Switching from one project to another quite often includes an interview with a client. It is a business-to-business conversation where you primarily represent a company and its expertise rather than your personal achievements and skills.

What should you know when preparing for such an interview, what questions may you be asked, and how to manage yourself? Daria Kashyrska, Recruitment Specialist, has prepared seven tips to help you successfully pass the interview with the client.

Be aware

Consider each answer. This practice applies to what you tell about yourself, the company, and the war in Ukraine.

Learning about the interlocutor in advance as much as possible is also very useful. You should know who our client is, what kind of project it is, and what team is working on it. That is how you can better prepare for the upcoming conversation and show interest, which will be a plus for you during the interview.

Prepare a self-presentation

As you will undoubtedly be asked to tell about yourself, you should carefully prepare for self-presentation. When speaking about your experience, you should focus on your usefulness to the client’s business and the expertise you will contribute to the project. So, you should talk about your experience relevant to the client’s needs, not your general professional experience.

If speaking in English makes you uncomfortable, a few lessons with a language teacher will help eliminate this problem. Multiple courses specifically for interview preparation exist now.

Review your CV

The focus of your CV should be on your accomplishments, not your responsibilities. Describe what you managed to do on the project and what the team was like. At the same time, be careful not to go beyond the NDA scope.

Identify your strengths and discuss the ways you can apply them with your PM. What can fill the gaps in your experience? For example, deep knowledge of a programming language can compensate the lack of knowledge of a framework. And the experience you do not have overlaps with the adjacent experience.

You should be sufficiently familiar with your CV and ready to answer questions about the information you provided. The good idea is to review the CV a few minutes before the interview.

About what may you be asked?

The following are questions very likely to be asked during the interview:

• What can you bring to the team?
• What does motivate you in your work?
• How do you manage your time during remote work?
• Describe a case when you had a miscommunication with a PM.
• Describe your most significant achievement and failure.
• How are you going to integrate into the team?
• Are you comfortable working alone or in a team?
• Have you experience with teams that have not yet established a process?

Avoid yes or no answers. Speak in lengthy, complex sentences. When being asked to describe a case or situation, you should answer according to the STAR system—Situation, Task, Action, Result:

• What kind of project it was.
• What task you faced.
• What actions you took to complete the task.
• What result you achieved.

Be ready to ask, not only to answer

Foremost, ask again if something is unclear to you. Do not hope you will guess the meaning of a word you don’t know. Think over a few phrases in advance to facilitate clarifying questions when necessary.

Prepare a question you can ask the client at the right moment. You can inquire about the following:

• The project.
• The team.
• The client’s expectations for a coming person.
• Definition of project success.

Take it easy

A few minutes before the interview, try to calm down and breathe out. Make sure that during the conversation:

• Nothing extraneous is behind or next to you in the frame.
• No one will appear next to you.
• The phone will not ring.

Watch your body language. Try to sit straight and calmly during the conversation. You can put a trifle on the table—for example, an eraser or pencil—anything you can hold in your hands during the conversation. But keep in mind that this item should not create noise.

Prepare a glass of water to take a few sips when you feel lost during the interview. You can also take a deep breath and hold your breath for five seconds to get yourself together and continue talking.

Please do not respond with rudeness to rudeness. There is a stress interview technique. Therefore, be ready for provocative questions. And if you notice that you are being treated intolerantly, reply in an as much as possible restrained and calm manner.

In the case of an interview with a client from the USA, small talk at the beginning of the meeting will be appropriate to establish a connection and make the atmosphere more friendly.

Things you should not do

Don’t fantasize. You should not add experience and achievements that you don’t have.

Avoid kidding. A good chance is that your joke will be misunderstood or not understood. The difficulties of translation and the difference in cultures are worth considering here.

No criticizing. You should not negatively comment on the client’s project, ideas, or ways of their implementation.

Do not give radical answers to questions about politics, religion, gender, and more. It is perfectly normal to say that you are working on tasks during working hours and that your personal life, faith, and so forth do not affect your work or to answer that this topic is unrelated to the conversation subject.