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When most early-career candidates think about job interviews, they picture the standard resume walkthrough, along with common questions like “Tell me about yourself” or “Why do you want to work here?” Nowadays, many industries have expanded their hiring methods to include a powerful (and often underestimated) conversation: the fit interview. Fit interviews are designed to help a company gauge whether you’re someone they want to work with. Here’s what you need to know, along with strategies to stand out.
What Is a Fit Interview?
A fit interview (also known as a “personal experience” interview or behavioral interview) assesses whether your personality, work style, and values align with a company’s culture and team. Instead of asking about technical knowledge, companies use fit interviews to evaluate your communication style, collaborative skills, leadership potential, ability to learn from experience and adapt, and how you handle conflict or setbacks.
Fit interviews also help a company get a read on what motivates you and what your values are, and can gauge your self-awareness and emotional intelligence. During a fit interview, you’re likely to get questions like “Tell me about a time you failed” or “How do you respond to pressure.” For more information on answering these types of questions, check out our previous blog here.
Industries and Roles That Commonly Use Fit Interviews
Fit interviews can appear in almost any industry, but they’re especially prevalent in fields that rely heavily on interpersonal skills, client interaction, and collaboration. Here is a list of industries that use fit interviews, along with what the companies are trying to learn about you:
Consulting
Perhaps no industry relies more heavily on fit interviews than consulting. Consulting firms want to see structured thinking and strong communication skills. Along with this, they want to see whether a candidate is coachable and ready to deal with clients. The bottom line is, fit interviews help determine whether you can handle ambiguous situations and work well under pressure.
For more on consulting interviews, check out our blogs on mastering the consultant mindset and common consulting interview questions.
Finance
In banking, fit interviews help weed out candidates who may struggle with long hours, intense work, and quick decision-making. Here, interview questions might deal with your work ethic, integrity, judgment, and how you handle stressful situations.
Accounting and Professional Services
Accounting firms seek to evaluate a candidate’s ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and maintain ethical standards. These fit interviews often delve into your ability to manage tight deadlines, how you stay organized, and how you convey complicated financial information to clients.
Technology
Tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon often combine technical interviews with fit interviews during the hiring process. This is to ensure that a candidate not only has the required technical ability for the job, but is also a good fit for the company culture.
What Employers Really Want to Know
Employers who conduct fit interviews ultimately want to answer three questions. First, they want to know that you can perform the job at hand—even non-technical answers can show whether you’re structured, dependable, and results-oriented.
Fit interviews are also a great way for employers to gauge whether you’re a good fit for the company culture. If you’re preparing to go on job interviews, remember that potential employers want people who will elevate the internal, everyday dynamics of their company. In other words, will you thrive at the company?
Lastly, potential employers want to see that working with you every day will be pleasant. Your energy, professionalism, and empathy all play into this. The key here is how you say things—do you come off as excited and engaged? When you talk about your experiences do you give off an air of authenticity?
Succeeding in a Fit Interview
There are several tactics you can employ to make yourself stand out during a fit interview. For starters, you might consider using the STAR Method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to help keep your stories structured. The most important thing to remember when using the STAR Method is to avoid sounding robotic. You don’t want to be tripping over your words, but you don’t want to sound over-rehearsed either.
Another tactic is to prepare some stories to bring along with you to your interview. When we say “stories,” we don’t mean a children’s bedtime story—here, you want to tell stories about your professional (or academic) experiences that demonstrate leadership qualities, great communication skills, or conflict resolution.
Building off of our storytelling idea, avoid vague statements like “I’m a strong communicator” or “I’m a team player.” Instead, demonstrate traits like these through your stories.
During a fit interview it’s likely you’ll be asked how you deal with failure. When answering a question like this, don’t be afraid to talk openly about a situation where things didn’t go as planned. A good “failure” story might highlight what you learned, how you adapted, how you improved, and how your team benefited afterward. Showing confidence, humility, and self-awareness is incredibly important during a fit interview.
Since your professionalism is being put to the test, one of the worst things you could do is speak negatively about a professor, manager, coworker, or a former employer. If you do, there’s a very good chance that you’ll irreversibly damage your candidacy. Positivity is infectious, and is often a deciding factor when it comes to hiring decisions.
Of course, research comes into play when preparing for any interview, and this also goes for fit interviews. Things to look into are a company’s social media posts, its “mission and values” pages on its website, and if possible, interviews with its leadership team.
Lastly, when it comes to preparing for any job interview, practice makes perfect. Consider putting together a list of common (or not so common) interview questions that are asked in your industry and running through some mock interviews with a friend or family member.
Remember, fit interviews aren’t just about whether you match a company’s culture and values—they’re about whether you elevate the company’s culture and values. When conducted effectively, these interviews allow candidates to showcase leadership, maturity, emotional intelligence, and potential, which are all incredibly important qualities.
Rob Porter is an editor at Vault.
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