You know your career. So why is it so hard to talk about it in an interview?
I am always surprised by how little interview preparation experienced professionals do.
Not because they do not care about the opportunity. Usually, they care enormously. They may have spent weeks researching the company, tailoring their resume, speaking with recruiters, and thinking about whether the role is right for them.
Then the interview arrives, and they assume they will be able to talk about their career because, after all, they have lived it.
That assumption causes a lot of problems.
Speaking about your work in an interview is very different from speaking about it with a colleague, a friend, or someone you already know professionally. The stakes are higher, the relationship is unfamiliar, and you know you are being assessed. If it has been five or ten years since your last interview, you may also have forgotten just how physically stressful the experience can be.
I see this with new clients all the time. They know their careers exceptionally well, but when I ask a simple question such as âTell me about yourself,â the answer becomes much longer and less clear than they expected. They start with the beginning of their career, move through every role, add context that made perfect sense inside their previous organization, and several minutes later we still have not reached the point that matters most: who they are professionally now and why that is relevant to this employer.
The problem is rarely lack of experience.
It is lack of preparation for communicating that experience under pressure.
Interviewing is a different form of speaking
Stress changes the way we communicate.
We speak faster. We lose words. We over-explain. We become more self-conscious and start listening to the running commentary inside our own heads rather than the person sitting opposite us.
I know this from personal experience too. Under enough pressure, my brain has occasionally decided that English is no longer required and Portuguese would be a perfectly sensible alternative.
That is why I do not think interview preparation should be primarily about memorizing fifty possible questions. You cannot predict every question, and heavily scripted answers can create another problem: the moment the interviewer phrases something differently, you lose your place.
I would rather prepare the material underneath the answers.
There are three things I would work on before an important interview.
First, get very clear about your professional proposition today. If somebody asks what you do, can you explain it simply, without taking them through your entire career chronology? Your answer should help the interviewer understand your level, the environments you have worked in, the kinds of problems you solve, and why that experience might matter to them.
Second, build a small bank of stories you know well. Think about the examples that demonstrate leadership, difficult decisions, stakeholder management, failure, conflict, transformation, commercial outcomes, and other areas relevant to the role. You do not need to memorize a speech. You need the details close enough to the surface that stress does not make them disappear.
Third, practice out loud. This is the part people resist most, and it is also one of the most useful. Thinking through an answer silently is not the same thing as hearing yourself say it. The first time you discover that your answer to âTell me about yourselfâ takes seven minutes should not be when three interviewers are sitting in front of you.
Your attention matters too
There is another part of interview preparation that is less obvious.
Once people become nervous, their attention often turns inward. They begin monitoring themselves.
Am I talking too much?
Did that answer make sense?
Why did I say that?
Have I already stuffed this up?
The more attention you give that internal conversation, the less attention you have available for the actual interview.
One of the things I work on with clients is moving attention back towards the people in the room and the problem they are trying to solve. Instead of asking yourself how you are performing, listen carefully to what they are asking. Think about what they need to understand. Notice where they seem interested and where they need more context.
An interview becomes much easier when it starts feeling more like a professional conversation and less like an examination.
That does not happen automatically, particularly when you really want the job. It is something you prepare for.
For you this Friday
Try one very simple exercise.
Answer this question out loud:
What do you do?
Give yourself one sentence.
Then say it again as though you were explaining it to an eight-year-old.
That second version is useful because many experienced professionals have accumulated years of corporate language without realizing how much of it has become meaningless outside their own organizations.
Words such as strategic, transformation, stakeholder engagement, and commercially focused may all be accurate. But if everybody uses them, they tell the listener very little.
Clarity is much more impressive than jargon.
Watch this weekâs video
This week's YouTube video goes much further into this problem. I break down what âTell me about yourselfâ is really asking, show the same senior finance career told two very different ways, and explain why your answer should begin with who you are now rather than where your career began.
I also cover what stress does to your voice and memory, how to build a story bank before interviews, how to redirect your attention when self-doubt kicks in, and a simple test for stripping corporate jargon out of your answers.
If interviews make you feel less articulate than you know yourself to be, I made this one for you.
Also worth reading
I also published an article on LinkedIn this week about the 60 Minutes discussion of AI in recruitment.
The conversation around AI and hiring is moving quickly, and I think experienced professionals need to understand both what employers are beginning to automate and where human judgment still matters. If you are interested in how recruitment may change over the next few years, you can read my take here:
How I help
Interview preparation is one of those areas where small changes can have a disproportionate effect.
Often, I am not teaching clients how to become better speakers. I am helping them remove the noise around what they already know so the interviewer can actually see the experienced professional sitting in front of them.
If you have an important interview coming up, or you are getting interviews but not converting them into offers, this is something we can work on together.
Time Out
I have done nothing but work, eat, and sleep all week. I tried listening to audiobooks, but I end up falling asleep or rewinding because I didn't pay attention. Zero TV watching. I can't wait for this weekend to relax at the beach, watch the latest Spider-Man movie, and start Atmosphere, the book I downloaded last week and haven't started yet. I have, however, been listening to Troye Sivan's new album at the end of every day to stay energized as I tidy up loose ends at my desk.
Until next week,
RB
