It is 9:52. Your interview is at 10:00. The CV is still a PDF you have not opened. Welcome to the club.
Here is the honest truth. You cannot fake deep prep in eight minutes, and candidates can tell when you try. What you can do is run a tight ten-minute scan that gets you to “useful,” not “polished.”
The ten-minute panic prep
Open the CV and ignore the summary section. Skip to the most recent role. Read the company name, the job title, and the dates. That is 30 seconds.
Now pick one project or bullet that stands out. Just one. Something concrete, ideally with a number or a product name attached. Highlight it mentally.
Next, scan the second most recent role for context. You are answering one question: does this career make sense, and what is the thread?
Spend the last five minutes writing three starter questions on a sticky note. One about the recent company, one about the project you flagged, one open ended question about what they want next. That is it.
Do not fake it
The worst move is pretending you read the whole CV. Candidates notice. They see the generic questions, the glazed eyes when they mention something specific, the awkward pause when you ask something they already addressed on page one.
Try this instead, at minute one: “I want to be upfront, I only had ten minutes with your CV this morning. I am going to ask you to walk me through the last two roles, and I will go deeper from there.” Nine out of ten candidates respect that more than theatre.
Turn panic prep into a system
If you are doing this weekly, the real fix is upstream. Block 20 minutes the day before every interview day. Not the morning of. The day before, when you still have time to react if something in the CV surprises you.
Build a standard prep template. Role, company, one project, three questions, one concern. Five fields. Use it every time.
Sieve gives you a pre-built candidate brief for every CV in your pipeline, so even on your worst Monday you walk into the call with the highlights, the risks, and the questions already waiting. See it at sievecv.com.