Ace Your Job Interviews with NotebookLM 🚀

Okay, so today we're going to have a look at how to use NotebookLM as your research partner for preparing for job interviews.

so there's obviously like a lot of talk at the moment around how AI is disrupting the world when it comes to careers.

And lots of people are getting impacted by limited restructurings that are happening across the world in various industries.

So really what people need to be doing now is thinking about how can you gain some leverage and how can you gain an edge using the tools available to you, like AI, to help accelerate your knowledge around prospective company that you're looking to go and get employed by.

So I've been using a really cool tool here for a variety of different things, whether it's company research, whether it's creating like a virtual coach based on somebody who I really admire and respect their thoughts and frameworks.

but a really cool way of using NotebookLM is as your research partner to help prepare you for interviews so it can become like your interview coach.

So what I'll do is I'll walk you through just some thoughts to get the idea spinning for you on how I would approach using NotebookLM to get me prepared for a job interview.

So let's start with NotebookLM.

So NotebookLM is a Google tool here.

you can access this with a free Google account.

so you don't need to pay for this tool, which is excellent.

and then what you would do is go and create a new tool.

Now I've already opened up, but I just want to show you something first which is how powerful this tool can be.

So essentially what you do is you're creating like an individual.

Imagine like this is an individual LLM but specific to the topic that you're looking to work with.

So here's one of the pre canned ones that's already been created by NotebookLM and Google, which is around looking at the earnings reports for the top 50 corporations worldwide.

it gives you all of that information.

So they've pulled in the reports, transcripts, PDFs, et cetera for all of these major corporations here in terms of the data sources.

And then this window here, the chat window, is now interacting with that data that's been pulled into the notebook.

and then you have this other cool feature called Studio.

But given this is a public, Notebook, I don't have the ability to create new Studio items.

But I'll show you that when we get into the example of preparing for a job interview, but you have these amazing sources that have already been created.

So think of this like a financial analyst researching the top 50 corporations, and chatting with the data here to get the insights based on that immediately, out of this tool.

so here's just an example I'll open up to share with you.

This is like a presentation.

We can review what the prompt was here.

It was create a slide deck that is focused on the third quarter of 2025, show what the most important trends are, make a useful comparison with previous quarters and demonstrate which areas are evolving and how.

So it's taken that prompt and then created this slide deck essentially to distill that down based on all of the information over here on the left in the sources section.

and as you can see it's very complete.

It's got a lot of information, very straightforward to digest, and very easy to consume.

So I just wanted to share with you that example so you can get a quick flavor of the makeup of what Notebook is and what the outputs are that it can deliver.

And now I'll show you what it can be like to prepare yourself for an up and coming job interview.

So if we go in and open a new notebook, what we can first do is either upload our own sources.

So this is where you can be very specific about the sources you want or equally you can go and search the web for the latest sources.

Now I've got some sources here that I would use manually.

But for the purpose of this I'll show you how you could go and search the web for the same information.

so what I would do here.

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So I've created the prompt here now which we can use to do the web search.

I'll run this, and we'll assess what the results are like when they come back.

Okay, so let's take a look at these here.

This may have many of the ones that I was looking for anyway.

because here's the approach I would take if I was doing it manually for this, just to get you your minds going.

Firstly I'd be going to their homepage and basically I'd be looking at their company information.

So I'd be looking at the career section.

the career section would be a good one.

I would copy this URL and add that into the notebook.

I would have the Life at Cloudflare and I would add that into the notebook.

I would go and search for the open position that I'm interested in.

I picked one here at random.

I would take this job description.

I would add that link into the notebook.

I would then go to the Investor Relations section and I would bring up all the latest presentations.

Now I tried using the webcast video streams, but it doesn't recognize that format in NotebookLM.

So I download the PDFs, I download the presentation.

I'd go and look at the archive presentations for the last year.

I'd get the Q1 earnings, I'd download the transcript.

I would get the Cloudflare Investor Day.

I would download that transcript.

I would get the Q2 earnings, I would get the Q3 earnings.

Now the Q4 earnings haven't come out yet, so I wouldn't include that.

here, just take all of the recent earnings for the current fiscal year that they're operating in, along with any investor presentations that they've done.

I would add all of that in and then I'd supplement that with any kind of products, information that might get, you know, might be available on their website.

I would then also upload a copy of my LinkedIn profile.

So I would download, my LinkedIn profile into a PDF and add that into the notebook as well.

And that's how I would then start to create the brain around the information that I want to be, interacting with and chatting with to get me prepared for the job interview.

so let's go in and have a look at that now.

So look, I'm going to import all of these sources and while we're there, I'm going to drop in a few that I downloaded as well.

So here's my LinkedIn profile.

I'm going to add some more.

I downloaded the transcript.

So let's take all of these, transcripts, let's bring all of those in here as well.

And then once we've got all of those sources, fully uploaded here into the notebook, then we can get started.

I would then label this like whatever the role is that you're applying for.

So here's the link to the job description.

So let's just take this Director of Partner Sales role.

Let's add that as another source.

So web link.

Pop that in just in case, these career ones haven't come up.

Because this is good to get the culture and values of the company and you can figure out where your alignment is and you can create your message that is directly aligned to it.

Okay.

And then let's just leave it at that for now.

I get those last Few load.

Okay, great.

So now what we've got here is we've now built the foundation of the data that we want to interact with to help accelerate our knowledge about the company that we're going after.

In this instance, Cloudflare, we've told it about the job and what the expectations are of the job.

We've told it about what the values are.

And the philosophy of Cloudflare is, we've told it all about its previous quarterly, earnings results, its investor day presentation, where they share the strategy of what they're doing Cloudflare moving forward.

And we've uploaded our, my LinkedIn profile here as well so we can, you can start to see where the linkages are and the alignments are.

So what I could do is say, have a quick interaction now with this data and see what starts to come out.

So we could say, based on my LinkedIn profile and the job description provided.

For the director of partner, sales role, Act, like my interview coach and.

Assess my current fit for the role.

So let's start with that.

So what you can start to see here is it's now taking information from my LinkedIn profile.

So it's got a complete career history there.

it's got other information that's obviously part of my LinkedIn profile.

It's now looked at the job description for that role and it's starting to make, it's starting to find the patterns where there's overlap and alignment between my experiences and what they're asking for.

It's then also giving tips.

So it's saying here, like in the interview, position yourself as the architect who knows how to build the next billion dollar engine through channels.

as Cloudflare is specifically looking to deepen its investments in GSI and mssp, et cetera, it's got another one here around the regional landscape.

While the uk all knowledge is beyond reproach.

Ensure you highlight your Northern European experience, products and strategy.

It's like my Fit Technology experience is great.

mention your work with Thousand Eyes.

So here's a great way to just get started.

Like it's showing you the things that are specific to that job description and where the alignment areas are and it's coaching you with some tips.

Now the other thing that I would use this for is to start to build some collateral that you can use to make you stand out from the crowd.

So like, one thing that I would suggest you do is have a think about creating like a slide deck.

Like let's imagine you get to the end of the first set of interview processes.

Like, the thing I would do is say, right, let's create a slide deck with three big innovative ideas that we would, that we have come up with.

To help accelerate the growth for Cloudflare in this region through the partner channel.

now if it's going to be one that you just share with them, I would go for the detail deck rather than the presenter slides.

A presenter slides is more if you're going to record yourself presenting something and you just want a nice clean, deck that's going to act like a prompt for you, rather than one that they can read and get more of the detail.

So I would go for the detail deck, and leave it at default.

It supports a multitude of different languages.

Obviously I'm in English, so I would now generate that deck and that's going to take a little while to generate.

the other thing I would start think about in terms of preparing is to just get you ready for potential interview questions would be either chatting with, the notebook to get yourself prepared for the interview.

So you could say like, what would be 10 particular questions that are focused on, this particular job description, that are situational, for example, and it could then create those situational questions for you.

You could then take those and create a quiz or, or flashcards and you could use that as a prompt to kind of test yourself as you're getting prepared, for the actual interviews themselves.

and another cool one that I like here is this infographic feature.

This is a great way to just very quickly distill down your ideas as well.

So if you've come up with, let's say you've got a few big ideas that you've thought about based on your research that you've done on the prospective company, and you want to just give them like a one page view that's like really interesting.

Like you can use this infographic, studio feature here inside of NotebookLM, and that's a really powerful tool.

So I'll create one here now.

anyway, just so you can get a sense for how that works.

but I'll come back to that in a second.

Okay, so the slide deck we generated has finished now.

And I thought this was really cool.

And this is just again to illustrate why I think NotebookLM is such a powerful tool in preparing yourselves for job interviews and for other functions.

But just take a look at the fidelity of what it's created.

Like, it's looked through all of that information.

It's obviously picked up on the nuances of what language is being used throughout all of those sources that we've given it.

In terms of the strategy, it's picked up the colors of Cloudflare's brand, and essentially it started to create imagery that also then aligns with the language that's being put into this document.

now this is a great option.

Like, if you were going for this job and this was something you wanted to do to prepare yourself for it, I would highly recommend just downloading a copy of this and sharing it after your interviews to show your proactivity and to show that you're interested.

But look at the quality of the content that's come out of here.

So it's come up with this on its own.

I've not prompted this other than to say, come up with three innovative ideas for accelerating Cloudflare through partners, in the region.

It's come up with this idea about the AI Edge foundry, which is a dedicated track for agencies and dev shops focused on their workers AI product.

It's got this zero friction project which is unlocking the service provider mass market.

So this is embedding Cloudflare into the ISP bundles for SMV reach, the legacy migration factory.

So this would be, displacing hardware or displacing people from hyperscaler platforms and bringing them onto the workers products.

At and Cloudflare, it's got the formula for regional growth, so velocity, mass market and momentum.

Like I even like the flow of that.

I think that's a brilliant way that's very memorable and high impact.

It starts to talk about the region itself.

So, you know, mature markets facing infrastructure sprawl and the partner mandate under indexed on partner revenue versus peers.

So a need to move from selling point products to selling the platform.

I mean these are all brilliant insights that has come up with on its own.

the big idea is to close the gap.

So this sort of rainbow here is something that's come out of the Investor Day presentation.

So what it's doing is kind of showing where those three key ideas would align with the strategy.

Like, I think that's a brilliant way to position Yourself.

It shows you've done your homework.

It shows that you're aligning yourself to the strategy for Cloudflare as a whole and how your ideas would work.

And then it gives you a little bit more detail about each one of, the concepts and the ideas that it's come up with.

Again, with amazing looking graphics, very simple to digest.

typically text to go with it to back it up.

I just think it's phenomenal.

Really, like the power of this is really incredible.

Now imagine in a world where you're competing against lots of different people, going after the same one role, how do you stand out from the crowd?

And it's creating leverage for yourself using the tools available to you.

So like I said, this is a free tool that's available to you.

this is something that you can access right now without any expense.

You just need to have your free, Google account to log in.

but hopefully this was useful to you.

So my sort of general structure here that I would follow would be create the new notebook specific to the job, upload the job description, upload your downloaded LinkedIn profile, search across the web for any information around the company venture.

Very specifically, I would make sure that you go and look for the careers pages where they've got the cultures and values for the company.

I would look at their investor, sections and I would Download the latest 3 to 4/4 of annual reports or quarterly reports, any investor day presentations that are there because that kind of sets out the strategy for the company, which is good for you to know.

And then I would say that's your baseline for any job.

You're going after whatever the prospective company is that you're going after.

And then basically you use this tool to chat with it, to prepare yourself so that you can accelerate your knowledge about the products.

if you know nothing about the company and its products that they sell, I would highly recommend you make sure you've got their product information in your notebook.

And then that way you can quiz yourself and rapid fire do a very quick, accelerated learning around the products of the company as well.

So you're very familiar with it.

And then build some ideas around like what strategy you might, implement immediately to show that you're thinking strategically, already even without the job being given to you.

and then use those cool tools to present, you know, to create those amazing assets.

Like, you know, the infographic, that I created, like this one's probably not relevant for this example, but again you can see the quality of the output but certainly, like this presentation, I would download a copy of that.

I would probably record myself on Loom or something and do like, just a quick 30 second, one minute recording, to say, you know, to follow up on the call or the interview that you had.

And I'd say, and, here's some ideas that I've just started to throw around in my mind based on the research and the homework I've been doing for you to consider.

I hope it's of use.

so, yeah, that's my quick, I guess, my quick whirlwind education on how I would use Notebook.

LM as, an interview partner or recruitment partner going into, a job interview process with a new role.

I hope you enjoy.

Cheers.