I recently interviewed a candidate for a VP of Security Operations & Platform Engineering role. He spent most of the call telling me what he couldn’t do.
He knew GCP, but not AWS. He’d built a platform team, but didn’t know much about security and audits.
Here’s what he never mentioned: he built that platform team from 0 to 20 people, and they cut the time it took to get products into production in half.
That’s the story. That’s why you hire him. And he left it on the table.
What he should have told me was what he built, what difference it made to the company, and why that makes him worth hiring. Simple, but not easy.
Progress is the goal
Every day I do something different and hard, I grow. Every day I move a search forward, build a relationship, or help someone, that’s progress.
Progress is the goal. It’s easy to get caught up chasing a number, an accomplishment, or attention. But what actually brings fulfillment at work is progress. If you’re progressing, you’re growing.
That brings me back to interviews. A lot of people can’t explain the progress they’ve made. They tell me what they do, but not how their work fits into the success of their company. They walk me through their weaknesses and skip right past their strengths.
How to tell your story
Keep it simple:
The situation you were in
The action you took
The result
If the result was bad, tell me what you learned and how you’re better now. That counts too.
Most people only share the wins and skip the struggle it took to get there. But the struggle is often the most convincing part.
On a CMO search we’re running right now, I talked with a candidate who scaled her brand up to enterprise. Along the way, she lost focus on her SMB customers, and the company actually lost revenue.
She told me that story anyway. And she still got the interview.
Why? Because it was obvious she’d been through the hard part of going from SMB to enterprise. She knew where the potholes were because she’d hit one.
Don’t tell me what you can’t do. Tell me what you built.
Hiring managers, this one’s for you
Plenty of strong candidates undersell themselves. Don’t let them. Ask:
What were you hired to do, and what did you actually do?
What will you be proudest of when you leave your current job?
Either one would have gotten me the 0-to-20 story in five minutes.
Do the work
Next time you have a quiet moment, at work or away from it, notice what you reach for first. That’s what you value.
Yes, we need breaks and downtime. But our brains and bodies are wired to take the easy route. We want to stay in bed longer. We want to skip the work.
I believe we’re here to make a difference, and that means doing the work, even the work we don’t want to do.
This week I spent a full day reorganizing that same CMO search for a big meeting because the hiring manager changed the entire scope of the role. I wish I’d known sooner. But complaining wasn’t going to do anything for me.
Now I have a new path and a list of candidates to target.
That’s progress.
P.S. Hit reply and send me your situation, action, and result in a few sentences. I’ll tell you how it would land in an interview with me.