Interview guides

Everything you need to walk in ready.

One guide, five stages: prep the week before, answer behavioral questions well, negotiate the offer, and follow up in a way that keeps you top of mind.

01The week before

Good interview performance is mostly preparation that happened days earlier, not thinking fast in the room. Spread this over the week, not the night before.

Re-read the job description line by line and match each requirement to a specific example from your background.
Research the company's last two quarters — funding news, product launches, layoffs, or leadership changes. Interviewers notice when you know what's actually going on.
Pull up your notes on this role from Findr — the recruiter's name, what came up in the first call, and anything you flagged to ask about.
Prepare 5–6 stories that cover conflict, failure, leadership, ambiguity, and a proud win — most behavioral questions map to one of these.
Do one mock run out loud, even alone. The gap between "I know this story" and "I can tell it in 90 seconds" is bigger than people expect.

Read the full interview-prep guide →

02Behavioral questions & the STAR method

"Tell me about a time you disagreed with a manager" isn't really about the disagreement — it's about whether you can tell a structured story under pressure. STAR keeps you from rambling:

Situation — one or two sentences of context. Don't over-explain the setup.
Task — what you were specifically responsible for.
Action — what you did, in first person. This is the longest part — be specific about your decisions, not the team's.
Result — the outcome, ideally with a number. If it went badly, say what you learned and changed after.

Example — "Tell me about a time you missed a deadline" "I was leading a launch that slipped two weeks because a dependency team's timeline shifted without us knowing early enough (Situation/Task). I renegotiated scope with my manager, cut a non-critical feature, and set up a weekly sync with that team going forward so we'd catch shifts earlier (Action). We shipped the core launch on the new date, and that sync became standard practice for the org (Result)."

Common prompts worth having a story ready for: a conflict with a coworker, a failure you owned, a time you influenced without authority, a time you had incomplete information, and your proudest piece of work.

Read the full STAR-method guide with worked answers →

03Questions to ask the interviewer

The questions you ask are being evaluated too — generic ones ("what's the culture like?") read as not having done homework. Better options:

"What does success look like in this role at the 6-month mark?"
"What's the biggest challenge someone in this seat would be dealing with in the first quarter?"
"How has this team's priorities shifted in the last year, and why?"
"What made the last person in this role successful — or what would you want to see done differently?"
To your future manager specifically: "What's your management style, and how do you like to give feedback?"

Save one or two for the end that only make sense based on what came up earlier in the conversation — it signals you were actually listening.

Read the full list of questions to ask →

04Negotiating the offer

Almost every offer has room, and almost nobody loses an offer by negotiating professionally. The goal isn't to extract maximum dollars — it's to make sure you're not leaving something on the table you didn't have to.

Don't name a number first if you can avoid it. If pushed early in the process, give a wide, researched range instead of a single figure.
Get the full offer in writing before responding — base, bonus, equity, and start date. Negotiate the whole package, not just base salary.
Always ask for time to consider — even a strong offer. "This is exciting — can I take 48 hours to look it over?" is a completely normal thing to say.
Anchor to market data and competing signal, not need. "Based on my research and other conversations I'm in, I was expecting closer to $X" lands better than "I need more money."

Script — asking for more "Thank you for the offer, I'm genuinely excited about this. Based on my research for this role and level, and the other conversations I'm in, I was expecting the base to be closer to $X. Is there flexibility there?"

Script — leveraging a competing offer "I want to be transparent — I have another offer at $X. I'd genuinely prefer to join this team; is there room to close that gap?"

Read the full negotiation guide with scripts →

05Following up

Timing matters more than most people think. Findr can remind you automatically once you log an interview date on a card, but the rules of thumb:

Send a thank-you note within 24 hours of each interview — short, specific to something discussed, not a template.
If you haven't heard back by the timeline they gave you, follow up on day one after it passes — not before, not a week late.
No timeline given? A week after a first-round interview and 3–5 business days after a final round are reasonable defaults.
After two follow-ups with no response, it's fair to treat the process as closed and redirect your energy — Findr's insights view will show you if this is a pattern worth adjusting for.

Template — post-interview thank-you "Thanks again for the conversation today — I especially enjoyed hearing about [specific thing discussed]. It reinforced how excited I am about the role, particularly [specific detail tied to the job]. Happy to share anything further in the meantime."

Template — status follow-up "Hi [name], following up on the [role] process — I know things can move, so no rush, just wanted to check in on timeline and see if there's anything else useful for me to send over."

Read the full follow-up guide with templates →

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