Advice on keeping interview answers concise

[Victoria R]

Hi everyone! I have an upcoming AC but when practicing my answers, I find I regularly talk for about four minutes and have received feedback from friends who I've practiced with that I waffle a little bit. How do you guys suggest going about keeping answers concise, yet detailed? Questions I'm particularly struggling with in this regard are 'why the firm', where I usually try and fit in three points.

 

[Alice G]

Hi everyone! I have an upcoming AC but when practicing my answers, I find I regularly talk for about four minutes and have received feedback from friends who I've practiced with that I waffle a little bit. How do you guys suggest going about keeping answers concise, yet detailed? Questions I'm particularly struggling with in this regard are 'why the firm', where I usually try and fit in three points.

I think ultimately preparing and maybe typing out your answer could help you because you might be able to see on paper what info you’re giving which is peripheral or not fundamental to the answer. I had a few long answers and that’s fine I think but they need to be engaging. With competencies, when preparing your STAR sections, keep to just a couple of bullet points for each to make your answer very direct and to the point. I was told I was too waffley and these are the things I did and I didn’t get that feedback again so like to think it worked!

 

[Victoria R]

I think ultimately preparing and maybe typing out your answer could help you because you might be able to see on paper what info you’re giving which is peripheral or not fundamental to the answer. I had a few long answers and that’s fine I think but they need to be engaging. With competencies, when preparing your STAR sections, keep to just a couple of bullet points for each to make your answer very direct and to the point. I was told I was too waffley and these are the things I did and I didn’t get that feedback again so like to think it worked!

Thanks so much Alice, that's super helpful!

 

[Dheepa]

Hi @Victoria R

I think Alice has already given you some great advice here but just wanted to flag up that there was some advice posted on for a similar question a few weeks ago. Hope this gives you some additional pointers!

I sympathise with this! As someone who practiced interview responses hundreds of times over, this is an issue that I ran into before.

What I did to try and compensate for it was, instead of actually scripting a full answer, to write key bullet points for all the points I needed to hit and, when practicing, making sure my response was slightly different each time while hitting all my key points. I found that helped me come over more naturally and took away some of the contrived feeling of a scripted answer. It also made me much less anxious about being 'knocked off script' by a follow-up question or whatever, and also made me feel like I had less to 'remember' heading into the interview so I was much more relaxed.

I completely understand! However, as much as recordings are useful, it's important to remember it doesn't mimic a real interview as you won't ever just be speaking on end unless you are giving a presentation. Even then, it's likely your interviewer will ask follow up questions and pick up on things you mention.

I think my biggest advice and the thing that helped me in interviews was to mentally pace myself as I have a tendency to waffle and speak very fast when I get nervous. When you are asked a question, don't feel like you must respond at the very next second.

To help pass this time ( because of course you can't just sit staring at them ) you can start your answers by saying something like: I think I am interested in X firm for 2 key reasons. My first is xyz .... This will help you feel and look more in control as it gives you time to gather your thoughts.

Don't worry too much for now about sounding conversational as you can't really pre-empt this, it depends if your interviewer is also conversational!

So my take-away is to practice being controlled and measured.

I'm sure everything will be fine- best of luck