CAREER STRATEGY

Podcast 13 min read

How to Land the Job and Nail the Interview w/ Jule Kim

with Jule Kim

Chris Do and Jule Kim examine how selective applications and specific stories strengthen a job search.

Chris Do

Founder, The Futur™ · October 11, 2025

More applications, less evidence

Hundreds of applications can conceal a weak strategy. More effort does not automatically make a candidate easier to hire. Jule Kim, an executive coach and longtime collaborator of Chris Do who also prepares clients for interviews, has seen that disconnect firsthand.

Her perspective comes from both coaching and corporate experience, including work at Amazon. She is careful to distinguish that background from recruiting: she was not a recruiter. Her concern is the distance between what candidates have accomplished and what their applications actually communicate.

In conversation with Do, Kim describes a client named Angela who had submitted more than 250 applications over roughly six or seven months. Angela wanted a full-time role and had also experienced a layoff. The search had become emotionally exhausting without producing the opportunities she needed.

According to Kim, Angela was applying to around 20 jobs a day, sometimes more. The same resume went out repeatedly, without meaningful changes for the position or much investigation into the company. The visible output was substantial. The case for hiring her remained generic.

That distinction matters. An application count measures activity, not how clearly a candidate connects experience to an employer's needs. Sending another document can feel like progress even when the document repeats the same unresolved communication problem.

Kim's first intervention was subtraction.

Angela began looking for roles that sounded genuinely appealing, not merely available. Kim says the daily volume fell to one or two applications. That created room for the work the larger number had crowded out: reading closely, researching the employer, and adjusting the resume.

The change was not a recommendation to become less serious about finding work. It was a demand to become more serious about each opportunity. Selection gave the application a point of view.

A job application is a case for relevance, not a record of effort.

Kim reports that Angela subsequently received a job offer. That is a coaching account, not a controlled comparison or a guarantee that reducing applications produces employment. Its value is more specific: it shows what changed when an exhausted applicant stopped treating every opening as interchangeable.

Do brings the urgency behind that story into focus. People have been telling him they have gone months, sometimes much longer, without work. For someone in that position, advice to slow down can sound detached from financial reality.

Kim's argument is not that urgency is misplaced. It is that urgency can produce an application process that consumes the candidate without improving the employer's understanding. The remedy is not optimism. It is a more deliberate allocation of effort.

There are two separate problems to solve: earning a conversation and making that conversation count. A resume has to communicate relevance before an interview can reveal judgment. Neither stage benefits from asking the recipient to infer everything important.

That is the through-line of Kim's approach. Candidates do not necessarily need more impressive experience. They need to stop making their existing experience so difficult to recognize.

The resume has a reading problem

For creative applicants, the instinct to stand out often begins with the document itself. Photos, columns, graphics, and watermarks can make a resume feel distinctive. Kim asks whether those choices help its contents survive the application process.

She warns that applicant tracking systems can extract text from uploaded files, creating problems when a complex layout is converted into a reading order. Her recommendation is straightforward: a simple, single-column resume without decorative graphics.

The practical point does not require treating every hiring system as identical. Kim's advice is a precaution against avoidable ambiguity. A document designed to communicate professional experience should not depend on a particular layout being interpreted perfectly.

The same principle applies to language. Kim recommends using the terminology of the job description when it accurately describes the candidate's experience. Her example contrasts detail-oriented with meticulous: similar meanings, but different words for a system or reader searching for a particular expression.

This is her argument for alignment, not permission to stuff a resume with unsupported phrases. Matching an employer's vocabulary is useful only when the work underneath it remains true. Otherwise, the application creates a claim the candidate cannot defend.

Kim is equally skeptical of corporate language that inflates simple responsibilities. A person who interviewed candidates should be able to say so plainly. Adding coordination, management, and process terminology does not automatically make the work more substantial.

The document should remain understandable when its author has to explain it aloud.

Her suggested architecture is deliberately restrained:

Name and contact information, with a city rather than a full address if preferred.
A short summary describing experience, strengths, and the work that interests the candidate.
Education placed prominently when it carries particular relevance or recognition.
Work experience that supports the claims made elsewhere in the document.

The summary is especially vulnerable to overstatement. Kim describes resumes that announce major achievements at the top but offer no corresponding evidence in the employment history. The reader is asked to accept the conclusion without seeing its basis.

A claim about increasing traffic belongs beside the work that produced the increase. A claim about solving problems needs an identifiable problem and a credible contribution. The summary should direct attention toward evidence, not substitute for it.

Kim resists treating one or two pages as an absolute rule. She says her own resume has sometimes reached four pages. But her more transferable recommendation is editorial: give relevant experience room and compress older or less relevant roles into a few useful lines.

Length is not a license to preserve everything.

A long career creates a selection problem, not an obligation to reproduce every responsibility. The application should foreground accomplishments that matter to this role, while retaining enough employment history to make the candidate's background coherent.

The distinction recalls the communication problem named in Know your audience: the recipient's needs determine what deserves emphasis. Here, that means resisting the urge to make the resume an exhaustive self-portrait.

The strongest version is selective without becoming misleading. It gives the reader enough information to understand the fit, then leaves the candidate ready to substantiate every line.

The employer is also being evaluated

Once a candidate reaches the interview, the pressure changes. Silence has become attention. The temptation is to spend that attention proving worth at any cost, adopting whatever personality or language seems most likely to secure approval.

Kim challenges the premise. The employer is evaluating a candidate, but the candidate is also evaluating an employer. A role represents a substantial commitment of working life, not simply a successful escape from the application process.

That distinction broadens the research beyond the job description. Kim suggests contacting shared connections on LinkedIn to understand what working at a company is actually like. The useful information is often the experience people do not put into public-facing descriptions.

The company has a culture in practice, not just a culture in its recruiting language.

Kim wants candidates to consider the people they would work with, the personalities they would encounter, and whether the environment suits them. This is not a demand for perfect certainty. It is an insistence that the applicant remain a decision-maker.

That question sits beside the broader employment choices suggested by Staff, Freelance or Entrepreneur? The immediate task is landing a role; the larger task is choosing a working arrangement worth inhabiting.

In Kim's account, interviewers are also looking beyond baseline competence. Credentials, skills, and experience establish whether the person can plausibly do the work. The conversation then tests those claims and explores how that person would function inside an existing team.

She describes several considerations:

Whether the candidate can demonstrate the abilities listed on the resume.
How the candidate would work with the people already on the team.
Whether the candidate's priorities align with the company's stated principles.
What distinguishes the person from another similarly qualified applicant.

This is where personality enters, but not as an invitation to perform a manufactured version of authenticity. Kim suggests that hobbies, languages, volunteering, and other relevant personal details can make an applicant more recognizable as a person.

She illustrates the point with another client, a finalist for a role at an unnamed venture capital firm. He had been asked to deliver a presentation. When he showed Kim the deck, she thought it concealed the qualities that made him compelling.

The presentation demonstrated an effort to fit an imagined corporate expectation. It did not express the client's capacity to entertain or make material interesting. Kim pushed him to rebuild it around those strengths rather than suppress them.

According to her account, he reworked the presentation within 24 hours and received an offer shortly after presenting. She says the recruiter later described the competing candidate's presentation as resembling the client's original, more conventional version.

The story does not establish that unconventional presentations always win. It makes a narrower point about indistinguishability. A candidate can meet the assignment while removing the very qualities that would help an employer understand why this person belongs in the role.

Competence makes a candidate plausible. Specificity makes that candidate visible.

A result without reasoning is incomplete

The same disappearance happens when candidates describe their achievements. They name a task, report a result, and leave out the thinking that connected the two. The work sounds simpler than it was because the explanation has removed the difficult part.

Kim describes a client who had improved an invoicing process. In its original telling, the achievement amounted to automating some work and reducing the time required. The outcome sounded useful, but the candidate's judgment remained mostly invisible.

The underlying situation was much richer. Vendors were waiting weeks to receive payment. Kim says the client investigated the workflow and discovered an entirely manual process involving several people and checks in Excel spreadsheets.

The candidate did not simply encounter an obvious automation task. She spoke with the teams, followed the invoice through the system, and identified how the handoffs were creating delay. Those details revealed the work behind the eventual fix.

After implementing automations and streamlining the process, the client reduced payment time from roughly eight weeks to two or three, according to Kim. Some manual steps remained. The achievement was not total automation; it was a substantial improvement grounded in an understanding of the actual workflow.

That distinction protects both credibility and meaning.

Kim's objection to the familiar STAR structure, situation, task, action, result, comes from this concern. She argues that candidates can use it to describe assignments and outcomes without explaining how they investigated a challenge or reached a decision.

That is a criticism of what an answer leaves out, not evidence that every STAR answer must be shallow. Kim's preferred approach makes the missing reasoning explicit. The interviewer should be able to follow the candidate's thinking rather than merely receive a polished conclusion.

Do applies the same standard to a smaller claim. When Kim offers a generic example about helping and mentoring people, he finds it unconvincing because it supplies no actual instance. His response is blunt: “Give me a detail.”

An adjective cannot do the work of an example.

Team player, proactive, and helpful can all describe valuable qualities. They can also mean almost nothing when detached from a person, a situation, and a change. Do is not asking for more impressive vocabulary. He is asking for something that happened.

Kim demonstrates the difference by describing her interest in mentoring Asian American women. She connects that work to her experience as a Korean American who grew up in Alabama and often felt out of place. The motivation becomes specific rather than generically benevolent.

She then describes observed communication habits, an action plan, and feedback indicating greater confidence. The point is not to turn personal identity into a universal explanation. It is to show how a broad claim about helping others becomes an account of attention and intervention.

The relevance to Storytelling Is A Superpower is direct: the story makes the contribution understandable. In an interview, narrative is not decoration added after the evidence. It is the structure that allows the evidence to mean something.

The candidate's responsibility is therefore double. Preserve the truth of the work, and explain it well enough that its value does not disappear.

Make the hidden work visible

Kim turns that responsibility into a five-part structure. It asks the candidate to identify not only what happened but what was learned along the way. The difference is especially important for people whose best work involves diagnosis, coordination, or improvements that become invisible once they succeed.

Her sequence is problem, investigation, realization, action, and impact. Each stage supplies a different kind of evidence, and each prevents the candidate from jumping too quickly to a claim of success.

Problem: Establish the challenge facing the company, team, customer, or candidate.
Investigation: Explain the research, questions, and examination used to understand the challenge.
Realization: Identify what the investigation revealed and why that finding mattered.
Action: Describe what the candidate did in response to that understanding.
Impact: Show what changed for the business, team, customer, or individual.

The invoicing example demonstrates why investigation and realization deserve separate attention. Asking teams how an invoice moves through their system is investigative work. Discovering that multiple manual handoffs are driving the delay is a realization.

Automation is then an action with a reason, not a fashionable tool applied to an unspecified problem. Faster payment becomes an impact connected to a traceable intervention. The account gives an interviewer several places to test the candidate's understanding.

This does not require every answer to become a lengthy case study. Kim cautions that irrelevant detail can cause the listener to disengage. Specificity is not the same as exhaustiveness; useful detail explains the difficulty, the decision, or the consequence.

A description of every meeting would not necessarily strengthen the invoicing story. A clear account of the manual checks does. The editing test is whether the detail helps the listener understand why the candidate's contribution mattered.

Impact introduces another difficulty: candidates do not always have access to the numbers. Kim rejects the idea that the solution is to invent impressive metrics or abandon the result entirely. She recommends building the habit of collecting evidence while the work is still accessible.

After a significant project, the candidate can record a few notes and ask the relevant project, product, or program manager what changed. The request is not for a flattering endorsement. It is for information that connects the work to an outcome.

Kim identifies several useful forms of evidence:

Time saved after a process changed.
Costs reduced through a specific intervention.
Traffic or revenue associated with a project's results.
A qualitative success story when numerical evidence is unavailable.

The final category matters. A candidate without revenue data still has a responsibility to describe impact, but the evidence can take another form. Feedback, an identifiable improvement, or a concrete case study can be more honest than a number with no defensible basis.

Kim's mentoring example follows that route. Reports from managers and family members describe changes in confidence and presence. Those observations do not become financial metrics simply because a resume would look more impressive with percentages.

Preparing evidence also changes the meaning of self-promotion. The candidate is not announcing exceptionalism and hoping the interviewer agrees. The candidate is explaining a contribution and allowing its significance to be examined.

The framework makes room for confidence without requiring exaggeration. Its discipline is simple: show the problem, show the thinking, and show the change.

Rehearsal without a script

Even a strong story can collapse when someone has never tried to tell it aloud. Kim sees candidates attempting to recall the facts, organize the sequence, manage their nerves, and judge the listener's reaction at the same time. Preparation reduces the number of problems competing for attention.

Her first recommendation is to write answers down. She then clarifies what that means: not a memorized speech, but an outline that helps the candidate remember the structure and the essential details.

Practice the story, not a performance of the script.

The distinction matters because an interview is still a conversation. A candidate who knows only a fixed paragraph has prepared one delivery. A candidate who understands the underlying experience can explain the same work in response to different questions.

Kim recommends practicing common behavioral prompts. Examples include disagreement with a manager and a project that missed its deadline. These questions ask for evidence of behavior under pressure, not a declaration that the candidate always communicates well or always delivers.

The outline should follow her five parts. A few bullets establish the challenge, the inquiry, the insight, the response, and the outcome. Speaking from those notes reveals where the story is vague, where it wanders, and where an important connection is missing.

Then comes the uncomfortable part: hearing oneself describe an accomplishment.

Kim notes that many people are not accustomed to speaking about their own work in a way that highlights their contribution. Cultural expectations and concerns about appearing arrogant can make even accurate accounts feel excessive. The discomfort is real, but it does not make the evidence inappropriate.

An interview requires the candidate to supply information the interviewer does not already possess. Withholding a meaningful contribution out of embarrassment does not demonstrate humility to someone who has no other way to know it happened.

That tension gives the practice a second purpose. It is not merely improving sentence order. It is making a truthful account of competence feel familiar enough to deliver without apology or inflated language.

The relationship between preparation and self-belief also places this conversation beside Where Do You Draw Confidence From? Here, the practical work is concrete: collect the evidence, organize it, and rehearse saying it.

Do provides a useful contrast. His own working life has largely developed outside the corporate application process Kim describes. Rather than pretend to share her experience, he acknowledges the difference. The exchange keeps the advice grounded in the particular demands of employment interviews.

Kim compares an unprepared interview to learning to fly while already flying. The point is not that every question can be anticipated. It is that familiarity with the candidate's own history should not be the surprise task added to an already demanding conversation.

The next application therefore has a clear standard. The role should warrant attention. The resume should make a defensible case. The interview stories should reveal decisions, not merely duties.

A useful final rehearsal is one ordinary question about one real project. If the answer cannot explain what was discovered, what changed, and why it mattered, another adjective will not fix it.

The work does not speak for itself. The candidate has to make it heard.

TRANSCRIPT

I've seen in my DMs in the last couple of months, so many different people say, I haven't worked in a year, six months. I haven't worked in two years. Something's going on. So we know it's really, really hard to get the opportunity where there's a job opening and you think you're ideal fit for it and no one calls you. Or you actually get the call and you get the interview, but you're so out of practice, you don't even know what to say. So sometimes you go foobar on the whole thing. So Jewel's here, Jewel Kim, who's a longtime collaborator of ours on the pod and elsewhere. She's a coach and she's going to share some stories about how she's helped someone who hasn't been able to get any opportunities to land it. So we're talking about how to land the job interview and how to get it in the first place so you stop bombing. Jewel, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chris. Always fun to do this with you. Thanks for having me. Okay, why don't you take us through what you plan on talking about? So today we're going to be talking about some of the people that I've been coaching over the past couple of years. Now, I'm an executive coach. Many of you may know this, but what I don't widely advertise as much is the fact that I literally coach people and prepare people for their interviews. So if you have a job interview lined up, or even if you're getting ready to get back on the job market and you want help fixing your resume, you want help positioning yourself correctly, there is a certain approach to this entire process that I think 99 % of you are just not aware of. So you go into it and you just kind of slap together your resume. Maybe you stress for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. You don't actually put in the work to fix your resume the way that you want, nor do you understand even basic things like how your resume is ingested into the systems for most companies. What ends up happening is that your resume ends up never being seen by anybody human because it's already been filtered out by the systems that these companies are using, especially if they're going through systems like Indeed or the other big job tools. So we are going to cover some of just the easy lift, like very low hanging fruit that you can fix today just to make sure that your resume at least gets through that first cut and get some human eyeballs on it which is then how you get a chance at landing an interview or at least a phone screen. So if you don't already know this, how most companies will handle this entire process when they're looking for somebody to fill a position is they'll put out a job posting, they'll get flooded with often hundreds if not thousands of resumes. The automatic system, whether it's AI or whatever software they're using will filter out because there's no way anybody has time to look at this. And then they'll end up with some small pile of resumes to actually vet by a human, usually their HR person or the hiring manager. And then from that point on, if your resume didn't make that first cut of just getting past the automated system, then that might be why you never get a call. So first is going to be the phone screen. There may be a follow -up phone screen and then usually a job interview, which these days is often virtual. Now, the other part that we'll be covering today is once you do get the golden ticket, And then you're going to be the next thing. of resumes to actually vet by a human, usually their HR person or the hiring manager. And then from that point on, if your resume didn't make that first cut of just getting past the automated system, then that might be why you never get a call. So first is going to be the phone screen. There may be a follow -up phone screen, and then usually a job interview, which these days is often virtual. Now, the other part that we'll be covering today is once you do get the golden ticket to get the interview, what do you do? How do you prepare for this? What are the kind of things you need to say? And how do you present yourself while remaining in integrity and not being a liar? So that's what we're going to cover. And I have somebody who I've been coaching just over the last month and a half who literally landed a job offer last week, which was amazing. So happy for her. So let's get right into it since I teed it up. And first, I'm going to share the story of my client, Angela. She told me that she has literally applied to 250 plus applications. It may be even closer to 300 over the past six, seven months. And I've been coaching her for the past year, not on interviews, but on other various things, you know, job and life type of issues. But she recently wanted to move more into a full time role. And at the same time, she got laid off, which, as you know, can be very tough on you mentally and emotionally. So what ended up happening is she had been applying for a while. I told her there are certain techniques that you really need to activate and apply to this process if you want a chance in hell to even get seen by somebody who's human. I know that whenever I coach somebody new on any of this process, it can often feel like an avalanche. It's very overwhelming. And what a lot of people or most people will generally do is they'll hear it and then it'll feel like too much work. So they won't implement it right away, which is totally natural. Now, I think she went on for a couple of months without getting any interviews. And then she sort of hit rock bottom. She was super discouraged, which I think we've all been there. And then she finally reaches the point where she's like, I'm like, I have to find a job. Like things are getting a little bit desperate and I'm stressed all the time because I don't have a job and I really need one. And so this is where I say, OK, so are you ready to get down to it? Because I promise you, I have the answers. I promise you, your results will change if you just do even half of the stuff that I'm about to tell you. And she says, yes, that was roughly two months ago or maybe less. Now, since then, some of the major things that I had her stop doing was the spring and praying approach. So as the name suggests, this is where you take your resume and you just blast it across as many job applications as possible. So she was applying to probably 20 jobs a day. Easy. Yeah, if not more. And this is where you take your resume, you don't make any changes to it, and you're literally just hitting apply, apply, apply and just sending email, sending emails, submitting your resume through the system, maybe through LinkedIn, whatever that platform is. There's no cover letter. There's no even really looking at the job description. There's no research on the companies or the jobs to see if you would remotely want this job if they were to call you for an interview, right? You're just doing it like a mass market approach. So that was the first thing I told her. She had to stop doing because... apply, apply, and just sending email. Sending emails, submitting your resume through the system, maybe through LinkedIn, whatever that platform is. There's no cover letter. There's no even really looking at the job description. There's no research on the companies or the jobs to see if you would remotely want this job if they were to call you for an interview, right? You're just doing it like a mass market approach. So that was the first thing I told her. She had to stop doing because what most people do not know, and this is my time having worked at Amazon, I was not a recruiter, but the thing that is not very commonly known is that at Amazon or big companies like Amazon, such as Microsoft, whenever you go in for a job interview, you are probably going to face what's called a loop, an interview loop. This means you will be interviewed from anywhere by, let's say, two to four people. And in some cases, it may be even five to six, depending on how senior the role is. So you're going to face a loop. And because Amazon takes this hiring practices very seriously, in order for you as an Amazon employee to be even involved in that job interview loop to interview potential candidates, you yourself have to take an interview class on how to interview. So Amazon has this principle called raising the bar. And in theory, the principle is that every person that they bring on be at least 50 % better than the people who are already in the role today. So if you think about that and you say, okay, so maybe not every company out there is just like Amazon, but you're, you're thinking of this line in the sand and you're like, okay, how do I demonstrate that I'm better than at least half of the people who are already in the role? This is now, as I said, Amazon makes everybody who's, who's involved in the interview process, take this class on how to interview. It's very illuminating. And a lot of companies like Amazon of that similar size will handle things roughly in a similar way. So I'm talking meta, Google, Microsoft, it probably even slightly smaller companies, maybe like Nintendo, et cetera. So if you want to be in the tech world, these things kind of follow a similar process. Now, maybe some companies, you don't face an interview loop of one person back to back. Sometimes you'll face what feels like a firing squad, which can be a little uncomfortable. So whatever the case, I'm going to teach you some frameworks on how to handle this. And it's not going to be about many memorizing a script. Okay. So when you apply to a job, I had Angela immediately dial down. And so she was going to actually start looking at job descriptions and only apply to job descriptions that felt exciting to her, something really positive, not just, you know, I'm going to apply to whatever is out there as a warm body, as a human who is alive. I'm only going to look at the companies that I really want to work for. And the job actually sounds like something, not just that I can do, but something that I want to do. So this immediately dialed down her number of applications to maybe one or two a day. And now this becomes much more manageable for the next part of the process, which I'm about to tell you. When you look at the job description, and because so many of these systems are now handling this in an automated filter, you have to use some of the same language you see on the job description and put that into your resume. So if the job description says we are looking for somebody who's detail oriented, your resume should say you are detail oriented, not that you are meticulous, because guess what? or two a day. And now this becomes much more manageable for the next part of the process, which I'm about to tell you. When you look at the job description, and because so many of these systems are now handling this in an automated filter, you have to use some of the same language you see on the job description and put that into your resume. So if the job description says we are looking for somebody who's detail -oriented, your resume should say you are detail -oriented, not that you are meticulous, because guess what? The automated system is probably not going to say, hey, meticulous means the same thing as detail -oriented. If you're sitting there thinking, well, this sounds stupid, I kind of agree. But again, you have to think of this more like an SEO approach. The automated system will be doing a literal word check between job description and all the thousands of resumes coming in, and that is the first cut. Even before automated systems were in place, I used to date somebody who was a recruiter for multiple companies, including Amazon. And he was applying the same approach, even as a human. He would scan multiple resumes. And in order to get through the thousands of resumes he had to look at per day, he was just scanning. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating when I say he only spent about three seconds on any person's resume because he was just scanning for certain keywords on there. And if you did not have those keywords, your resume went into the trash. So that's going to be probably the most intensive part of your resume lift, is to make sure you look at the resume, you understand what they're looking for, what they're asking for, and then you start to tailor your resume to include some of those keywords. Now, the second part of this process that most people find potentially even more difficult is to rewrite each of your resume bullet points so that it actually makes sense. Now, what do I mean by that? Many people out there will think I have to speak corporate. I have to insert corporate lingo jargon into my resume, and somehow that's what's going to get me noticed. I promise you, it is not. And somehow, if you make it through the first round filter, and you get an interview, you're going to crash and burn if somebody actually asks you, what do these bullet points mean? And if you've written it in a manner where you're using weird words, you're putting bullet points on there that kind of use a lot of words, but don't really say much, you're going to get caught. It's never a good look. So do not do that. So make sure that your bullet points are just stating things like how you would normally say things to a real life person, your friend even. So if your job was to interview candidates, and look for a good fit, then just say that. Don't say something crazy, like managed process incoming, you know, candidates, and handled automated systems, and coordinated projects between multiple teams, and blah, blah, blah. So try not to insert extra words, or things, and especially do not lie. So I know that a lot of people will potentially exaggerate a little bit of what they do. Try not to do that, like just be super plain, super direct. The next part that I'm going to address, which is very easy, is just have a simple one column resume. And I'm saying this especially because most of your audience tend to be creatives. These are people who are constantly looking to stand out, just like you accessorize your outfits with all these embellishments. I've seen designers especially. will potentially exaggerate a little bit of what they do. Try not to do that, like just be super plain, super direct. The next part that I'm going to address, which is very easy, is just have a simple one column resume. And I'm saying this especially because most of your audience tend to be creatives. These are people who are constantly looking to stand out, just like you accessorize your outfits with all these embellishments. I've seen designers especially do this with their resume, meaning they put their photos on there, they put graphics, they put background watermarks, they do three column resumes. And I'm telling you, if you do that, you are already killing your chances of making it through the first round, the filter, like you've already killed it, probably by more than 50%. What happens is in the ATS, which is the applicant tracking system, you upload your resume. And then that system will often take out, it will extract a text from your resume, instead of just passing on the file as is alone. When it extracts the text from your resume, you having two columns, three columns will really F up that ingestion process a lot of the times. So maybe something that was three bullet points across the page in separate three columns will end up looking like fragments, because now it's smashed them all together. So do not do this. If you put in any graphics, take them out. Your resume should be ultra simple, your name, your contact information, your phone number, your email address, and maybe just say what city you live in if you're paranoid about your address. And then just go from there. Have a summary at the top of the page, basically who you are, how many years of experience, what kind of things excite you, what you're really good at. That should be no more than four lines, maybe even just three. You move into your work experience. Now, this is where it's a toss up. If you went to a prestigious school, for myself, I consider Berkeley to be fairly prestigious. For people in Chris's audience, if you went to Art Center, that's very similar, very prestigious in your industry. For people who are in the computer science fields, for example, my husband, he went to the University of Waterloo in Canada, very prestigious as well. So you know the status of where you went to school. If you went to a very good school, something that holds like a strong brand and status, then it may make sense for you to list education first, right? Just put the school you went to in your major. If you had any honors or awards during that time that are relevant to the job description that you are applying for, then maybe put those in there too, but just keep it very light. Okay. So, so far we have the summary, we have your, your education, if it makes sense to pull that forward first, and then we're going to get into your work experience. Now, one of the mistakes that I've heard recruiters complain about multiple times is that people will make claims to things in their summary. They'll say, I've done this, this, this, this, you know, I've achieved, I've moved or I've like three X income at all of my companies. But then in the actual work experience, there is no evidence to back that up. You kind of look like a fraud. And I have literally had recruiters tell me that they hate seeing resumes like that because they don't believe these people. So you need to make sure that whatever you're putting on your resume is backed up by evidence as best you can. So if you're going to make a claim saying that you are a problem solver and you have three X traffic to multiple sites, you know, at multiple companies, then your work experience sections for those companies need to actually show that and how you did that. fraud. And I have literally had recruiters tell me that they hate seeing resumes like that because they don't believe these people. So you need to make sure that whatever you're putting on your resume is backed up by evidence as best you can. So if you're going to make a claim saying that you are a problem solver and you have 3x traffic to multiple sites, you know, at multiple companies, then your work experience sections for those companies need to actually show that and how you did that. Now, lastly, because we are in the age of the personal brand and people wanting to know who you are as a person, what really moves you and motivates you, you'll also want to think about including certain things that aren't necessarily professional, but things that just show who you are as a person, what kind of hobbies you have, do you speak any extra languages, maybe you have skills in certain programs. So not just stuff like Word, but if you're a designer, maybe the, I would expect the baseline to be you're a very skilled in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and whatever else is out there. But perhaps you can include stuff like you're also experienced with Gen AI in Photoshop, you're experienced with MidJourney, you're experienced with Dolly. Where have you traveled? Do you volunteer at places? Who are the types of people that you like to help? Or even are you a crazy cat lady like I am? Any of those things, something that helps bring a little bit of quirk could make the difference. So keep in mind that when someone is looking to hire, and they're usually quite desperate because from everything I've seen at most companies, they tend to be reactive about the process, meaning they only hire when there are like 10 fires to put out. Like they actually should have hired maybe three months ago or even six months ago, a year ago, but they've waited until it's pedal to the metal and things are so desperate and the company is just crumbling around them and now they're hiring. So they'll tend to be quite desperate. And they'll be looking for almost like anybody to fit the job. They're going to get inundated with a ton of applications, a ton of resumes, people with great experience. And so the first level filter that everybody is going into this is credentials, skills and experience. Now those three things are not that hard to meet the bar on. I know that sounds a little bit ridiculous if you're a but I promise you as you even achieve five years into your career, you'll find that it's not your skills and experience that really set you apart. It'll be your personality. So the first level filter that people are looking for once they get people into the interview process is, can this person do the job? And if you've made it all the way to the interview, they've already mostly ticked that box. They've already decided this probably, this person can probably do the job. So when you get to the interview, they'll now be vetting a little bit more deeply. Can you actually do the job? Do you actually do the things that you say you can do on your resume, which is where some testing might come in, but then they'll be looking at, will this person be a good fit in our team that already exists? Will this person be a good fit for our company culture? Do they align with our company's principles and values? What is it about this person that sets them apart from this other person? And I have a story here. I helped one of my other clients which is where some testing might come in. But then they'll be looking at, will this person be a good fit in our team that already exists? Will this person be a good fit for our company culture? Do they align with our company's principles and values? What is it about this person that sets them apart from this other person? And I have a story here. I helped one of my other clients earlier this year land the job. It was at one of the most famous VC companies. I won't name which one. And the role was essentially between him and one other person. He wanted me to look over the slide deck that he had been given an assignment to do. So he had the initial phone screens, initial short interviews, and then they wanted to bring him on to do an actual presentation. So he wanted me to look at it. I said, sure. I look at the presentation and I said, what the F is this? I could just fall asleep during this. Your personality, the thing that really makes you special, your special sauce, is beyond you just doing the job. This slide deck says that you're just trying to fit yourself into the box that you think they want from you. But I promise you this is not going to fly. I'm expecting you to really showcase your quirkiness and make this interesting. Now, to his credit, he actually reworked the entire presentation over the next 24 hours. He went and watched the movie I told him to watch. And then he came away and he radically, like the presentation he ended up with, I don't think had even a single slide in common with the first thing he showed me. He went and did the presentation. He knocked it out of the park. They gave him the offer, I think, within three days. Not only that, the recruiter told him that the other candidate went into the presentation with exactly the kind of presentation he first showed me. And the feedback was, it was like this. The other candidate and this was him way up here. Because he leveraged his ability to entertain and just have fun with this. I'm listening to the stories. There's a bunch of questions and comments in the live stream about how can you fit all your experience in a two -page resume while adding all your quirky, weird hobbies and interests open you up for scams. I don't know why there are scams here. I don't know what's going on. Like you're applying for a job. How do they scam you? Give you the job? I don't know, but that's a question. It's a scam if you apply to a job that doesn't exist in the first place. So it's not really about your resume at that point. Yeah. I do see those comments, so I'm going to address those. So the question of how long does the CV have to be? How do you deal with a CV that has a lot of experience and 15 years of experience? So basically the same question. I'm going to give you a secret. My resume at times has been four pages long. I know that directly contradicts a lot of the advice out there that says you should only have a one -page or two -page resume. I don't believe that. And I've seen other people also say that doesn't really matter to them. The only people that that matters to is when the company is only using human recruiters to vet resumes. So when you run into that situation, they don't have any filter in place, or maybe even with a filter, they're still getting hundreds of applications. That's when you'll have somebody who looks at a resume and be like, this is too bleeping long. I'm moving on. one page or two page resume. I don't believe that. And I've seen other people also say that doesn't really matter to them. The only people that that matters to is when the company is only using human recruiters to vet resumes. So when you run into that situation, they don't have any filter in place, or maybe even with a filter, they're still getting hundreds of applications. That's when you'll have somebody who looks at a resume and be like, this is too bleeping long. I'm moving on. If that's the company you're applying to is probably not a fit anyway. I'm just going to lay it out there. I have seen many people apply with just one page. And unless there are like they were a freaking superstar, they moved billions of dollars in revenue, they fixed things that were broken for 10 years. If you don't have like amazing, huge projects and things to showcase that you're a superstar, having a one page resume, probably not going to help you. So if you have 15 years of experience, the first thing I would say is this. You need to do a filtering process within your own experience. What I mean by that is, if you have had job positions that weren't as relevant to the job you're applying to now, just trim those down. Those become just two lines, three lines at most, just to show that you were employed, but that it's not something to really pay attention to. And when you trim it down to just two to three lines, you want to save those two to three lines for your most impactful results you achieved in those positions. If there's nothing that you can say that was really special, then just go with your best guess. Just pick out the things that you think would be most notable. And as always, default to what's most relevant with this job description. So notice I said earlier, you really need to tailor your resume to the job description. So if I apply to two jobs today, my resume for those two jobs should not look the same. Will this take some work on my part? Yes. But I promise you, this is what's going to get you the results. In my history before I started my business, and I was employed like most of the world. Whenever I went through these cycles of having to look for a job, whether I was unemployed, or I was already employed and looking for a job, I was applying to jobs. At most, I only ever applied to five to six jobs total within that period, whether we're talking six months or even a year. And that is because I was ultra selective in the jobs that I was evaluating. So one mindset shift you want to really pick up here is many people, many candidates go into the interview feeling like they have to prove themselves. The mindset shift is the employer has also prove themselves to you. They are not just evaluating you to see whether you are a fit. You are also evaluating them to see if they're a fit for you. And does it make sense for you to spend the next year of your full time working life with them or the next two years? So you have to really think about that. What kind of personalities, what kind of people are at this company? If you have network connections in common on LinkedIn, I would contact those people and just be like, hey, can I get the download on what it's like to actually work there? What do the people you know say about this company? The stuff that they won't say in public. Do that research. I've seen people apply to some of the jobs that I put out there with six pages. Now, did I ding that person? Yes, kind of personalities, what kind of people are at this company? If you have network connections in common on LinkedIn, I would contact those people and just be like, hey, can I get the download on what it's like to actually work there? What do the people you know say about this company? The stuff that they won't say in public. Do that research. I've seen people apply to some of the jobs that I put out there with six pages. Now, did I ding that person? Yes, but it wasn't anything to do with it being six pages long is because none of the experience she listed was relevant. And she also had weird formatting, as in, I think she had three lines in between each line. So then it made me question, do you even know your job as an editor if this is the resume you're applying to? So in my past life, I was a content manager, a content strategist, a product manager, and an editor. If you apply to certain types of roles, you know, as a writer or an editor, then I'm going to expect your resume to look better than if you're applying to something like McDonald's. No shade on people working at McDonald's. Chris, you're like, stop talking, Jewel. No shade whatsoever, Jewel. You get what I mean. If you're applying for a job digging ditches, then I'm going to expect your ditch digging technique to be good. Your resume doesn't have to look amazing to me. I'm going to ask you a question. Have you ever applied to work at a fast food place? I have not, but I have applied to work at retail. So you don't know what you're talking about. I have relevant job experience here. Oh yeah. Which fast food? For Arby's. And you get a form. You just fill out the form. There's no resume. They don't expect a CV. It'd be overkill for McDonald's job. Oh my God. But you know, this is 30 plus years ago, so they might've changed everything. Well, I don't know. Even 20 plus years ago, I applied for a job at Old Navy and I had to turn in a resume plus fill in the form thing that you're talking about. Oh, maybe that was a higher skilled job. Who knows? You browbeating me right now? Higher skill. Do my brows look beating? Well, the jobs that I've applied for require a resume, Chris. So sorry about your low labor, non -skilled work. I got you. Well, what can I say? Retail, okay? Retail. Yeah, I didn't really work retail. It wasn't good enough. I have worked at all kinds of places. So there was Old Navy. There was Blockbuster. I haven't done fast food or the restaurant industry, although I've always kind of wanted to just to see if I'd be any decent at it. Yeah. But most of my experience obviously comes from corporate jobs. I worked as a, what do you call it? The front desk in the dorms in college. Yeah. And I've also worked as a private tutor. So you have what we call high quality jobs, where I've had just stock boy, French fry boy, and something else. I can't remember this. Another stock boy in the supermarket. So that's it. I think I've had practice, which people would say the same for you. And look at where we are today. Look at where we are. I went from the bottom to the top and nothing in the middle. Yeah. So maybe that's really the path to follow people. Do it like Chris. So we have a question. What movie did you ask that person to watch? You kind of teased them and then you just dropped it and walked away. People are asking. I knew you were going to ask me that. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was a basketball movie. So I will get back to you. I have to check my text history. Basketball Diaries? No. White Man Can't Jump? No, it's not an older. Bottom to the top and nothing in the middle. Yeah. So maybe that's really the path to follow people. Do it like Chris. So we have a question. What movie did you ask that person to watch? You kind of teased them and then you just dropped it and walked away. People are asking. I knew you were going to ask me that. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was a basketball movie. So I will get back to you. I have to check my text history. Basketball Diaries? No. White Man Can't Jump? No, it's not an older one. It's somewhat newer. It's the movie that showcases LeBron as like a young guy in high school. Oh, okay. Don't know. Yeah. So if you find the movie that shows not only LeBron, but his besties he played basketball with in high school. Yeah, that's the movie I'm talking about. The reason why I told him to watch this movie was because of how the story was set up. And I think there was another movie I told him to watch. It was, it might have been the one that talks about how, is it Nike? That came to the forefront for shoes? There was a movie a couple of years ago. Yeah. So there's something about Bill... It's called Air. Is it that one? Okay. Yeah, with Matt Damon. Is that the one you're talking about where they negotiate to deal with Michael Jordan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ben Affleck's in that one too, right? I think so. Yeah. So also that movie. I told him to watch both of those movies. Now, that's actually a decent segue for this next part. As we move into interview mistakes. The reason why I told my clients to really watch those movies is because people do not understand that storytelling is really king in an interview. The people who just kind of come off average or lower than average in any interview is because they approach the interview process as something where they talk about their job history as almost like a to -do list. They were at this job and they just did some stuff. And this is why I really hate the STAR method that is all over the place out there. If you have not heard of the STAR method, it's the framework that tells you to approach every answer to an interview question as, here's the situation, here's the task, here's the action I did, and here's the result. My problem with that is that interviewers, whether they know it or not, are looking to see how you think. How do you solve problems? How do you navigate challenges? My issue with the STAR method, that framework, is that it doesn't really set you up for that. It just has you saying, well, here's some stuff that happened, and then here's what I was told to do, and here's what I did, and then here's what happened. It does not set you up to look like a superstar. So, instead of the STAR method, what I recommend is my framework, and it's five steps. And I want you to write this down if you're taking notes. The framework starts with P, which is, what is the problem? What was the problem that your company was facing, or that you were facing, your team was facing, the customer was facing? What was the problem? The next part of the framework is I, which stands for investigation. So, once you saw this was the challenge or the problem, what research did you do? What did you start to study? What did you start looking into? What was the work you put into to try and understand this problem, and what was causing it? The next part is R, which is realization. As a result of your findings, what did you realize? The next part is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R, which is R which stands for investigation. So once you saw this was the challenge or the problem, what research did you do? What did you start to study? What did you start looking into? What was the work you put into to try and understand this problem and what was causing it? The next part is R, which is realization. As a result of your findings, what did you realize? So for example, one of my clients, she was telling me the story of how she changed some processes and she automated some stuff and then she ended up saving the company, the team, something like 70 % of the time. So proposals or invoices were taking months to be paid out, which of course would make vendors really angry. They were cranky. She looked into this and then she, in her words, she just automated some stuff and cut down the invoice time down by 70%, okay? So stuff that used to take like seven, eight weeks to pay out turned into two weeks, three weeks. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You are not doing this story justice. So she was missing the investigation and the realization part. So what happened to here is like, as she reworked this story, she went to those teams and she literally asked them, okay, so what's going on? When an invoice comes in, what happens to this invoice? Where does it go in this system? How many people are looking at this? She finds out that it's an entirely manual process. The invoice has to go through the hands of something like five or six people who then have to do some manual checkoffs in freaking Excel spreadsheets. So she's like, oh my God, that's ridiculous. So she puts in a lot of automations in the Excel spreadsheets and she streamlines this entire workflow, which is how it ends up going from eight weeks down to two to three weeks. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Most of you are telling stories like the first version of how she was telling this. So again, problem, investigation, realization, and then A for action. As a result of your realization, what did you do? In my client's example, she went and implemented all of these Excel automations. So then all they had to do was upload the invoice and then from then on the system would take care of it. There were still some manual steps in the process. But she cut down so much time. And as always, time is money. If you save time, you save money. At the end of the day, you are saving the company money. And then the last part is impact. As a result of you doing this action and all of this research and investigation, what changed? What was different for the customer, for your company, for yourself, for the team? Did you change something and how long it took? Which is, you know, what was the example in my client's story? Or maybe you actually saved money. So back when I was at Amazon, I was brought on to save a global translation project. The translation series was not going very well. And there were a lot of people, many different moving parts in different countries, and they weren't talking to each other. Plus, we had a system that wasn't working very well. And the editors hated this content management system. Now, as a result of me working in there and bringing together all these people, putting some Band -Aids in place, we cut down translation costs by, I think, $20 million. Right? series was not going very well. And there were a lot of people, many different moving parts in different countries, and they weren't talking to each other. Plus, we had a system that wasn't working very well. And the editors hated this content management system. Now, as a result of me working in there and bringing together all these people, putting some Band -Aids in place, we cut down translation costs by, I think, $20 million. Right? It's not, it's not trivial. So whatever your impact is, you need to try and tie it to something. Now, where I commonly see people freaking out over this is they're like, I don't have numbers. People don't share those numbers with me. And I'm going to say this, every time you finish a project that you know was high status, had high visibility, I want you to write down just a couple of bullet points about that project. You're going to keep that in your Google Docs or your iOS notes. And then you're going to remind yourself to go ask the project owners, the product managers, the project managers, whoever was involved, maybe it's a program manager, and you are going to ask them, hey, so what are some numbers that I can attach to this just for my own reference? So for example, I did some SEO work at one of the startups that I used to work at, AVO. I overhauled, I think, 100 Q &A pages. I employed the data entry team, giving them the guidelines of how to implement some of the SEO techniques. They didn't know that's what they were doing, but that's what they were doing. I gave them the keywords to look out for, and I taught them how to approach this. As a result of this project, maybe three to six months later, those 100 pages were bringing in 30 % more traffic. So you need to go and chase down people and try to put some numbers to this, whether it's money, whether it's more traffic, more revenue, time saved. The other side of this is if you can't get quantitative data, then try to get something that's qualitative, a success story, a case study of some kind, and attach it to this. What are your thoughts, Chris? My thoughts are your life experience is so vastly different than mine. Talking about metrics and building up a resume, it was not my intention to ever apply for a job again in my life a few months after working for a different company. So this is fascinating to me. It's a whole world, like this corporate world that I don't even understand at all. So it's been fun listening to you so far. It's like, God, what was that like? How would that be if I had to apply for a job? Because I haven't worked on any of those things that you talked about. So footnote for myself, if things don't work out in the future, I better start thinking about some of these ideas you're mentioning. Oh, please. You and I both know you would hit those interviews out of the ballpark, out of the park. It's my own resume. Like, how did you do as an employee? I did great because I reviewed myself. That was excellent. Really good. I gave myself exceeds expectations. In all categories. What a delight to work with. Brings ideas. Proactive. Team player. Oh my God. Okay. That's actually a really good point. You know how you and I love to talk about suitcase words, right? Those are some of the most famous suitcase words in corporate. If you see somebody list that stuff on their resume, and let's say you're hiring for someone at the future, what would you ask about any of those terms? Let's say team player. I would ask him, can you give me some specific examples where you demonstrated that? Let's say team player. active. Team player. Oh my God. Okay. That's actually a really good point. You know how you and I love to talk about suitcase words, right? Those are some of the most famous suitcase words in corporate. If you see somebody list that stuff on their resume, and let's say you're hiring for someone at the future, what would you ask about any of those terms? Let's say team player. I would ask him, can you give me some specific examples where you demonstrated that skill that you're talking about? Okay. Maybe we can do a little bit of a role play here to demonstrate the average mainstream answer versus like a really great answer. Okay. How about I give you the average answer, and then you tell me what you would want to hear? And you can even grade me. So A through F. So your question, give me any, you said some examples. I'm going to say, just give me one example. One of my clients, she told me, yeah, I like to help people at work. I try to spend some time and mentor them. How would you grade that? would probably be a D minus. And I'm being kind. So tell me why. Broad generic, no details, no transformation, nothing to record. And it almost sounds like a lie right now. So I'm borderline going to give it an F. So what about it sounds like a lie? I like to help people. Okay. And that's super generic. Like I've used software before. I've done things. I got words, so many words. It's like, you haven't said anything. Give me a detail. I literally asked you for an example. And to be honest, I wouldn't say this out loud, but I'm like, I think you're pissing me off right now because I asked you for a specific example and you don't have one so that we have a problem already. It's sending all the wrong signals to me. I've even mentored someone. Yeah. I had a cousin who's hot. It's like, so, you know, she don't know her. She goes to another town. It's like, okay, come on. Let's get real. So when someone asks you for an example, this is now us moving into step number two of most common mistakes is people are not specific enough. Now I have noticed that when we're talking about creatives and designers, especially, there is just something very strange going on where it's almost like you guys hate words. You guys are always trying to chop things down to the fewest words possible, but you are not gifted communicators enough to choose the right words to showcase and highlight the right examples. So do not do that. So if somebody gives you the same question of, can you tell me about a time where you demonstrated being a team player? I want you to go through the framework I gave you. So anytime somebody says, can you tell me about a time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is your cue to then mentally go through the framework I just gave you, right? Problem, investigation, realization, action, and impact. So how somebody could make this answer a lot better, I like to help people. Who do you like to help? Well, myself, Jewel Kim, I particularly like to help Asian American women because I'm Korean American and I grew up in Alabama. I grew up amongst people feeling like I never belonged. And these days, when I go into a job interview, 99 % of the time, I'm going to be faced with people who do not look like me. And that makes me feel awkward AF. I'm always worried that I'm coming off the wrong way. I have a... answer a lot better. I like to help people. Who do you like to help? Well, myself, Joel Kim. I particularly like to help Asian American women because I'm Korean American and I grew up in Alabama. I grew up amongst people feeling like I never belonged. And these days, when I go into a job interview, 99 % of the time, I'm going to be faced with people who do not look like me. And that makes me feel awkward AF. I'm always worried that I'm coming off the wrong way. I have an RBF. Maybe they don't like the sound of my voice. Maybe they don't like how I look. Maybe I just look scary. I've heard that a lot. I have gone through 10 years of corporate experience feeling like I was in a game where I didn't know the rules. And this is why I like to mentor people who are almost like the earlier version of myself. Asian American women who are trying to succeed in the workplace, but don't seem to get the promotion and have literally been told that they're not confident. They're not assertive enough. So this is how I like to spend some of my time being a team player. I will devote two hours per week out of my time to mentor two members every quarter to try and get some of their soft skills leveled up. So the problem that we're facing is that Asian Americans tend to be qualified as submissive and meek, lacking assertiveness. I do not like that characterization of Asians at all. And unfortunately, there's something about our cultural background that I think lends itself to that. Asians tend to be a very hierarchical society. So when they come into the workplace, they are unconsciously bringing that in as well. So they come into it with a lot of fear and respect for authority. And I would say maybe too much respect for authority. So that's the first problem. The investigation is a lot of what I just told you. There's a lot of cultural components at play. And then investigation, I will literally ask people to record their meetings and send me their meetings so that I can observe their behaviors. Now, over the last five people I've done this with, I've realized that they don't know how to project their voice. I've realized they use a lot of hedging language, stuff like I think, and I guess, and they also speak with an upward inflection in their voice. Yeah, maybe, instead of yes, assertiveness. Now, because I realized that there were key components of their presence that they weren't signaling correctly. I drew up an action plan. Here are the top three things you need to work on. And here's how you go about that. So I'll typically work with people over one quarter, and then we'll gauge their progress every week. Again, with recordings, because I need receipts to see that you're putting these things into action. And then the impact is their family members, even, even their children will say stuff like, Oh my gosh, mommy, something's really different about you. I've had people at work tell me that their boss said that they no longer had concerns over their confidence. Can you imagine if that's you? So that's me going through the same framework. I give you this framework because it's designed to force you to be more specific. Now, even after I give people the framework, what I find is that there's still a gap to be closed. When we do the interview coaching, there's some tweaking to be had. And it's almost always around the specifics. They'll often give me too many details of stuff that just nobody cares about. Nobody gives an F about. you. So that's me going through the same framework. I give you this framework because it's designed to force you to be more specific. Now, even after I give people the framework, what I find is that there's still a gap to be closed when we do the interview coaching. There's some tweaking to be had. And it's almost always around the specifics. They'll often give me too many details of stuff that just nobody cares about. Nobody gives an F about. And you have to remember, when you give too many details that are irrelevant, the person starts mentally checking out. You've given them an information overload. So sub tip 2 .1 here, okay? 2 .2 is to be more specific. 2 .1 is write out your answers. And I'm not saying that from a place of scripting, but you need to write out your answers so that you know your stories. When you go into an interview without prepping, without practicing saying the answers, without practicing writing out your answers, you are creating the experience where you're trying to learn how to fly the plane and fly the plane at the same time. And this is why interviews feel so awkward. You need to think of interviews almost like you going into a public speaking spot. Would you ever deliver a talk with no practice? Probably not. I mean, some of you are crazy enough to do that. And unless you have a ton of experience like Chris, where he's done so many public speaking spots, given all day workshops, even, I know that if somebody were to approach Chris and say, Chris, you need to go on in five minutes and deliver a talk about personal branding. Chris would be like, what the hell? Oh, please. I don't buy it. Chris's first response. First response would probably be, how much are you paying me? Facts. It's like, you got my 30k fees, or maybe it's 50k fees for five minutes. Maybe it's 100k, right? Like five minute notice. I can do this, but it's going to cost you. Yeah. Yeah. But we all know Chris can deliver the goods because he's had so much experience. So as Chris likes to say, you need to put in the reps. When we're talking about interviewing, you putting in the reps means you practicing writing your answers down to how you would explain your, how you would answer some of the most common behavioral questions, right? Can you tell me about a time when you disagreed with your manager and what you did about that? question tends to get asked in almost every interview because people want to see how you deal with conflict. Can you tell me about a time when you weren't able to deliver a project on time? Those questions, there's a million of those out there. Go find some of those questions and then practice working your answers through the framework I gave you. Step two is to practice saying those answers. So just outline your answers. Do not script it out. Just outline, right? Bullet point. P -I -R -A -I. Outline some things so you can jog your memory and then practice answering that question in real time because 50 % of what makes this awkward is you are not used to speaking of yourself. You are not used to speaking of your experience. You are not used to telling stories in a way that highlights yourself. And in a lot of cultures, we will feel uncomfortable feeling like we're tooting our own horn. If you're a woman, you may even worry that you're being arrogant somehow, big -headed. And I promise you that a job interview is the time where you need to pull forth all of your best highlights, your best accomplishments. You are building a brand in that interview. Step three is to speaking of yourself. You are not used to speaking of your experience. You are not used to telling stories in a way that highlights yourself. And in a lot of cultures, we will feel uncomfortable feeling like we're tooting our own horn. If you're a woman, you may even worry that you're being arrogant somehow, big headed. And I promise you that a job interview is the time where you need to pull forth all of your best highlights, your best accomplishments. You are building a brand in that interview. Step three is for common interview mistakes. Remember I said a lot of you go into the interview where it's like you're trying to learn and fly the plane at the same time. You don't want that. So number three is you need to create a story bank and you need to have enough stories of some of the results you've achieved. So it's not going to go so well when you've only got like two or three stories, you want at least five to eight stories so that you can hit different questions with different stories. Because if you've only got like one or two stories, what happens is all the people who interviewed you, when they get together to share their thoughts and be like, yes or no. And then they start to review notes and compare with each other. And they realize you've really only got like one or two stories. That's when you run into some trouble here. So try to compile a list. I generally like to go eight to 10 just so you have them. But the biggest issue here is that most people, when they're in the job, they're not recording their experiences. So anytime you do a good job at anything, any project, any scope, any level, remember you need to take some time out of your day. This should only take 10 minutes. And you just write like a short description of what the problem was, what you did, what you investigated, what you realized, just kind of fill in the framework already so that you don't have to try and remember. Because when too much time passes, you'll find that you have a really hard time remembering anything. So as you're in the job, fill in the P -I -R -A -I. Make sure especially you chase down people for the I -Bit, get those numbers, 30 % lift, $36 million saved in translation costs, things like that. For some of the workflow that I managed with the content management system, I was able to cut down workflows by 40 % in some of the examples that we worked on. Yeah. So create a story bank and then attach theme labels to them. Thanks, Joel. I think that was informative with rich with examples and very usable frameworks. I saw people writing in P -I -R -A or P -I -R -A -I or something like that in the comments a lot. Before we get out of here, can you just remind people for whoever might have tuned in kind of what the framework is? Really briefly just summarize that and we'll get out of here. Yeah. So throw away the STAR method for interviews and take this framework and said, so P is for problem. What was the problem? What was the challenge they were trying to solve? I is for investigation. What's the study? What's the research? What did you look into? R is the realization. What did you figure out as a result of all of the research you did? What did you learn? What was the takeaway? And so because of that, what was the action you took, which is A. And then lastly, what was the impact? Who was impacted by this action that you took in this overall project? Was it the customer? Was it your team? Was it the company? Was it time saved? Was it money saved? Or was it money gained? So any of those things you need to demonstrate impact what did you learn what was the takeaway and so because of that what was the action you took which is a and then lastly what was the impact who result like who was impacted by this action that you took in this overall project was it the customer was it your team was it the company was it time saved was it money saved or was it money gained so any of those things you need to demonstrate impact and try to make it as quantifiable as possible and if you can't get the metrics you can't get the numbers then try to at least get a story a case study at least one example

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