How to Prepare for a Job Interview in a Week
23 May 2026
A week is plenty of time to prepare well — more than enough, if you spend it on the right things and don't leave it all for the night before. The people who interview badly usually aren't under-qualified; they're under-rehearsed, and they tried to fix a week's worth of preparation in a panicked evening.
Here's a day-by-day plan that spreads the work out, ends with you calm rather than crammed, and takes maybe 30–45 minutes a day.
Day 1 — Understand the job, properly
Re-read the job description slowly and pull out the five or six things they clearly care most about — the skills and responsibilities that repeat or sit at the top. These are the themes your answers need to keep returning to. Write them down. Everything else this week serves these.
Day 2 — Research the company
You don't need to memorise their annual report. You need enough to answer "Why us?" with something specific and to ask good questions back. Look at what they do, who their customers are, anything recent (a launch, a change, a piece of news), and their stated values. Note two or three things that genuinely interest you — those become your material.
Day 3 — Build your story bank
This is the highest-value day. Most interview questions are answered from the same handful of real stories, so prepare the stories, not scripts for every possible question. Write down six to eight situations from your past: a problem you solved, a conflict you handled, something you led, a tight deadline, a mistake you owned, a result you're proud of.
Shape each one with STAR — Situation, Task, Action, Result — keeping the Action (what you did) at the centre and ending with a concrete result. With eight flexible stories ready, you can answer almost any "tell me about a time…" question by reaching for the closest one.
Day 4 — Draft your answers to the predictable questions
Some questions are near-certain: "Tell me about yourself," "Why this role?", "What's your greatest strength/weakness?", "Where do you see yourself?" Draft a rough answer to each — bullet points, not a script. The goal is to know the shape of each answer, not to memorise sentences that'll sound robotic on the day.
Day 5 — Practise out loud
This is the day most people skip, and it's the one that matters most. Reading your answers silently feels fine; saying them out loud is where you discover which ones ramble, which ones you actually believe, and where your voice tightens up. Say each answer aloud. Record one and listen back — it's uncomfortable and it works. Better still, have someone ask you the questions cold, out of order, so you're recalling under a little pressure rather than reciting in comfort.
Day 6 — Logistics and questions for them
Remove every avoidable source of stress:
- Confirm the time, format (in person, phone, video), and who you're meeting.
- Test your tech if it's a video call; plan your route and a buffer if it's in person.
- Lay out what you'll wear.
- Prepare three questions to ask them — about the team, what success looks like early on, or what they're trying to solve. Good questions signal you're serious.
Day 7 — Light review and rest
Don't cram. Skim your story bank and your notes on the company once, then stop. Do something that calms you. Walking in rested and clear-headed beats walking in over-prepared and frazzled. You've done the work across the week; today is about arriving as yourself.
The seven-day plan at a glance
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Decode the job description |
| 2 | Research the company |
| 3 | Build a STAR story bank (6–8 stories) |
| 4 | Draft answers to predictable questions |
| 5 | Practise out loud |
| 6 | Logistics + questions to ask them |
| 7 | Light review, then rest |
If you have less than a week
The same order still works, just compressed — and you protect the same two days. With only two evenings, spend the first on your story bank (Day 3) and the second practising out loud (Day 5), and fit the company research into the gaps. With one evening, build four or five STAR stories and say your "tell me about yourself" and "why this role?" answers aloud a few times. When time is short, cut research before you cut rehearsal — knowing one less fact about the company costs you far less than freezing on a question you could have practised.
Why "out loud" is the whole game
If you take one thing from this plan, make it Day 5. Knowing your answers and being able to deliver them are different skills, and only the second one is tested in the room. The first time you say "my greatest weakness is…" out loud should not be to the person deciding whether to hire you.
If you want a structured way to do that practice, Ofarwise is a Windows app that turns your CV and the job description into tailored prep, then runs realistic mock interviews so Day 5 isn't just talking to your bathroom mirror. It's a free 14-day trial, then a one-time £49.99 pass for three months rather than another subscription. With or without it, though, the plan is the same: spread the work across the week, and spend the back half of it rehearsing out loud.