A Good Resume Can Be Your Interview Prep
A strong resume can do more than help you get an interview. It can also tell you what to prepare for once you get one. That came up again this weekend when a former Resume Rewrite client commented on someone else’s LinkedIn post about job search struggles. They shared that the resume work we did had helped them start getting the interviews they wanted. Then they added something important: interviewing was now where they felt they were falling short.
That’s a useful reminder because resume strategy and interview strategy shouldn’t be treated like completely separate parts of the process.
If your resume is aligned to the jobs you’re targeting, you’ve already made decisions about which parts of your background matter most. You’ve brought forward the experience that best matches what the employer is looking for and given the recruiter enough reason to start a conversation. Those same examples should become part of your interview prep. Look at the exact resume you submitted for the job. Which bullets are probably doing the most work? What accomplishments line up most closely with the responsibilities in the posting? What experience would make a hiring manager want to ask you for more detail? Start there.
If the resume says you built something from scratch, be ready to explain how you approached it and what happened when things got complicated. If it says you improved a process, know what was wrong with the old one and what you actually changed. If you’re highlighting leadership, be prepared to talk about the decisions you made, the people involved, and how you handled situations that didn’t go according to plan.
The resume gives the employer the short version. The interview is where they find out what’s behind it.
The job posting is useful here too. If you tailored the resume around what the company appears to care about most, those are probably the same areas they’ll want to explore in the interview. You don’t have to guess your way through a giant list of possible questions. Start with the overlap between what the employer needs and what your resume says you’ve already done.
That doesn’t mean memorizing an answer for every bullet. You should know the stories well enough that you can talk about them naturally and use them in different ways depending on what you’re asked. The same project may be useful for a question about leadership, decision-making, conflict, or problem-solving. What matters is understanding the experience well enough to explain the part that’s relevant to the question.
This is one of the things I work through with coaching clients. We can look at the role, the resume that got the interview, and the stories behind the strongest parts of it. From there, we can figure out what the interviewer is likely to care about and whether the answers are giving them enough information to make a hiring decision.
A resume can get someone interested enough to meet you. Once that happens, make sure you’re ready to talk about the exact experience that got their attention.
If you want help preparing for an upcoming interview or figuring out why interviews haven’t been turning into offers, Karpiak Consulting’s coaching services can help.
