How to Prepare for Virtual Interviews

Have you fumbled through virtual job interviews before or you’ve never had one, and you know that that could likely be standing in your way of landing your dream role? 

If you are in your 40s and beyond, chances are you have amazing valuable experience. And you want to master virtual interviews in order to command top dollar in your field. In today’s video, I share my three step process for how to prepare for virtual interviews, I will show you how you can excel at this skill that is really needed in today’s marketplace. And this will set you up to successfully make your next career move. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet, hit the subscribe button and the bell and you’ll be notified when I publish my weekly videos. So you don’t miss any of my content. That’s all about how to enjoy a thriving career in your 40s and beyond. I’ve helped the client learn these strategies to land highly paid coveted roles. And I’ve also been a hiring manager. 

And as a hiring manager, I can tell you that it’s often not the most qualified candidates that land the role. In the end, it’s the ones that are the most prepared and that are the most skilled at conducting interviews. 

It’s so important to be able to successfully shine and prove yourself as the best candidates through virtual interviews. So let’s get into my three proven steps to excel at any virtual interview. 

Step number one is all about before your interview. What do you do to prepare before your interview? Well, there’s a few elements here. But number one, obviously, you want to prepare yourself, right, you want to prepare yourself physically, and you want to prepare your environment and your mind. 

Let’s get into this in more detail. For virtual interview, your grooming is just as important. You want to present yourself just as polished and professional as you would if you were in person. So the grooming is really important, make sure that you present your best self, and that you’re also dressed appropriately for the role and the industry that you’re interviewing for. And make sure that you have had a good night’s sleep. 

And if you have it, then it’s a good idea to have an extra cup of coffee. What happens when we’re on camera is that the camera dolls us a little bit. So you need to amp yourself up a bit to show up as yourself on camera. 

So now the best way to prepare yourself here is to record yourself on camera ahead of time. I know this can be painful, trust me, many of us do not like necessarily the way or maybe we don’t love the way we look on camera. But it’s important to record yourself and then watch it back so that you can see certain things perhaps that you’re not really aware of prior to seeing your recording. And a word of caution here when you’re rewatch Be kind to yourself right you’re not going to help yourself by being overly critical of yourself. So take a look at it. Give yourself some time to make some adjustments into practice. And it’s going to become second nature before you know it. 

So let’s talk about your physical environment. On camera, you want to make sure that your lighting is on point. It doesn’t need to be professional lighting. But there are some minor things that you can do to help boost your lighting. Make sure your face is well lit, that we can see your smile and we can see your eyes. 

And in order to do that if you don’t have great lighting, where you are reporting from where you’re conducting your virtual interviews, it might be a great idea to invest in something small. There’s a ton of different things online nowadays. I will post some links below this video with some ideas of inexpensive lighting that you can procure. So we’ll take a look at that for some ideas of what you can do here to invest in lighting that is going to help complement you in your virtual interviews. You also want to pay attention to your background so important. And the most important thing is that you don’t need to have a fancy background, you just want to have something that is clean and uncluttered. That will make all the difference and will not distract your interviewer from what you’re saying. 

The other element of your environment is that you especially if you are interviewing for a position that has a component of working from home, you want to demonstrate that you have an environment that is conducive to that not only that you are able to work from a very quiet place but that you have a good internet connection and that you are able to work on interrupted so that they will not be judging your environment as something that maybe not conducive to working from home. So that’s super important as well. 

So now let’s talk about the tech, I recommend that you use a computer to conduct your virtual interviews, it’s a lot more stable, and it allows you to do a few things. And one of them is to position your computer at a level that is going to be slightly down from where you are. And that’s going to do a few things. For one, it’s a little bit more flattering. At the same time, it also puts you on an equal playing field with your interviewers so that you’re not looking down on them, or you don’t have them, you know, overly looking down on you. So that would be my recommendation for computers and how you set that up for success. 

You also want to be well versed with all the different video technologies out there, practice these ahead of time find out what the interviewer is going to use, are they using zoom? Are they using teams or Skype, make sure that you practice that specific technology and that you’re very familiar with how it works, so that when the interview comes, you are calm, relaxed, and you can be confident on camera, and you don’t have to worry about the technology. 

And the other piece that’s so important as well, is that, especially as an older worker, sometimes people think that we’re not as tech-savvy, you want to demonstrate that you are tech-savvy, that is so important for so many roles. So practice. And you know, use a friend if you need to, to show you the ins and outs of the different technologies out there. Don’t let that come between you and an amazing interview on interview day. 

And come in close, I want to say there’s a little secret to the zoom technology that I want to share with you. And it’s that you can actually click on a button to slightly improve your appearance on camera. And I will show you how to do that very specifically on zoom right now. 

Okay, so this is where you can update your appearance on zoom. And it can be a little bit hard to find. But you basically have to go in the zoom app, and you have to be signed in. And right here under your picture, you click on the gear icon, and then you click on video. And right now I don’t have my video turned on. But basically, you would see yourself when you click on that on your end. And you can touch up your video right here, touch up appearance. And when you click on that you have the ability to update it to see just how deep of a filter you want to apply. And then you can also adjust for low light. So there you have it, that’s how you touch up your appearance on zoom. 

Okay, so we’re still in step number one, which is the preparation before the interview. Of course, the other piece, just like any job interview, you want to do your research, I will put a link in the description below the video for an article that I wrote about how to do your research prior to an interview. But you want to make sure that you do that. 

And the final piece in the before prep is to work on your mindset. It is so important that you show up on interview day with a really clean and confident mindset that is going to help you. And the way that you do that is that you want to make sure that you think ahead of time, have a specific thought that is going to generate that feeling of confidence. And it helps if you’ve done your research and you’ve done your preparation. 

One very useful thought that you could use would be I have done my research, I am well prepared for this interview. And that can generate that feeling of confidence that is going to help you shine in any interview, including the virtual interviews. 

So I’d love for you to tell me in the comments below. Have you had some fumbles in virtual interviews before? And how did that go? How did you overcome it? And how are you able to do better than next time that you are presented with a virtual interview situation? 

Comment below this video and tell us step number two is during the interview. This is all about really focusing because that virtual interview process is so different from in-person and there’s so many things that can distract us from really focusing in and zeroing in on the person on the screen. 

And so it’s very important that you make a conscious effort to do that to really listen attentively to what they’re saying listen to their body language, even though you’re a little more limited on the body language typically that you can see on a virtual interview, really focus in on the person that you’re talking to. And imagine yourself being with them in person that is really going to help you connect with them. And that is so important when we’re in any interview. situations, but especially when we’re in a virtual interview. 

Step number three is after the interview. What do you do? Well, of course, you want to send a thank you email a thank you note, just like you would, in a regular interview. Virtual interviews are no different. But here’s another element. Another tip that I want to add is you want to do an evaluation of how you feel the interview went. And you can use this for regular interviews. But it’s especially helpful in virtual interviews, because it’s still kind of different for many of us. And the way that you do the evaluation is you think about and you can write this out three things. 

Number one is what worked, what worked well for you during this interview, you want to write that out and capture that in your notes, so that you can do that when you’re faced with a second third interview, or if you’re interviewing at any other time in the future with other companies. So number one is what worked. Number two is what didn’t work, there may be some areas where you feel like you didn’t do as well as others who want to capture that. And then you want to capture what you would do differently in the future. 

This is going to help you become very, very skilled and excel at virtual interviews in the future, when you do this kind of evaluation really, very much after very shortly after the interview so that you can capture it while it’s fresh. 

So that’s it for today’s video. Stay tuned for my video next week that is going to be all about how to recover if you’ve had a bad interview, it happens to the best of us. But there are very specific ways that you can recover and still get called in potentially for the next round. So you want to stay tuned next week for that video. 

In the meantime, if you are struggling to secure your job interviews, chances are your resume is not cutting it. And I have a resource for you. It’s free. It’s called a resume booster and you can get it at my website which is coachwithdanielle.com/boost. And in that free resource which is a video and a PDF. I share with you why your resume is failing you and my four quick steps on how to fix it. So I’ll put the link below this video where you can download that resource and be sure to check my other video by clicking right here or in the description below, which is my resume advice if you’re 40 Plus, if you like this video, like it subscribe to my channel so you’ll never miss any of my future videos and I will see you in another video.