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Most people think the job search starts and ends with the CV.
It doesn’t.
Your CV has one job. It needs to land you an interview.
Once it’s done that, the next part of the process begins. That part is the interview.
This is where a lot of people get stuck. Not because they’re not good enough. Not because they don’t have the experience. Often, it’s because they haven’t yet learned how to talk about that experience in the right way.
That’s what I call building the interview muscle.
Like any muscle, it gets stronger with practice. You don’t build it by reading one article the night before an interview and hoping for a personality transplant by 9am.
You build it by preparing, reflecting, practising and learning how to choose the right examples for the right role.
The first stage of the job search is your CV.
Your CV needs to position you clearly. It needs to show why your experience fits the type of role you want next. It needs to make it easy for a recruiter, talent person or hiring manager to see the match.
But once your CV has done its job, it can’t do the rest for you.
At interview stage, you need to bring your experience to life.
This is where positioning matters again, but in a different way.
On your CV, your experience is written down. In an interview, you need to explain it, expand on it and connect it to the needs of the role.
You need to help the interviewer understand not just what you’ve done, but why it matters.
One of the biggest mistakes candidates make is treating every interview the same.
They’re not the same.
Different stages have different aims. Different people are looking for different things. The way you answer should reflect the stage you’re in.
This doesn’t mean changing who you are. It means knowing what information is most useful at that point in the process.
The first interview is usually with a talent acquisition person, recruiter or someone from the people team.
Very often, they’re generalists. They may not know every tiny detail of the role. Their job is usually to check whether you meet the main criteria set by the hiring manager.
They may ask about your current situation, notice period, salary expectations, location, right to work, motivation, sector knowledge and broad understanding of the role.
They’re usually trying to answer a few simple questions.
Do you broadly match the role?
Do your expectations fit?
Do you understand what the role is?
Are there any obvious gaps?
Are you likely to be a good person to move forward to the hiring manager?
This stage usually isn’t the time to go into every detail of every project you’ve ever worked on since 2014.
You need to be clear, focused and relevant.
Your task is to show that you understand the role, meet the main criteria and are worth taking to the next stage.
The next interview is usually with the hiring manager or line manager. This is the person you’d report to, or someone close to the role.
This stage is much more detailed.
Here, the interviewer wants to understand your actual experience. They want to know how closely your background matches the job description. They want to see whether you understand the role, the market, the customers and the problems they need you to solve.
This is where your examples matter.
If you’re in sales, they may want to know who you’ve sold to, what your deal sizes looked like, how long your sales cycles were, what your targets were, how you built pipeline and what your strategy was.
If you’re in customer success, they may ask about retention, onboarding, adoption, renewals, stakeholder management and customer health.
If you’re in marketing, they may ask about campaigns, positioning, lead generation, content, brand, product marketing or how you measure success.
If you’re in a leadership role, they may ask about strategy, team building, growth, change, hiring, commercial results and how you make decisions.
At this stage, they’re not only asking, “Have you done this before?”
They’re asking, “Have you done something close enough to what we need here?”
That’s a very important difference.
Every role exists because something needs to be done.
A company may need to grow revenue, enter a new market, improve customer retention, build a team, reduce churn, create stronger processes, launch a product, improve partnerships or fix a problem that’s been sitting quietly in the corner for too long.
Your job in the interview is to understand what that problem is.
Then you need to show why your experience makes you a strong person to solve it.
This is where many candidates miss the mark.
They talk about everything they’ve done, but not the things that matter most to the role.
They share examples, but not the strongest examples.
They explain tasks, but not impact.
They go off on tangents, because they haven’t worked out which parts of their experience need to be elevated.
And sometimes, that costs them the role.
Not because they couldn’t do the job.
Because they didn’t show the interviewer clearly enough that they could.
A good interview answer isn’t just a nice opinion.
It needs evidence.
If you say you’re strategic, show where you created or changed a strategy.
If you say you’re commercial, show where you grew revenue, improved conversion, protected margin or made a smart decision.
If you say you’re good with stakeholders, show where you managed a complex relationship, handled disagreement or influenced a senior person.
If you say you understand EdTech, show that you understand buyers, users, procurement, learning outcomes, implementation and the reality of education sales.
Interviewers don’t need you to use perfect words.
They need proof.
Your examples are that proof.
Before an interview, build an evidence bank. Look at the job description and list the main things the role needs. Then choose examples that match those needs.
Don’t try to use every example you have.
Choose the strongest ones.
That’s the skill.
Later stages often involve more people.
You may meet team members, senior leaders, future peers or cross functional stakeholders. Sometimes this stage is called culture fit. Sometimes it’s more of a team fit or values fit conversation.
This doesn’t mean you should turn up and try to become whoever you think they want.
It means you need to show how you work.
How do you communicate?
How do you handle challenge?
How do you make decisions?
How do you work with other teams?
How do you respond when things go wrong?
What kind of environment helps you do your best work?
In these interviews, you may find yourself repeating some answers. That’s normal. Different people need to hear your story from their angle.
You may also need to shift between detail and bigger picture.
One stakeholder may want to know the detail of how you manage pipeline. Another may want to know how you think about market growth. Another may want to know how you’d work with their team.
This is why preparation matters. You need to know your story well enough to adapt it without sounding rehearsed.
Some processes include a task, case study or presentation.
This stage is often used to see how you think, communicate and apply your experience to a real business problem.
The task isn’t always about finding the one perfect answer.
It’s often about showing your approach.
Can you structure your thinking?
Can you explain your decisions?
Can you make sensible assumptions?
Can you connect your ideas to the company’s goals?
Can you present clearly?
Can you answer questions without becoming defensive?
A common mistake is spending too much time making slides look perfect and not enough time thinking about the actual message.
Design matters, yes. But clear thinking matters more.
A simple, well structured presentation with strong logic will usually beat a beautiful deck that says very little.
By the time you receive an offer, the company should already understand your value.
That doesn’t mean you need to talk about salary in every interview. It means you should be showing your value throughout the process.
Your examples, your questions, your understanding of the role and the way you talk about impact all shape how the company sees you.
Negotiation shouldn’t feel like a surprise at the very end.
If you’ve positioned yourself well, the company should already understand the level you operate at, the value you bring and why you’re worth the package you’re asking for.
Of course, you can still negotiate when the offer arrives.
But the groundwork starts earlier.
This is one of the biggest pieces of advice I give candidates.
You don’t want your dream company and dream role to be your first interview in a long time.
That’s a lot of pressure.
Interviews are a skill. If you haven’t interviewed for a while, you may be rusty. You may ramble. You may forget strong examples. You may undersell yourself. You may only realise what you should’ve said when you’re making tea two hours later.
That’s normal.
It’s also why practice matters.
The more you interview, the more you understand how to present yourself. You learn which examples work. You learn where you get stuck. You learn how to answer questions with more clarity.
You build the muscle.
This doesn’t mean applying for roles you’d never take. That wastes everyone’s time.
But it does mean being open to conversations that help you practise, learn and sharpen your positioning before the role that really matters comes along.
Thinking through an answer in your head isn’t the same as saying it out loud.
In your head, everything sounds clear.
Out loud, you may realise the answer is too long, too vague or missing the point.
Practising out loud helps you hear yourself. It helps you spot where you ramble. It helps you tighten your examples. It helps you sound more confident without sounding robotic.
You can practise with a coach, recruiter, friend or even by recording yourself.
Yes, hearing your own voice back is painful. Almost everyone hates it. Sadly, it works.
The goal isn’t to memorise answers word for word.
The goal is to know your examples well enough that you can use them naturally.
A lot of candidates have strong experience, but they don’t know which parts to highlight.
They either talk about everything, or they focus on the wrong things.
This is where preparation needs to be linked to the role.
Look at the job description. Look at the company. Look at the stage of growth. Look at the sector. Look at the likely pain points.
Then ask yourself:
What are they really hiring this person to do?
What problems are they trying to solve?
Which parts of my experience best match that?
Which examples show that I can help?
Which results are most relevant?
Which stories prove my judgment, not just my activity?
That’s how you start to position yourself properly.
You’re not giving a life history.
You’re building a case.
Interviews aren’t only about answering questions.
They’re also about asking them.
Good questions show that you understand the role and are thinking seriously about fit.
You might ask about the main priorities for the first six months, what success looks like, what challenges the team is facing, how the role connects to wider company goals or what kind of person tends to do well in the business.
For more senior roles, you may ask about strategy, team structure, investment, market challenges, decision making, board expectations or growth plans.
Your questions should help you understand whether the role is right for you.
They also show the interviewer how you think.
A strong question can sometimes do as much for your positioning as a strong answer.
People often think confidence means being naturally polished.
It doesn’t.
Confidence usually comes from clarity.
You know your story.
You know your examples.
You know your value.
You know why the role makes sense.
You know which parts of your experience to bring forward.
You know when to stop talking.
That last one is underrated.
Clear candidates are easier to hire. They help the interviewer understand the match.
That’s especially important in competitive markets, where several people may be able to do the job.
The offer often goes to the person who makes the strongest case.
The more you interview, the better you get at interviewing.
You learn how to answer common questions.
You learn how to handle difficult questions.
You learn how to talk about gaps, changes, mistakes or career moves.
You learn how to show impact.
You learn how to connect your experience to the role.
You learn how to stay calm when an interview doesn’t go exactly as expected.
This is what building the interview muscle looks like.
It isn’t about becoming someone else.
It’s about learning how to present yourself with more choice, clarity and confidence.
If you’re applying for roles and want to strengthen how you position yourself, RecruitHer can help.
We support education and EdTech professionals with CV positioning, interview preparation, job search strategy and career coaching.
As recruiters, we understand what hiring managers are really listening for. We know how job descriptions connect to business needs, and we can help you choose the right examples to show your value.
Because sometimes, the issue isn’t your experience.
It’s how you’re presenting it.
And that can be changed.
