Job Description
Brian had spent five years in logistics. He could read a supply chain the way some people read a novel, quickly and fluently. His manager trusted him with vendor relationships that others fumbled.
So nobody could explain why he kept losing interviews.
Not one. Not two. Six interviews across eight months, for roles he was, on paper, more than qualified for. Each time, he would return to his desk at the current job, stare at his screen, and quietly begin to wonder whether something was wrong with him.
Here is what Brian had been doing, and what most of us do. He prepared for interviews the way he had been taught, by memorizing. He found lists of likely questions online and career coach videos online. He wrote out answers. He rehearsed them in his car, on the walk to the venue, and in the waiting room.
By the time he sat down across from the panel, the words were smooth. He could answer questions flawlessly.
And then someone asked a question that was not on the list, and everything dissolved.
The problem was not preparation. The problem was the kind of preparation. Memorizing answers is preparation for a test. People tend to forget that Interviews are not tests. They are conversations between a stranger who is trying to decide whether to bet on you, and you, who is trying to show them why they should.
What changed for Brian
A friend of his who had gone through a similar issue recommended interview coaching. Brian was sceptical at first, and he felt he should be past needing help with something like this. He went anyway.
The coach did not give him a new list of answers. They spent the first session doing something Brian had never done before: digging through his work history for stories. Real ones.
The vendor rescue. The rebuilt system. The moment with the junior colleague. The coach helped him find the structure inside each one, not just a script, but a shape. A shape he could adapt to almost any question thrown at him.
In the seventh interview, Brian was offered the role before he reached the stage. The eighth, he declined, because the seventh offer was already everything he had been looking for.
Bottom Line
Brian was not broken. He was not unlucky. He was experienced, capable, and genuinely qualified. He had never been taught how to translate all of that into the particular language that interviews demand.
Most of us have not been. We learn our jobs through doing. Nobody teaches us how to narrate ourselves under pressure, how to stay calm when a question lands unexpectedly, how to make five years of real work sound like the thing someone on the other side of the table has been waiting to hear.
Just like Brian, who was able to learn the skill, you can too. Click here to learn moreabout our interview coaching services and take charge of your career.
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