You applied with a tailored resume, made it through the initial HR screening, and now finally get to interview with a hiring manager. And then you blow it.

There’s nothing worse than that sinking feeling, that if only you had thought faster on your feet or had a little more time to come up with a better answer, you could have nailed an interview. Now you’re back to square one, browsing for job postings while you should be working your current job.

How do you get better at interviews?

Like most things in the professional world, performing well at an interview is a skill that you can get better at. Sure, some people naturally interview pretty well, but the truth is, you can get a lot better at them with some preparation and strategy.

1. Write down your experiences. This is the single most important piece of advice we can offer you. Take a couple hours to sit by yourself and mentally walk through your entire career. Read your resume, and versions of your resume from over the years, and write down all the information you can about your accomplishments, what you delivered, how you learned and grew. This is the raw material that you will polish into great “impromptu” answers.
2. Organize your experiences. Take all of the items you just wrote down, and put them into thematic buckets. Do not worry about the chronological timeline of your career. Instead, focus on common interview themes. For example, you might have several examples over the years where you had to make a tough decision, or where you had to lead other people, or where you delivered something under budget.
3. Look up the most common interview questions online, and write down your answers. For example, take 10 random questions from this list, and come up with the ideal answers you want to say the next time an interviewer asks. The odds are that an interviewer will ask these exact same questions, or ones very similar to them, in the initial stages of a conversation. Pro tip: many companies will ask you about the last thing you learned about. Take a few minutes to fill out a skills assessment, so you have something to say!
4. Practice with mock interviews. This might seem corny, but you should practice your interview responses out loud with someone else. It’s important to sound both genuine and practiced, but not rehearsed, during an interview. We’ve seen candidates talk way too fast because they’re nervous. It seems like any amount of silence makes them uncomfortable, but always take your time.
5. Take interviews at companies you may not be totally interested in. Don’t waste anyone’s time, but if you have an opportunity to interview, we recommend taking it. You never know if there might be a good fit for you somewhere unexpected. More importantly, the more you interview, the better you get at it. You become more comfortable and articulate in describing your qualifications. We suggest never turn down a chance to talk with someone new about your career.
6. Don’t give up. This is the most important piece of advice. Everyone flops now and then in an interview. This is how you know you are aiming at the right roles. If you can easily get multiple job offers, then you’re probably not trying very hard or pushing your own limits. Everyone gets rejected, ghosted, or awkwardly declined. Keep at it! If you give up, you’ll definitely not make it through your next interview.

Bonus tip: a lot of interviews happen virtually, so control what you can control. Have your resume and organized written responses already pulled up for you to reference. Focus on the interviewer, but having these materials on hand should give you a great place to start in your answers.