Interview Prep Skill

Generic interview prep ("tell me about a weakness") is nearly useless — interviews are won by being ready for this company's this round. This skill builds a tailored prep pack: the questions you're actually likely to get, STAR-structured answers drawn from your real experience, your best stories mapped to the role's competencies, and the gaps to address before you walk in.

Required Inputs

Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:

• Role & company (and the job description if you have it — pair with [jd-decoder](../jd-decoder/SKILL.md) / [company-brief](../company-brief/SKILL.md)).
• Round type — recruiter screen, behavioural, case/product sense, technical/analytical, execution, or panel/final.
• Your background — CV or a summary of your experience and your strongest stories.
• Known concerns — anything you're worried they'll probe (a gap, a pivot, a short tenure).

Output Format

Interview Prep: [role] at [company] — [round]

1. What this round tests — the 3–5 competencies this specific round screens for, and how they'll likely probe each.

2. Likely questions — the realistic questions for this role/round (behavioural, case, or technical as fits), ordered by likelihood — not a generic list.

3. Your answers (STAR) — for the top behavioural questions, draft answers from the candidate's real background using Situation · Task · Action · Result — concise, quantified, first-person. For case/product questions, give a structured approach + a worked example.

4. Story bank — your 4–6 strongest stories, each mapped to the competencies they cover, so you can flex one story across several questions.

5. Questions to ask them — sharp, role-specific questions (lean on company-brief) that show you've done the work.

6. Gaps & landmines — the weak spots (a tenure gap, a missing skill, a pivot) and how to address each honestly and confidently if it comes up.

Deeper Materials

• [references/story-matrix.md](references/story-matrix.md) — the 6-stories-cover-40-questions matrix and the first-sentences rehearsal method

Quality Checks

• Questions are tailored to the specific role and round, ordered by likelihood — not generic
• STAR answers use the candidate's real experience and quantify the result
• A reusable story bank maps stories to competencies (so prep scales across questions)
• Questions-to-ask are company-specific, not boilerplate
• Known gaps/landmines have an honest, confident handling plan

Anti-Patterns

• Do not produce a generic question list — prep is only useful when it's for this round at this company
• Do not write fabricated achievements into STAR answers — build from the candidate's real stories
• Do not over-script — answers should be structured talking points, not memorised paragraphs that sound robotic
• Do not dodge the candidate's weak spots — rehearse an honest, confident response instead of hoping it won't come up
• Do not ignore the round type — a behavioural prep and a case prep are different documents

Based On

Structured interview preparation — STAR/behavioural method, competency-mapped story banks, role-and-round tailoring.