Remembering your stories
Interviewing for senior roles is often more about storytelling than showing off technical expertise. Knowing what stories to tell is half the battle.
If you're well into your career, there are more than enough stories to share. However, as years fade and projects continue, you forget what happened. What database fields were invalid? How did we find out the API broke? Why did we pick that vendor?
Inevitably, I'm asked about times where I had to make trade offs, or times where I needed to persuade other teams to change direction and collaborate. These concrete examples are such a good lens into someone's approach to work, a great signal for hiring managers. It's so important to be able to provide specific examples instead of abstract things you may well have learned from a TED talk but never actually practiced.
The best examples are focused, provide just the right amount of context, describe how things played out, and explain how what you learned and what you may do differently now. They show your full abilities, allowing you to celebrate successes and be honest about challenges.
However, it's challenging to capture months and years of experience on the fly. My worst interviews are the ones where I try to cram too much in, skip critical details, and don't send a clear message about my abilities and experiences.
Looking back, I wish I'd written my stories down as they happened. I don't mean publishing them (though you can do that too), I mean writing them for myself. Stories that capture what happened, how I realized it, and what we did to change things would be so helpful to future me.
I'm going to make this a practice from now on. I'm currently looking for work, so I'm starting with the interviews themselves. I love writing and telling stories. I want to remember what I went through so I can continue to grow and learn from all of it.
