The night-before checklist
Nine things to settle the evening before, so the morning has nothing left to decide.
Interview mornings go wrong in boring ways: a dead laptop battery, a building with two entrances, a CV version you can no longer find. None of these say anything about whether you can do the job, and all of them cost you the first ten minutes of composure. Spend twenty minutes the night before and the morning becomes a matter of showing up.
Logistics
- Confirm the exact format in writing — in person, video, or phone — and who is calling whom. If the invite is ambiguous, ask the recruiter today, not tomorrow.
- For an onsite: look up the building entrance, parking, and the security desk process. Add fifteen minutes for a lobby you have never walked into.
- For a video call: install the platform, sign in, and join a test meeting. Doing this for the first time four minutes before the call is the single most common self-inflicted wound.
- Charge everything, and put the charger in the bag anyway. Note a second way to join — a phone number, a mobile hotspot — in case the first fails.
Material
- Decide which version of your CV they have, and re-read that exact file. You will be asked about a line on it, and it should not be a line you forgot you wrote.
- Print two copies for an onsite, even if nobody asks. It costs nothing and it occasionally matters.
- Have the job description open in a tab. Interviewers quote from it; you should be able to quote back.
- Write your questions down — on paper, or in a note you can glance at. Under pressure, prepared questions evaporate.
- Know the names and roles of everyone you are meeting, if you were told. If you were not, ask.
Yourself
Stop preparing by 9pm. Past that point, more revision does not add much and lost sleep subtracts a lot — a tired candidate is slower to hear the real question, and hearing the real question is most of the job. Eat something before the interview even if you are not hungry; a 45-minute conversation on an empty stomach is harder than it needs to be.
Preparation is not what you do in the last hour. It is what makes the last hour uneventful.