5 Smart Ways to Prepare for Your FMCG Interview Over the Weekend
- James Skidmore
- May 20
- 3 min read
If you’ve secured an interview with a company you've been trying to meet for ages — congratulations! These companies move fast, and the competition is strong. Your weekend is the perfect opportunity to prep efficiently without burning the midnight oil after your actual day job.
Here are five ways to use your time wisely:
🔍 1. Deep Dive Into the Brand & Its Market Position
Spend an hour reviewing the company’s recent news, product launches, category performance, and retail/outlet presence. For marketing and insights professionals, look at advertising trends and consumer sentiment - this could spark interesting conversation in you interview. For sales and ops, understand distribution, supply chain movements, or channel strategies - how does the company show up in its customers' venues/stores... how do you think ops are being affected by the world we find ourselves in just now?
Grab Marketing Week, Drinks Business, the Grocer and its pullout section if it helps - any trade publication that can help your understanding of the company your meeting but also the category they play in and what's happening in FMCG now more broadly too.
Make a couple of salient notes that help you speak confidently about the brand’s current challenges and opportunities.
📈 2. Prepare Success Stories Using the STAR Method
Whatever function and walk of life you're in, FMCG interviewers from both HR and Line want impact. Pick 3–5 achievements that show how you've driven results, navigated challenges, or influenced stakeholders. Frame them using STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and tailor your stories to what matters most in the role... if you do this right, you can - to a degree - control the direction and flow of topics in the interview.
💬 3. Practice Commercially Relevant Interview Questions
Expect scenario-based and data-driven questions - in the current climate, businesses want people to join and hit the ground running. They also want people onboard who are proven and battle-hardened when it comes to growing their business. For example:
"How would you grow share in a declining category?"
"How have you ever translated insight into action?"
"Talk us through how you managed a logistics disruption."
Prep your responses with examples that highlight your ability to do, to learn, deliver and reframe problems to come up with solutions.
🧠 4. Review Your CV and Anticipate Questions
Re-read your CV as if you were the hiring manager. What would you ask? Be ready to explain transitions, targets hit (or missed - and the learnings from that), and projects that didn’t go to plan. Honesty, ownership, and reflection go a long way. Never. Ever. Diss your current or former employer.
☕ 5. Recharge Without Guilt
Rest is part of preparation. Go for a walk, play some sport, or do something you enjoy. You’ll show up sharper from Monday. A calm, focused mindset always performs better than a crammed, stressed one that's trying to juggle 1001 things all at once.
POET is a UK-based recruitment company that helps some of the Consumer Goods industry's best-loved brands to hire world-class talent across Sales, Marketing, Insights and Operations. Now in our tenth year, we help with one-off projects, building entire teams or simply consulting across an increasingly unpredictable market for talent.
For advice, help or just to understand what's happening in the FMCG marketplace, get in touch with POET - book a call any time here
FMCG Recruitment. Done Better.
