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Welcome to Issue #202 of Jobseeking is Hard!

Today’s issue is brought to you by The Hustle! They put together a free database with 100 side hustle ideas. If you’ve been thinking about making some extra money, it’s worth a look.

Happy Wednesday!

More of my coaching work lately has been happening after the resume has already done its job. People are landing interviews, and that shifts the question from “How do I get noticed?” to “How do I make this conversation count?”

That's what I want to talk about this week.

I'll also share how a former Resume Rewrite client recently reminded me that a strong resume can double as interview prep when it’s aligned closely to the job you’re targeting.

This week we’re talking about:

• What interviewers actually need to hear before they’ll hire you

• How your resume can become your interview prep cheat sheet

• The best (worst?) job posting of the week

• The meme of the week

And for Premium subscribers I’m:

• Debunking a LinkedIn claim about interviews and “automatic disqualifications”

• Answering a Premium subscriber’s question about talking too much in interviews. I’ll explain how to give enough detail without burying the parts the interviewer actually needs to hear.

Let’s get to it!

THE RESUME GOT YOU THE INTERVIEW…NOW WHAT?

Hiring is picking up, and a lot of my coaching calls and emails lately have shifted toward interview prep. People are getting the interviews. Now they want help making sure they don’t waste the opportunity.

Some come to me before an interview to work through strategy and prepare. Others have been interviewing without getting offers and want to go back through the questions they were asked, the answers they gave, and figure out what they could have done differently.

A lot of those calls end up sounding pretty similar. We go through the questions they were asked, what they said, and what I think the interviewer was actually trying to learn from the answer.

That last part matters a lot.

When people talk about giving the “right” answer in an interview, it can sound like there’s some secret response you’re supposed to know. There usually isn’t. The right answer is the one that gives the interviewer what they need to evaluate you. That’s something candidates miss all the time.

Take a question like, “Why do you want to work here?” A lot of people answer with something like, “I’m looking for a new challenge,” or “I think this would be a good next step.” Nothing is technically wrong with either answer. They just don’t give the interviewer much. What they really want to understand is why you chose their company and this role. Did you put any thought into it? Does the move make sense? Are you interested in something specific about the work, or did you apply to 40 jobs and this is the one that called?

So when I’m coaching someone on that answer, I’m not trying to give them a prettier version of “I want a challenge.” I’m trying to get them to answer the part the employer actually cares about.

The same thing happens with questions about strengths. If you tell me you’re detail-oriented, analytical, persistent, or a good communicator, I have no idea whether any of that is true. Everyone says those things. Tell me about the time you caught an issue nobody else noticed. Tell me what you analyzed, what you found, what recommendation you made, or what became easier because of your work. That gives the interviewer something they can actually evaluate.

I see another version of this with behavioral questions. Candidates will give me an answer that includes plenty of detail about what happened, but when we go through it together, I realize I still don’t know what they did. I hear all about the project, what the team was trying to accomplish, and the problem they ran into, then the answer jumps to the result. That’s usually where I start asking questions. What was your responsibility? What did you decide? Why did you take that approach? What did you change? What happened because of it? The problem is, most interviewers won’t pull it out of you…they’ll just move on.

Look, you don’t need to force every answer into some robotic formula, but the interviewer needs to understand what was happening, what your role was, and how you thought through it. Somewhere in there, they should also understand why the story mattered. A lot of candidates stop too early. They’ll tell me they created a report, learned a new system, trained someone, fixed an error, or improved a process. Okay. What did that allow the business to do better afterward? That last piece is often what turns a decent interview answer into one the interviewer can actually use.

This gets more important as you get more senior. At a certain point, the hiring manager probably isn’t trying to figure out whether you know the basic mechanics of your job. They’re trying to figure out how you make decisions, what you take ownership of, how you handle things when they don’t go according to plan, and whether they trust you to do the same kind of work for them.

That’s also why I don’t want people writing out every interview answer word for word. Should you prepare? Absolutely. But there’s a difference between preparing and memorizing. If you write out 25 answers and try to remember every sentence, you can end up spending the interview waiting for your chance to give the answer you prepared. Then the interviewer asks something a little differently and suddenly you’re trying to force that memorized answer into a question that isn’t quite the same. That’s when people start sounding rehearsed. Or worse, you lose your place in the answer you memorized and get flustered while the interviewer has no idea what’s happening.

I’d rather you know your examples really well. Know what happened, what made the situation difficult, what you personally did, and why you made the choices you made. If you understand the example instead of memorizing how you’re going to tell it, you can use the same story in different ways depending on what the interviewer asks. A conflict example might also work for a question about influencing someone. A process improvement story might work for a question about initiative. The important part is understanding the story well enough that you can talk about the part that actually answers the question.

And that makes follow-up questions much easier. “Why did you do that?” “What happened next?” “What would you do differently?” “What did the other person say?”

If you’ve memorized a speech, those questions can throw you off pretty quickly. If you actually know the story, you can just have a conversation.

I also spend a decent amount of interview coaching time fixing hypothetical answers. Someone gets asked how they would handle an underperforming employee, a difficult stakeholder, or a project that was falling behind, and they start explaining what they would do. If you’ve actually dealt with that situation before, tell them about it. A reasonable hypothetical answer shows that you know what you’re supposed to say. A real example gives the interviewer evidence that you’ve already had to make the decision. That’s a much stronger place to be, especially in later rounds when they’re comparing you against other people who also look qualified.

This is why I think interview prep needs to be more than running through a list of common questions the night before. I’ve had people give perfectly reasonable answers that still didn’t tell the employer what they were actually trying to figure out. Other times, there was a much better example sitting in their background and they never thought to use it, or the best part of the story got buried under five minutes of setup.

This is a tight market, and if you get an opportunity, don’t waste it. The resume got you far enough that someone wanted to meet you. Now the interviewer needs enough information to decide they want to hire you.

Have a topic you want me to cover in an upcoming issue? Reply or email [email protected] and tell me what you want to know!

SHAMELESS PLUG

If your job search needs a little more help, Karpiak Consulting offers resume and LinkedIn services, as well as job search strategy coaching.

A former Resume Rewrite client popped up in the comments of someone’s LinkedIn post this weekend and basically wrote the Shameless Plug for me.

They were responding to someone who was struggling with their job search and broke the process into three parts: the resume gets you to the interview, the interview gets you to the offer, and then you actually have to decide whether you want the job.

They recommended having someone objective review your resume if you aren’t getting to the interview stage, and then mentioned me:

Awesome.

But the next part of their comment is actually why I wanted to revisit this client for this interview-centric issue:

And that’s a really good example of why your job search materials and your interview strategy need to stay aligned. The resume did its job. We took a background that wasn’t generating the interviews they wanted and repositioned it in a way that started getting them through the first part of the process.

BUT…a resume can only get you in the door.

Once someone decides they want to talk to you, pay attention to what on that resume probably got their attention in the first place. If your resume emphasizes that you built something, improved a process, led a difficult project, developed a team, or solved a particular kind of problem, assume you may be asked about it.

That should become part of your interview prep. A strong resume is basically a cheat sheet for the interview. If you’ve aligned the resume to the job posting correctly, you’ve already highlighted the experience you think matters most for that role. You’ve already told the employer, “These are the parts of my background that are most relevant to what you need.”

Now prepare around those same stories. Go back through the resume you submitted and look at the examples doing the most work. If one bullet shows that you built something from scratch, be ready to explain how you approached it, what got complicated, and what changed because of your work. If another example shows leadership, be ready to talk about how you handled people, decisions, pushback, or competing priorities. If the resume says you improved a process, be ready to explain what was wrong with it in the first place and what you actually changed.

That’s the alignment I want. The job posting tells you what the company cares about. Your resume should show the best evidence that you’ve already done those things. Then your interview prep should go one level deeper and make sure you can actually talk through that evidence.

That’s also something I work through with coaching clients. We can look at the role, the resume that got the interview, and the stories sitting behind the strongest parts of that resume. Then we can figure out what the interviewer is likely to ask, where they may push for more detail, and whether your answers actually support the version of you that got them interested in the first place.

Because if the resume says one thing and the interview gives them something much weaker, that’s a problem.

If you're not getting the response you expected from your resume and want an honest assessment of why, our services can help. 

Curious what the process has been like for other clients? Check out our testimonials here!

BEST (WORST?) JOB POST

OF THE WEEK

Here’s the job that got the most people talking on my Instagram this week!

for the love of the game

If you come across an irritating job posting, email it to the newsletter or DM me on Instagram and I’ll add it to the list to post!

MEME OF THE WEEK

This meme got more reactions on my Threads than anything else I posted this week.

(FYI - it’s a gif…it makes more sense if you click on it)

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PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER QUESTION

“I tend to give a lot of context because I don’t want to leave anything important out, but sometimes I can tell I’m losing the interviewer. How do I know if I’m talking too much?”

Check out the Premium Section below for my answer! Not a Premium Subscriber? Upgrade here: www.JobseekingIsHard.com/upgrade

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• Extra Tips & Advice: Get additional recruiter-side advice beyond the free newsletter, including breakdowns of bad job search advice I see online and what actually happens in hiring.

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Jobseekers, have a great rest of your week, and good luck with those applications!

-Adam

PS!! If you're enjoying the newsletter, let people know! Forward it, post it on social, tag me, whatever...the bigger the discussion, the better! The idea is to help as many people as possible!

About Adam- Recognized as a leading voice on hiring and workplace trends, Adam has been recruiting and providing career advice since 2003, developing high-trust relationships based on honesty with companies and jobseekers. A highly sought-after speaker, he has appeared in numerous outlets, including Bloomberg News, Business Insider, LinkedIn, and CNNMoney. You can find out more about Adam's resume and coaching services here.

AFFILIATES

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