walking into the conversation with some context.

8. Take care of the practical things

Good preparation also means removing unnecessary stress.

If the interview is virtual, test your camera, microphone and internet connection beforehand.

If it’s in person, know where you’re going and give yourself enough time to get there.

Have your resume available. Have a notebook nearby if you like taking notes.

And give yourself a few quiet minutes before the interview rather than joining the call with 30 seconds to spare.

These things sound small, but they can make a big difference to how you feel when the conversation starts.

9. Don’t try to become someone you’re not

This is probably one of the most important points on the list.

Preparation is about becoming more confident in your own story, not creating a version of yourself that you think the interviewer wants to meet.

You don’t need to have the perfect answer to every question. You don’t need to know everything. And you certainly don’t need to pretend that you do.

If you don’t know something, be honest. If you’re missing experience in an area, explain how you’ve approached learning something similar before.

Curiosity, self-awareness and a willingness to learn can tell an interviewer a lot.

10. Remember that an interview is a conversation

It’s easy to forget this when you’re nervous.

You aren’t sitting an exam.

The interviewer is trying to understand who you are, how you think, what you’ve done and whether you could be successful in the role.

So prepare, absolutely.

But don’t spend so much time preparing that you lose the ability to actually have a conversation.

Know your experience. Know the company. Know the role. Have your examples ready.

Then take a breath and talk to the person in front of you.

Interview preparation doesn’t need to be complicated.

The more comfortable you become with your own experience, the company you’re speaking to and the value you could bring to the role, the easier it becomes to walk into that conversation with confidence.

Prepare well. Then be yourself.

My pre-interview checklist

If I were preparing for an interview today, I’d make sure I could answer these questions before I joined the call:

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