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Carolyn Moir-Grant
With over 30 years of experience at Allstaff, Carolyn has been a guiding force in shaping the agency’s reputation as a trusted recruitment partner.
Getting called for an interview is the hard part – or at least it used to be. The part that trips most candidates up now is what happens between getting the call and walking through the door.
Preparation. Specifically, the kind of thorough, role-specific preparation that most people either don’t do, don’t know how to do, or run out of time for.
AI tools have changed this significantly. What used to require a career coach, a well-connected mentor, or hours of research can now be done in an evening with ChatGPT or Google Gemini, a copy of the job description, and a willingness to actually practise.
Here’s how to do it properly.
Everything in your interview preparation should flow from the job description. It tells you what the employer values most, what problems they’re trying to solve by hiring someone, and — if you read it carefully — what they’re likely to ask you about.
Paste the job description into ChatGPT and ask:
“Based on this job description, what are the ten most likely interview questions for this role? Include a mix of competency-based, situational, and motivational questions.”
The response won’t be identical to what you’ll actually be asked, but it will be close enough to be genuinely useful. You’ll almost always see questions you’d have thought of yourself — and two or three you wouldn’t have.
Do this before you do anything else. It shapes everything that follows.
Not all interviews follow the same format, and preparing the right way, depends on knowing what you’re walking into. If you’re not sure, it’s completely acceptable to ask the recruiter or the employer’s HR contact when they confirm the interview.
Competency-based interviews ask you to give specific examples from your past experience. You’ll hear questions like “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult situation at work” or “Give me an example of when you worked effectively as part of a team.” These are standard across most sectors — engineering, accounts, office support, and management roles in particular.
Situational interviews put you in hypothetical scenarios: “What would you do if a colleague wasn’t pulling their weight on a project?” They’re testing your judgement and reasoning rather than your track record.
Technical interviews are common in engineering and accountancy roles and may include practical tasks, problem-solving questions, or assessments of sector-specific knowledge.
Informal or conversational interviews are more common in smaller businesses and for some warehouse and production roles, but don’t let the relaxed format catch you off guard — the employer is still assessing you, just less formally.
Ask ChatGPT to generate questions specific to whichever format applies to your interview. If you tell it the role, the sector, and the type of interview, it can tailor the question list accordingly.
For competency-based interviews, the STAR method is the most reliable framework for structuring your answers:
The mistake most candidates make is spending too long on the Situation and not enough on the Action. Interviewers are assessing what you did — not the context you were operating in.
AI is excellent for helping you build a bank of STAR answers before the interview. Here’s a prompt that works well:
“I work in [role/sector] and have [X years] of experience. I have an interview coming up for [job title]. Help me identify five strong examples from a typical background like mine that would work well as STAR answers, and for each one, show me what a strong answer structure looks like.”
Then take that framework and fill it in with your own real examples. The AI gives you the skeleton — your actual experience is what makes it credible.
Once you have your answers written out, paste them back into ChatGPT one at a time and ask: “How could this STAR answer be stronger? Is the Action section specific enough? Does the Result feel measurable?” You’ll often find you’ve been vague where you could be specific, or modest where a number or outcome would land better.
Most candidates do a quick scan of the company website the night before. That’s the bare minimum, and interviewers can tell. AI lets you go further without spending hours on it.
Ask AI: “I have an interview with [company name]. What should I know about this type of business, the challenges they typically face, and what questions might show genuine interest and understanding?”
For the company-specific detail – recent news, growth plans, values, any notable changes – use the company’s own website, their LinkedIn page, and a quick Google news search. AI’s knowledge has a cutoff date and may not reflect recent developments, so verify anything current before you use it in an interview.
Then ask AI to help you prepare two or three questions to ask the interviewer. Candidates who ask thoughtful questions at the end of an interview consistently make a stronger impression than those who say “no, I think you’ve covered everything.” Good questions show that you’ve thought seriously about the role – not just whether you can do it, but whether it’s the right fit for both sides.
Strong questions to ask include things about the team dynamic, the challenges you’re likely to face in the first few months, or what success looks like in the position after six months or a year. These signal genuine interest and give you useful information at the same time.
Of course, before you get to your own questions, you’ll need to handle theirs – and one of the most common is also one of the easiest to get wrong. Our guide to answering “why do you want this job?” walks you through how to give an answer that’s specific, credible, and memorable, rather than the kind of generic response that most candidates default to.
A growing number of employers – particularly larger companies hiring at volume for logistics, manufacturing, and some office roles, now use AI-assessed video interviews as a first stage. You’ll be sent a link, asked to record answers to a set of questions, and your responses will be evaluated by software before a human reviews the shortlist.
If you’ve never done one before, the format can feel strange. A few things that help with your job interview presentation:
Structure your answers clearly. AI assessment tools tend to evaluate based on the components of your answer – did you give context, explain your actions, describe the outcome? Rambling answers that eventually get to the point score less well than concise ones that hit the key beats.
Pace yourself. Speak at a natural but deliberate pace. Rushing through answers, or long pauses while you think, both tend to affect how your delivery is perceived.
Look at the camera. It feels unnatural, but looking at the camera rather than watching yourself on screen reads as more confident and engaged to the assessment software and to any human who reviews the recording afterwards.
Do a practice run. Record yourself on your phone answering a practice question before you sit down to do the real thing. Most people are surprised by how different they look and sound on camera compared to how they imagine. Better to find that out in practice than during the actual interview.
An AI tool like ChatGPT can run a text-based mock interview with you – ask it to play the role of an interviewer for a specific job and respond to your answers with follow-up questions and feedback. It’s not a perfect substitute for practising out loud, but it’s a useful way to stress-test your answers before you do.
Everything above will make you better prepared than most candidates you’re competing against. But the interview itself is still a human interaction, and the things that actually win people over in a room – warmth, genuine enthusiasm for the role, the ability to listen well and respond naturally, can’t be scripted or optimised.
Use AI to do the preparation work thoroughly. Then put it away, trust what you’ve prepared, and focus on being present in the conversation.
And when it’s over, don’t let good preparation go to waste by dropping the ball at the final hurdle. How you follow up after an interview matters more than most candidates realise – a well-timed, well-worded message can reinforce the impression you made in the room, while saying nothing at all can occasionally work against you. Our guide on when and how to follow up after an interview covers exactly what to do, and what to avoid, in the hours and days after you leave.
If you’re preparing for an interview for a role you found through Allstaff, our consultants can also give you specific guidance on the employer, the format, and what they tend to look for. That kind of insider knowledge is something no AI tool can give you — get in touch before your interview and we’ll make sure you go in as prepared as possible.