Yes, You Still Have to Practice for Interviews (Even If You’re Brilliant)
Great experience isn’t enough. Discover why clear, structured storytelling often beats brilliance in today’s job interviews.
Everyone knows someone brilliant. They’ve delivered impossible projects under pressure, cleaned up chaos without fanfare, and carried teams on their back while quietly becoming the go-to person for everything. Their calendar is full, their output is strong, and their impact is real. You’d assume that kind of track record would glide them through any interview process with ease.
But it doesn’t.
Because interviews don’t reward lived experience alone. They reward how clearly and confidently you articulate that experience to people who have no context. People who don’t know the internal politics you navigated or the duct tape you used to keep things from falling apart. In that room, it doesn’t matter how good you were. It matters whether you can explain how you were good, why it mattered, and what changed because of you.
People with less experience are often better at doing that. Because they practice. They prepare. They show up ready to frame their story so it lands. That’s not manipulation. It’s strategy. If you’re hoping your résumé will speak for itself, you’re handing the mic to chance.
The Interview Is a Performance (But Not in a Bad Way)
Calling an interview a performance doesn’t mean you're putting on a fake persona or acting your way into a role you don’t belong in. It simply means you're taking the raw material of your career and presenting it in a way that is structured, engaging, and easy to follow. That’s communication.
Most people don’t realize just how easy it is to lose an interviewer. It’s not that they aren’t interested. It’s that they’re human. They have short attention spans, multiple candidates to assess, and a checklist of competencies to fill. If your answer is buried under layers of context, they might tune out before you reach the point. And often, that point is good, it’s just too late.
By contrast, a well-prepared candidate gets there faster. They know how to lead their listener. Their stories have shape. They anticipate the question behind the question. When they speak, the message lands. Not because they rehearsed a script word for word, but because they thought it through ahead of time.
This is what we mean when we say interviews are a performance. It’s about presence. Control. Clarity. You’re on the spot, and your job is to make your experience stick. Not through theatrics, but through structure.
If you’ve ever watched a good stand-up set, you’ve seen this principle in action. The pacing feels natural, but every beat has been rehearsed. It flows, but it’s been thought through. That’s the kind of presence that works in interviews too. It’s not about reciting your résumé. It’s about telling the right story, at the right time, in a way that makes someone want to hear more.
STAR Isn’t Just an Acronym
STAR doesn’t sound exciting. It sounds like a forced acronym. But beneath its unremarkable branding is one of the most effective tools you can use in an interview. Not because it makes you sound clever, but because it stops you from sounding confused.
Situation
Task
Action
Result
STAR is how you turn experience into narrative. Most candidates don’t struggle because they lack the experience. They struggle because they bury the lead, lose track of the point, or forget to actually mention what they did. STAR fixes that. It keeps your story upright.
Start with the situation so your interviewer knows what world we’re in. Outline the task so they understand what was expected. Describe the action so it’s clear what you did. And always, always land on the result, because the story is only as strong as where it ends.
It’s about having a map. With STAR, you stay grounded. You cut fluff. You resist the urge to spiral into too much context or vague phrases like “drove alignment” or “helped deliver outcomes.”
And the difference it makes is immediate. A candidate who once gave foggy, sprawling answers now tells stories with shape. Their examples feel real, not rehearsed. Even if the result isn’t massive, the clarity is compelling.
It’s the difference between “I supported an initiative” and “I redesigned our intake process and cut response times by 30%.” Same person. Same work. But one tells a story you can follow and remember. That’s the power of STAR.
Rehearsal Is Respectful (To Yourself and the Interviewer)
There’s a fallacy floating around that preparing for an interview makes you sound robotic. That somehow, by rehearsing your stories, you’re sacrificing authenticity for polish. But in practice, it’s usually the opposite. The person who “wants to sound natural” often ends up delivering something that started with potential but quickly lost all shape.
Rehearsing doesn’t mean memorising a monologue. It means giving your thoughts structure. It’s about noticing which parts of your story actually matter and trimming the ones that don’t. When you speak something out loud a few times, you start to hear the fluff, the detours, the sections where even you forget what the point was. And that awareness helps.
More than anything, rehearsal is a sign of self-respect. You’ve put in the work. You’ve built things, solved problems, influenced outcomes. It’s only fair that you give yourself the best shot at actually communicating that when it counts.
And yes, it’s respectful to your interviewer too. They’re probably jumping between meetings, reviewing CVs on autopilot, and desperately trying to focus. Giving them a clear, concise story is generous. It helps them help you.
Rehearsing is thoughtful. Just like you wouldn’t show up to a friend’s wedding in a wrinkled shirt, you shouldn’t show up to an interview with wrinkled stories. A little prep smooths things out. You don’t have to sound slick, you just have to make sense.
Yes, Average Candidates Get Hired Over Better Ones. It Happens Every Day.
People with less impressive résumés, fewer big-name projects, or slightly wobbly experience are getting the job. Not always, but often enough that it makes you wonder, “What just happened?”
What happened is simple. They were easier to understand.
Interviews are not reality shows where talent is discovered in a dramatic twist. They’re short, high-pressure conversations where clarity wins. Interviewers don’t get to watch a montage of your best work with uplifting music in the background. They only know what you tell them. If you can’t articulate it, it may as well not exist.
So yes, the average candidate who’s practiced, structured their stories, and figured out how to connect the dots will often beat someone with exceptional experience who decided to “just wing it.” Not because the first candidate is better, but because they’re easier to evaluate.
If that feels unfair, flip it. Being able to communicate your value clearly, under pressure, to a complete stranger? That’s skill. And it’s not just useful in interviews. It shows up in performance reviews, stakeholder meetings, and team leadership.
Telling your story well isn’t vanity. It’s showing people what’s behind the job title. The best candidates make excellent work legible. They translate it. They help others see the value that might otherwise be hidden in vague descriptions and overcomplicated context.
In a crowded job market, that’s no longer optional. It’s the difference between being the best-kept secret in the business and actually getting hired.
Let’s drop the idea that preparing for interviews is somehow dishonest. It’s not. You're not tricking anyone by thinking through your answers or refining your delivery. You're simply doing what everyone else is doing. Or at least, what everyone else should be doing.
Preparation isn’t cheating. It’s aligning with the reality of how interviews work. These aren’t quiet, reflective performance evaluations. They’re short, structured conversations in which busy people make big decisions based on limited data. If you want to stand out, you have to make your data easy to absorb.
The truth is, many candidates are already ahead of you. They’re rehearsing. They’re practicing STAR. They’re finding better ways to say the same thing they’ve always done. Not because they’re spinning stories, but because they want those stories to land.
You owe yourself that same effort. Not to oversell. But to avoid being undersold.
The interview isn’t just about proving you can do the job. It’s proving you can communicate why you should. And that takes prep.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we help professionals turn strong experience into stories that land in interviews. Contact us if you're tired of being overlooked, and ready to master the skills that actually get you hired.