The Most Common Interview Pitfall I’ve Seen When I Interviewed Career Pivoters

I’ve interviewed many candidates who are moving into new careers. Some of them do a fantastic job of helping me understand how their experience translates. (Especially former military – they teach these skills before people leave the service.) 

I remember one interview, though, where the candidate (not former military) struggled to identify their alignment with the role we were interviewing them for. Everytime they answered a question, they would start by saying, “well I’ve never done that …” and then go off on a tangent sharing something somewhat similar that they had done. I had to keep my internal monologue quiet. It kept wanting to interrupt and say, “this bullet point on your resume? That’s the one to talk about right now…” But they didn’t understand the role I was hiring for well enough to see the alignment. 

Preparing for your interview is really an extension of the work you’ve done tailoring your resume to particular jobs. While career coaches talk a lot about STAR and CARL, they are useful only after you’ve identified the content you want to talk about. STAR and CARL are organizing structures; they help you figure out how to effectively communicate your skills. But they don’t help you actually align your skills. 

And successful interviewing really comes down to deploying the same underlying principles you’ve been using throughout your application process to tailor your resume. 

With one critical difference.

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