Interview prep on one page

The night before an interview, you have five tabs open: the job description, the company's docs, your resume, a notes app, and something you saved about "tell me about yourself".

Close four of them. Make one page.

Gather the right sources#

The job description is the brief. The company's product docs or recent announcements are the context. Your own resume and project notes are the evidence.

That last source is the one people skip. The interviewer is not testing whether you can summarise the company; they are testing whether you can connect your experience to their problem. Put your stories in.

The four sections#

1. The role's problems. Pull three from the job description. Not the responsibilities; the problems those responsibilities exist to solve.
2. Your stories. Four, each with the situation, the decision you made, the result, and a number if one exists.
3. Questions to ask. Two about the work, one about how the team measures success.
4. Why this company. One sentence you can say without sounding rehearsed.

Use cues, not a script#

Put each story behind a cue question: "Tell me about a time you shipped under a deadline." Cover the notes and answer out loud. If you need the notes, you do not know the story yet.

Practice twice. The first pass will be clumsy. The second is where the sentences shorten.

What not to let the AI write#

Do not let it invent an achievement, a metric, or a title. If the source does not contain it, it does not go on the page. The same rule applies to company claims; check the date on anything you plan to mention.

Pick a look that helps you rehearse#

Typewriter reads like a dossier and keeps the page calm. Academic works if you want headings and structure. Avoid a style that makes you want to redesign the page instead of practising from it.

The limit#

A cheat sheet cannot tell you how the interviewer thinks. It can keep your own evidence in one place so you are not reconstructing your career from memory at 8:55am. That is enough.