A job description is a list of questions in disguise
Every requirement in a job description represents something the hiring manager intends to verify. Every responsibility is something they will probe to make sure you can actually do it. The interview guide is often built directly from the job description. In some cases it is literally built from it.
That means you have the interview questions before you walk in. Not exactly, but close enough that the preparation you can do from a careful read of the job description is substantial.
Most candidates read the job description once to decide whether to apply and once to prepare a few talking points. That is a fraction of what it is worth.
How to read it for questions
On your second read, look specifically for the ownership verbs: manage, lead, drive, build, own, improve, oversee, partner, influence. Each one maps to a set of interview questions.
"Lead cross-functional teams to deliver product initiatives"
"Tell me about a time you had to align stakeholders across multiple departments on a shared goal."
"Drive product strategy and roadmap prioritization"
"Walk me through how you have set product direction and made prioritization decisions in a previous role."
Once you can see the question behind the requirement, preparation becomes concrete. For each question, find the specific experience from your resume that answers it. Build the story. Practice it until you are not reconstructing it on the spot.
Five-step preparation from the job description
Identify the three to five things the role actually requires at its core. Ignore the nice-to-haves. Find the things a candidate would be disqualified for not having.
For each core requirement, write out the question it generates. Use the ownership verb as your guide. "Own the customer success function" becomes "tell me about a time you built or led a customer success operation."
Find the strongest experience from your resume that answers each question. Not the most impressive-sounding bullet -- the one where you have the most specific, defensible story.
For the gaps -- requirements you cannot fully answer -- prepare explicitly. What is your closest adjacent experience? What is the honest case for the transfer? Prepare that answer. Do not hope the gap does not come up.
Prepare one question to ask based on something specific in the job description. "The description mentioned X -- how does the team currently approach that?" It signals you read carefully and opens a real conversation.
What to do with a vague or poorly written job description
Extract what you can, then ask a clarifying question early in the interview. Something like: "From the job description, I understood the primary focus to be X and Y. Is that accurate, or are there other priorities I should know about?" That signals preparation, shows you took the posting seriously, and gives you more information to shape the rest of the conversation.
Do not let a vague job description be an excuse for vague preparation. Even a thin posting tells you the title, the level, and the company. That is enough to prepare for the most common questions the role at that level generates.