So, you’ve secured yourself an interview for an incredible position, in fact you’d go as far as to call it your dream job, congratulations! But then you find out it’s an online interview.
Let’s admit it, interviews can be uncomfortable and tricky at the best of times. It’s a hard act, trying to sell yourself and answer what can be very difficult questions, let alone doing it all from behind a screen.
Why should you prep for an online interview?
Online interviews are a relatively recent phenomenon (especially with the rise of AI), but they aren’t going anywhere. Remote and hybrid work are now the norm, not the exception: 36% of employed Australians usually worked from home as of August 2025, holding steady on the year before, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If interviewing on camera feels unfamiliar, it’s worth remembering that it’s how most hiring now happens, at least for the first round.
We put a call out to the Churchill Education community: what tips and strategies have actually worked for you in remote interviews, as interviewer or interviewee? We received some great answers, so instead of freaking out and catastrophising, sit down, breathe, and have a flick through this roadmap. We promise it’ll make it much easier.
Our Roadmap for Acing Online Interviews
Five stops, worked through roughly in order, from getting your tech sorted to actually landing the connection that gets you hired.
Stop 1: Technology
Have you ever been on a video call with someone who had an awful microphone? Remember how distracting that was? That’s exactly what you want to avoid, you want the interviewer focused on you, not a crackly microphone.
Almost every video call platform has an option to test your microphone, camera and headphones before you join. Do this before your interview and check that you sound clear, you’re well lit, and you can clearly hear what’s being said.
Stop 2: Internet
Once your set-up is sorted, find a location with a good, strong and stable connection. The last thing you want is to drop in and out with an awkward frozen screen. Run an internet speed test beforehand, above 2 Mbps and you should be fine; below that, scope out a better location. It’s also worth having a Plan B, such as a phone with the meeting app already downloaded, just in case.
Stop 3: Research
Most interview questions aren’t unique. They’ve been asked countless times before, across countless interviews, which means you can genuinely prepare for them. A few you’ll see constantly:
- Tell me about a time you had to adapt quickly to a change at work.
- Describe a disagreement with a colleague and how you resolved it.
- Why are you looking to leave your current role?
- Where do you see your career in the next few years?
A useful technique for structuring an answer is SOAR: Situation, Obstacle, Action, Result. Take the first example above. Situation: a project’s scope changed midway through. Obstacle: the original plan and timeline no longer worked. Action: you re-prioritised the remaining tasks and briefed the team on the new direction. Result: the project still landed on time, and the client didn’t notice a hiccup. Four sentences, and the interviewer has a clear, concrete picture of how you actually work.
Stop 4: Distractions
Set yourself up somewhere you won’t be interrupted, and let people around you know you’ll need the room for a while. Enabling your platform’s blurred background feature is a simple way to add privacy too, whether that’s hiding a messy background or just creating a more professional look.
Stop 5: Connection
It’s important to build a connection with whoever’s interviewing you, the reality is, people hire people they get along with. It’s a bit harder to do that behind a screen, but it isn’t impossible. A few things help:
- Look at the camera, not the screen, harder than it sounds, but it makes a real difference.
- Use visible body language: sit up straight, smile, nod along.
- Let yourself laugh and banter a little with the interviewer.
- Look for something to bond over, a shared interest, a hobby, anything genuine.
Remember that unlike an in-person interview, your interviewer usually can’t see your full body, so lean into the body language that is visible.
“Give yourself a bit of grace, technology doesn’t always work, and things don’t always go to plan, but sometimes, that’s when the best things happen.” — Melody McNulty, Compliance and Professional Development Manager at Churchill Education
Practising before the real thing
If you want a step further than reading tips, run a mock interview with a friend or family member over video call first. Ask them to throw a couple of the questions above at you, and watch the playback if you can. It’s the closest thing to a video tutorial on common mistakes, because the mistakes you catch are your own, not a stranger’s.
How to use RPL to boost your interview success rate
If you’re interviewing on the back of a qualification you earned through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), that’s worth bringing into the room, not hiding. RPL turns years of hands-on experience into a nationally recognised qualification, which means the story you tell in an interview about your skills already has the paperwork to back it up.
A few ways to use it:
- Lead with the qualification, then the experience behind it. “I hold a [Qualification], recognised through my work in [role/industry]” frames your experience as credentialled, not just anecdotal.
- Use your RPL evidence as interview prep. The same work samples, references and project outcomes you gathered for your RPL assessment double as ready-made SOAR examples.
- Know exactly what you’re qualified for before you walk in. Our RPL Qualification Finder (https://www.churchilleducation.edu.au/rpl/rpl-qualification-finder/) maps your experience against the full qualifications list (https://www.churchilleducation.edu.au/qualifications/), so you’re not guessing at how to describe your own capability.
Haven’t started your RPL journey yet? A free RPL Appraisal is the first step toward walking into your next interview with the credentials to match the experience.