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Hi [USER=29878]@ashwright[/USER] and huge congrats on getting to the interview stage 🥳 🥳 I am sure you will nail it! My best advice for you to avoid sounding robotic is to not memorize your answers during your preparation. Instead, I think you should simply aim to remember how to link key competencies/motivations with aspects of a wide set of your experiences, and then to practice as much as you can coming up with good answers on the spot. This way, you will develop the most important interviewing skill of all: an ability to express your thought in articulate manner even if you have not considered the issue in the past. I believe this is essential because (i) no matter how much you prepare, it is unlikely that every single question you will be asked will be one you have memorized an answer for; (ii) even if they are, it is unlikely the exact form and framing of every question fits the specific phrasing you have memorized; and (iii) even if you are extremely lucky in this regard as well and everything fits perfectly, given the nerves you will naturally be experiencing during the interview, it is likely you will inadvertently deviate from your pre-prepared 'optimal' answer, which might then make you overthink the issue and end up derailing your entire performance.More generally, to keep calm on the day, I have two central pieces of advice: to focus on doing well, not on being perfect, and to aim to speak at a slower pace. I have explained these two tips in a lot more depth in a previous post, I will quote it bellow:
Hi [USER=29878]@ashwright[/USER] and huge congrats on getting to the interview stage 🥳 🥳 I am sure you will nail it! My best advice for you to avoid sounding robotic is to not memorize your answers during your preparation. Instead, I think you should simply aim to remember how to link key competencies/motivations with aspects of a wide set of your experiences, and then to practice as much as you can coming up with good answers on the spot. This way, you will develop the most important interviewing skill of all: an ability to express your thought in articulate manner even if you have not considered the issue in the past. I believe this is essential because (i) no matter how much you prepare, it is unlikely that every single question you will be asked will be one you have memorized an answer for; (ii) even if they are, it is unlikely the exact form and framing of every question fits the specific phrasing you have memorized; and (iii) even if you are extremely lucky in this regard as well and everything fits perfectly, given the nerves you will naturally be experiencing during the interview, it is likely you will inadvertently deviate from your pre-prepared 'optimal' answer, which might then make you overthink the issue and end up derailing your entire performance.
More generally, to keep calm on the day, I have two central pieces of advice: to focus on doing well, not on being perfect, and to aim to speak at a slower pace. I have explained these two tips in a lot more depth in a previous post, I will quote it bellow:
