71. The interview method that actually works in 2026 | Will Moore

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture.

0:28Welcome to All About Business Shorts, where we share practical advice you will actually use. In this episode, we're focusing on one of the most high-pressure moments in any career, the interview. I'm joined by Will Moore, one of our top read consultants who prepares candidates for interviews every day, from first moves to senior leadership roles. We'll break down how to research properly, how to talk about yourself with confidence and structure, and how to handle the questions most people dread. If you've ever walked out of an interview thinking, I could have done that better, this one's for you.

1:12Well, today on All About Business for our Spring Shorts series, I'm really excited about the conversation I'm about to have with Will Moore. We're going to be talking about how to prepare for a job interview, which is a really important question. Will is Senior Area Manager at Reid Specialist Recruitment. He's been in the business and specializing in this subject for more than 10 years. And he works here in West, well, central London, I should say in Hoban, just around the corner from where we are now. And he focuses in particular on the charity not-for-profit and education sectors. Thanks for coming in, Will.

1:50Thank you for having me. So really good to see you. What's the first thing someone should think about if they've got a job interview coming up? So I would always advise candidates to start in broad strokes and then narrow down to the detail in four simple steps. Step one, look at the company website. Make sure that you understand their mission, their values and their culture. Also, make sure that you're familiar with their products and services. It's very important. step two would be to look at social media recent news press releases make sure that you're aware of any new funding announcements any changes in leadership and and maybe they've got some new products and services that are coming up that you want to be aware of ahead of meeting with the interview panel step three would be to get to know the interviewers look on linkedin see if you have any shared connections and it's always a point of comfort when hiring people that people know good people so if you've got anybody that can champion you from the inside and that's great let's assume that they they don't you just basically want to make sure that there's if there's any similarities with your own career history with theirs you can point that point out and that's the talking point or and if there's anything particularly interesting that they've done recently and delivered on that you can that you can ask them about um and then step four crucially read that job description in detail make sure that you're aware of all the responsibilities and skills make sure that you're aware of any key phrases or repeated themes and then this is what a lot of people don't do it's a reread your own cv do it a few times and make sure that you're just very aware of where your skills align with that job description and that you can recall very very easily some clear examples about where your skill sets really meets that criteria.

3:42Yeah those are all very good pieces of advice. What do you think the biggest giveaway is that someone hasn't followed those pieces of advice or haven't properly researched the organisation when they go into an interview? Typically when you ask vague uninformed questions this is your opportunity to demonstrate that you really understand where the company is going so if you're asking things that come without any insight you're really not demonstrating your understanding kind of not only crucially like where the company's heading but most critically how your role then fits into that and then how delivering on your role is going to help get them there.

4:23So sort of vague questions about what have you got coming up when you could have found that out by looking at the website or sort of absolutely don't do you many favors this point about values i think it's quite important i mean can you you said you know look at that on the website are there any other ways you can sort of ascertain what a company's values are because i think alignment of values is important not just for the interview but for the job thereafter a hundred percent i think what i would say is be specific not general so you're not going to ever find a company that aligns completely you know with you if you were to go to an interview and you know say you know gosh if i was a company i'd look like you you know it's not ever going to happen so be very specific choose one project one initiative that really speaks to you about that company and then share why um if you can't find that within a company as well look at the interviewers and look at what their values are, look what they've done, do you often find that you can find a good kind of value alignment with them as well?

5:29What I'm hearing though is that there's so much more available now to applicants, job candidates, than there used to be in terms of information about all of this stuff. I mean, in some ways it's sort of overwhelming. And you want to be well informed, but you don't want to look like you've sort of stalked someone, do you? I mean, if you go on LinkedIn and start telling... I remember one guy came for an interview and he knew that my pet tortoise was called John Terry, and that gave me a bit of a shock. so uh so what where's the boundary here what's the right amount of sort of investigation i think it may depend quite often in terms of the level that you're interviewing for but if someone's posted something publicly on linkedin for example you know if there is a talking point perhaps where we had one example where somebody went skiing for example one of the and they went in a certain area of France, one of our candidates referenced that they're a keen skier and they've got chatting.

6:41And again, it's just a way to get to know them. So this person put that on LinkedIn? They put that on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's in the public domain. I suppose if they want to tell you where they go skiing, you can go and have a look. I mean, you probably wouldn't want to check their personal social media accounts for them personally. But I think LinkedIn's a professional platform, so probably that's where the line ends. Well, so this is their public accounts. but yeah I would say that's probably a good piece of advice yeah the first question in the interview book is tell me about yourself and that question is the first question because it's the most commonly asked question when we've surveyed all our clients um a lot of people get that wrong don't they yeah what's going on here I mean why does that happen you don't want to overshare and be over familiar where possible but you you want to you know the people that you work with you know you you spend more time than than anyone else so you want to make sure that you can be open enough that you know that you're just finding areas of kind of common ground um and people wanted to want to know about perhaps about um family or you know kind of how how you've kind of ended up in front of them really so if you're talking about from a professional standpoint absolutely share your journey in terms of how you how you got to be sitting here across from them i think it's um as long as you can articulate kind of why and it kind of helps you to helps them to kind of understand why how the the steps you've taken to get to this point and that's that's what you that's what you really want to share is your organization prepared for what's coming next at read talent solutions we don't just manage contingent worker programs and fill roles through our rpo solutions we future proof your workforce from scaling operations to upskilling teams and navigating digital transformation we are your strategic partner in building resilient future ready talent ecosystems visit reedtalentsolutions.com today to discover how we can help your business grow it's always struck me that that question tell me about yourself the people who have prepared an answer to that just knock it out of the park you know they they answer very strongly but the people who haven't prepared end up in a sort of yeah not end up in knots really because it's quite a lot to sort of compute in one go tell me about yourself so i think it's a really important it goes right back to the beginning about being prepared particularly that question because it's so common Absolutely.

9:18You've got to be concise. When you say talk about family, I mean, you don't have to talk about your family, do you? You don't. I mean, you don't have to. It depends if you're open to share that. But yeah, you're quite right. And they shouldn't ask you about it necessarily. No, probably strictly from a HR perspective, no. I'm probably an oversharer. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to talk about your family, I think, why shouldn't you? So one method that gets sort of mooted a lot, or is this STAR, S-T-A-R, interview method? Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me what that is and how that works?

9:54A little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, we often find one of the number one issues when recruiting at all levels is basically sticking to the answer that's being asked of you. And so we would often recommend the STAR method, which is an acronym which stands for situation. So describe the context, like what was happening, what was important to understand before you give your answer and the task be to describe what your objective was within that particular setting what were you trying to achieve action so what did you do specifically what were the steps you took to resolve this and then result obviously the outcome so what was the learns what kind of happened to ensure that you made sure that the outcome is what you wanted so i can give you a very general example of this yeah so you're saying as from what i can hear will that this is a good way for a person to think about how to answer it absolutely so star yes you give yourself situation task action result yeah um go on give me an example yeah so phil as a very very generic example imagine you work in customer service so the um so the situation is you've got an upset customer that hasn't um had their delivery on time that's your situation your task is to resolve the situation quickly making sure that the customer feels valued and and that you know critically keep buying from you remains a customer remains a customer absolutely so action so you would say well i looked at the order history I recognized that there was an issue with the courier.

11:35So I reordered the exact product for them with the fast delivery, obviously apologized to their customer about the service they received. And as a goodwill gesture, I've actually reduced their, I've given them a reduction of their next order. And so the result of that was that the customer was actually very happy. They left a positive feedback on the review. And they did continue to buy from us. And in fact, actually, their purchasing occurrence went up by 20 % following this. So STAR works well. Just to reiterate, situation, task, action, result. Keep that in mind. And have some stories, I suppose, to share ready for when you're asked, you know, what was a tough moment in your previous job or a question of that sort.

12:26Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's really helpful. How do you, I mean, this is an interesting one. How do you balance confidence, which you need to have, with authenticity when talking about maybe achievements or indeed difficulties that you've experienced? Yeah, this is a challenging one for some people. But authenticity means being real. so I'd try to reframe sort of self self um um self aggrandeure with uh facts and figures so be very specific so I could sit here as an example as a recruiter um and say I'm the top recruiter in London you know this is what I do but instead you'd want to reframe that and say I increased permanent placements within my specialist sector by 20 % from this year, last year.

13:25And so when you're talking about facts and figures, it feels a lot less like bragging, more about just reciting. Well, when you said the first thing, I thought, this guy's a bit big for his boots. And when you said the second thing, I thought, oh, he might be quite useful in my team. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that was literally what was going on in my mind. And it is actually quite helpful throughout your professional career, if you can, just to keep a log of what those milestones have been and make sure that they are factual and that they are accurate because it's a lot easier to promote things that are actually accurate rather than just kind of, you know.

13:59Well, you don't want to make stuff up because that's dishonest one. And also, you're quite likely to get found out at some point. Absolutely. When someone who you used to work with in your previous job joins and says, no, he didn't increase it by 20 % of his hopeless and got fired. So it's a small world. Yeah, absolutely. So BS is a dangerous game. Yeah, you're often found out. And I think for a lot of people, they find kind of bragging interviews quite awkward anyways, because, you know, interviews can be quite challenging things for a lot of people regardless. So it's a lot easier to talk about if you're, you know, sticking to the facts.

14:35So you don't want to brag, do you? No. But you do want to have some good facts at your fingertips that help make your case. Yeah, absolutely. And numbers, you say, are helpful in that regard. So you're talking percentages, talking about anything where you've saved time or money, increased efficiencies. Some numbers are confidential, aren't they? So you shouldn't... That's another thing you need to be careful of. Some things are make sure that you're not sharing anything that's not in the public domain. If you breach your confidence from your previous employer, the new prospect isn't going to want to hire you because they'll think you do the same.

15:11That's true. So you can be more approximate about some of those numbers. It depends how sensitive they are. Yeah. Yeah. So difficult questions. I'm always interested in these. People sometimes panic when they're asked about weaknesses. We all have them. what's the right approach to those types of questions do you know i'm so glad you said that we all have them there's always going to be some gaps in your knowledge or some weaknesses and my advice is to approach them head on be transparent about them and be prepared for them most importantly you'll obviously want to make sure that you've done your research and gauge how you think you'd go about tackling those but i'm a big believer in if you have 20 you know 75 to 80 % of the skills required to do the job, apply for that job.

16:06Everybody needs some stretch elements in that job description for that role to be of interest to them. That's why you want the job. There's no fun in knowing everything. There's no growth in that. This is a really good point. I think a lot of people maybe don't consider. What's the point of applying for a job that you can do all of it already? Because you're not going to grow and you're not going to progress. They shouldn't be looking for you on that basis. Employers really need to recognize that because that's how you keep your workforce engaged. Yeah. So they should be looking for people who can do sort of maybe three quarters, 80%.

16:40And you should be looking for a job where you can do three quarters, 80 % and look to grow within it. Absolutely. So that's a good way of framing it. It's maybe a gap. But I'm thinking weaknesses, when people say, what's your greatest weakness? Yeah, I'm reminded of a joke. It's quite rude. where the interviewee replies, honesty. And he says, no, no, no, I don't think you can have honesty as a weakness. And the guy replies, well, I don't give a toss what you think. It's a good one. It is. I mean, it sort of says the truth in the joke. But I mean, when we all have weaknesses, it's true. I mean, I suppose thinking myself, I know I'm an impatient person.

17:24That is a weakness because it can make you impetuous. But the strength of that is I like getting things done. So I would frame it as well that weaknesses are the opposites of strengths. So if you're someone who likes to get stuff done, that's good. But your weakness is you're likely to be impatient and probably make some mistakes along the way. Absolutely. You've got to frame it in the way that it's a double-edged sword. So there has to be some positiveness that comes out of that. You can't just say, well, actually, James, I'm late often. oh thank you for sharing that exactly next are you gonna get exactly so we'll tell you what we'll tell you an earlier time to start than everyone else yeah but the example that you said is brilliant well i'm not sure about that but it's a late often well that's interesting what is that yeah yeah that's a weakness for sure and if you stay late often maybe that compensates so a better way to answer that would be that after you're a yes person you often take on too much and so you can find yourself working some quite late nights obviously isn't great for for them or the person that's in the interviewee because you know no one wants to be staying late but it does show that the commitment to the employer and that this is somebody that perhaps would have to need help in managing that but it's somebody that's obviously a workhorse yeah and that should be that should be managed carefully in work we're often faced with pretty big challenges how can someone describe a challenge that they've managed or dealt with without sort of sounding over rehearsed when they're in an interview when they say what was your greatest challenge i think you have to choose a genuine challenge not just a full strength yeah so what you need to do and asked about real challenge is talk about the learns along the way and not just what went wrong and not you know not necessarily the result because everybody faces if it's a genuine challenge as long as you've learned from it and you can articulate why and how you're applying that to future challenges then that's that's a good answer yes um you don't always have to have every you don't have to be a shining light in every in every every answer because fundamentally like it just comes across as insincere and in and not genuine well just as we all have weaknesses we all know that we don't always get it right or things go wrong yeah so what we take away from that you know there will be challenges that we we will struggle with um so what what's the one mistake the candidates make that instantly weakens an otherwise strong interview yeah i genuinely think it's practice so a lot of the time you can have all the research you can have done all of your homework, you can have all your answers prepared in a really good way.

20:20Actually, if you haven't practiced saying them out loud, then it's quite a problem. So I would always advise any candidates that we're working with to speak to your friend, speak to your partner, speak to the mirror. Do mock interviews. Mock interviews, or even harness technology. use AI to write you up a list of interview questions based on that job description and then in real time try to address them. That's a good idea. Get AI to ask some questions of you and answer them. You'll soon realise where your gaps are and then you'll have the reps to be able to tackle those and then before you know it you'll be answering those questions very smoothly.

21:04Which will give you more confidence when you go into the interview. Absolutely. Any other classic mistakes we should be avoiding? I mean, I've got lots that probably aren't podcast appropriate. 10 years of recruitment, you see a lot of different things. Go on.

21:23I had someone come in without a shirt on once. That was a mistake. They didn't get the job. That was a long time ago. One thing that is actually really common, and again, we see at all levels, which is very surprising. And because of the changes in technology, team zoom you know a lot of recruiters will tell you this but what you have in your background matters when you're working from home or doing an interview remotely so we've had interviews for cfos fds they've got their washing hung up on you know behind them and all people that say if there's a problem you need to test the tech because if there's any issues with your laptop and say for example, then you switch over to your phone.

22:08If you're then hand-holding the phone, it's very distracting to everybody, you know, there. And often it's the case when you're recruiting at that level, people's diaries are quite precious. This is the time they're available. So you want to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible. And that is a big thing. And often it's the case as well that you have, you know, they'll have an in-person interview booked in. It could be a last minute change someone's unwell someone's you know things happen while you have to switch to be remote so you must make sure your technology is working and that you've got a safe space in order to interview whenever so that's a good additional advice around preparation yeah leave your washing out of the background yeah don't do that make sure the text tuned in yeah hey well thank you very much going to talk to me about this well i feel we could have gone on for hours on interviews maybe we'll do a sequel

23:04I'm going to ask you two final interview questions which I ask everybody at the end of my podcast because at Read we love Mondays first question is what gets you up on a Monday morning? It's usually my two year old sometimes your two year old has a lie in never, never they're very consistent in that respect yeah, my other kids would probably fill that gap if she ever didn't But they, but, but generally new things we're working on, there's always so much going on. And recruitment's one of those brilliant industries where there's always so much, like new initiatives being rolled out. And Reid, we're really fortunate.

23:47There's always new projects going on. Try and keep it that way. But there's always so much going on. And so, you know, Monday, you just got to run and jump straight in. Let's find out what's happening next. Very good. And my last question from the interview book, another shameless plug, why you? 101 interview questions you'll never fear again, is where do you see yourself in five years' time? Hopefully expanding my team, my charity unit. So adding more specialisms to what we cover and gaining on the success that we've already had. So there's six of us at the moment. There's no reason in five years there couldn't be 10 or 15 and we could look after the whole, you know.

24:27growing in the business in the sense yeah absolutely we you know we um we've got the capability to do it so we've got the plan to get us there well i sincerely hope you do thanks very much will thanks for coming to talk to me that was very helpful thank you

24:44thank you will for joining me on all about business i'm your host james reed chairman and ceo of reed a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company if you'd like to go deeper on interview preparation, I've also written about this in detail in my book, Why You? 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again. You'll also find links to read and further resources in the show notes. Thank you for listening and see you next time.