3 Steps to Ace Any Job Interview and Stand Out in 2025 – From a Professional Interviewer

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4 minutes

TABLE OF CONTENT

A lot of people see job interviews as nerve-wracking, and that’s completely understandable—especially if you’re just starting your career.

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But as you progress in your career, you need to shift your mindset. Instead of seeing interviews as your last chance to land a job, look at them as opportunities to grow your professional network and build meaningful connections.

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Here’s the truth: even if you absolutely ace an interview, the outcome isn’t always in your control. The company might love you but choose another candidate because of something as simple as budget constraints. Maybe someone else accepted a lower salary.

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So, now that you know you can’t control everything, let’s focus on what you can control: the opportunity to learn from other professionals and expand your network.

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In this article, I’ll share some practical tips from my own experience—both as a candidate and as someone who’s interviewed many professionals. I’ll show you how to turn an interview into a real opportunity.

1. Know Who Your Interviewer Is

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One of the most overlooked steps in preparing for an interview is understanding who your interviewer is. To me, an interview is a conversation, and you’ll always have a better conversation if you know who you’re talking to.

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Here’s a practical tip: Research your interviewer beforehand on LinkedIn. If you’re uncomfortable with LinkedIn showing that you viewed their profile, you can set your profile view to “Private Mode”.

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Look for common ground—maybe you attended the same university, share similar professional groups, or have mutual connections. Understanding their background also gives you insights into how the interview might go.

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For example, if you’re interviewing with a product manager for a senior consultant position and see that they have hands-on experience as a data engineer and data scientist, you can expect deeper, more technical questions. However, if you’re interviewing with a product manager who hasn’t been hands-on, the questions will likely focus more on general topics or business outcomes. Knowing this allows you to prepare the right way.

2. Don’t Treat It Like Your Last Chance

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Too often, people put so much pressure on themselves, thinking this interview is their last chance to make an impression. It’s not. Yes, it’s an opportunity to showcase yourself, but don’t focus on getting the job as the only possible outcome.

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Instead, think about these outcomes to make the process less stressful:

Can you make a meaningful professional connection?
Can you learn something valuable during the conversation?

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When you go into an interview with this mindset, you’ll feel more relaxed and confident.

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Let me share a personal experience. I once had a great interview with a candidate at a company I worked for, and I was fully convinced he was the right fit for the role. However, the company couldn’t meet his salary expectations, so he ended up rejecting the offer.

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A couple of days later, he added me on LinkedIn and thanked me for the insightful conversation. He was upfront about rejecting the offer due to salary but asked me to keep him in mind if I came across any other opportunities on my network. And I did. I introduced him to a recruiter friend of mine, and he landed another role through that connection.

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The lesson? An interview is never a win-or-lose situation. You can always walk away a winner. Sometimes the prize is the job itself, sometimes it’s expanding your network, and, in the best-case scenario, it’s both.

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3. Make Interviews Like a Knowledge Sharing Session

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This is my favorite tip, and it’s particularly valuable for senior professionals. The more experienced your interviewer, the more they see interviews as an opportunity to learn. Remember, you bring experience from other companies and projects, and they’re often curious about what you’ve done and what you’ve learned.

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Here’s how you can make it a knowledge-sharing experience:
When they ask a question—like, “What was the most challenging problem you’ve solved?”—don’t just stop at the first example. Share your experience, expand on it, and then flip it back to them.

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For example, you could say: “We faced a situation where the product needed to align with business rules from multiple stakeholders, like the marketing and sales teams—and everyone wanted something different. We couldn’t satisfy them all at once, so I prioritized the most critical stakeholders first and used the agreements we had to convince the less critical decision-makers. I found this to be one of the fastest ways to get everyone on the same page. Right? Is that something you do as well to align stakeholders?

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By framing your answer this way, you turn the interview into a two-way conversation. It becomes collaborative and engaging, and you leave a strong impression regardless of the outcome.

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Remember, as I mentioned, an interview is a conversation. You can’t rely on a single approach to have successful conversations with different people. You need to adapt and use different strategies based on the situation. For example, some professionals may not have a collaborative attitude and might see the interview as a test. If you feel your interviewer falls into that category, don't use this technique.

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