How to Prepare for Interviews, Coffee Chats & Elevator Pitches

Most students under-prepare for interviews the same way: too much knowledge, not enough reps. Interviewing is a performance skill. Twenty mock interviews beat a hundred hours of reading.

Coffee chats

A coffee chat is not an interview and not a networking transaction — it is a conversation. Prepare three good questions that could only be asked of that specific person, based on their career path. End by asking who else they think you should talk to. Send a two-line thank-you within 24 hours.

Competency interviews and the STAR method

Situation, Task, Action, Result. The hidden fifth letter is R for "reflection" — what you learned and would do differently. Prepare eight to ten STAR stories that can flex across any question: leadership, conflict, failure, initiative, teamwork, ambiguity, pressure, ethics. Society and fraternity experience makes the best source material because you were genuinely accountable.

"Tell me about a time you showed leadership"

Pick a story where you had no formal authority. Leading peers you cannot fire is the hardest form of leadership and the one recruiters actually care about. Chapter committee roles, founding a society, running a case competition team — all strong sources.

Elevator pitch

Thirty seconds. Four beats: who you are (course + university), what you have done that is relevant, what you are working on now, what you are looking for. Rewrite it every semester. Say it out loud fifty times before you use it in the wild — it should sound spoken, not recited.

Practising interviews

Mock with anyone senior who will give you honest feedback: society alumni, careers service, fraternity mentors, second-year friends who have just done the cycle. Record yourself. The gap between how you think you sound and how you actually sound is where most of the improvement lives.

What to wear

For a networking event in the UK: smart casual is the safe floor — chinos or trousers, a shirt, clean shoes. For a formal interview or assessment centre: a suit, always. Under-dressed reads worse than over-dressed at any UK grad-recruitment context.

Finding mock interviewers

Cross-year communities are the fastest source of honest mocks — professional fraternities in particular run internal case and behavioural practice each recruitment season. See the Forumor find a chapter.