Two Reads of One Candidate

Two of us walked out of the same interview with opposite reads on the same person.

I thought she was the strongest candidate we'd seen all month. The guy next to me thought she was a risk. Same resume. Same forty-five minutes. Two verdicts.

What we were actually arguing about wasn't her. It was which parts of her background we'd each decided to weight.

I'd locked onto the through-line. Every role she took was a step toward harder problems, and you could trace the logic. He'd locked onto the gaps. Two short stints, one industry switch he couldn't place, and that made him nervous.

Neither of us was wrong about the facts. We just told ourselves different stories with the same facts.

Here's the part that stuck with me. She had no idea that argument was happening. She couldn't defend the through-line, because she didn't know anyone in the room needed convincing of it. The story that decided her candidacy was one she never got to tell.

Most people think the interview is where it gets decided. A lot of the time the resume already started the fight, and you're not in the room when it happens.

If two people can read your background and land in completely different places, the question isn't who's right. It's whether you've made the read you want the easy one to reach.

What's the part of your story you assume people get, that they might be quietly arguing about without you?