Resumes get you in the door. The interview is what separates the contenders from the pretenders.
People spend hours crafting a resume, tailoring it to each opportunity. I recently had a candidate tell me they had eight different versions — one geared toward strategy, another toward client services. When a job opens up they modify the closest version to beat the ATS. I do not hate this strategy. You need to get past the gatekeeper.
But what do you do when you actually get in the room? I would argue: not enough.
I brought Chris in for an interview back in 2021. When he applied for the Account Director position I had posted, his resume did not immediately catch my attention. He came from a CRM and digital background — solid for a digital agency but I was not sure about the fit for a more creative shop. Chris, to his credit, was persistent. He followed up once a week, staying top of mind without being annoying. We connected quickly. Baseball, music, real conversations from day one.
I still had reservations about his background. But Chris had the biggest intangible any client services person can have: connection. Put him in a room with an executive and they talked for an hour. Put him with a junior account executive and they talked for an hour. He knew how to read people and he did his homework. He had looked me up beforehand and saw that I was President of the Danbury Drum Corps. He noticed my Mets posts on LinkedIn. He showed up knowing who he was meeting with.
Then there was Mike.
Mike had the resume. Came from all the top shops. Agencies were fighting over his background. But every time I brought him in for an Account Director role he flopped. How does someone with that pedigree come up so short? The answer was simple. He took his background for granted. He thought he could coast on his client roster and freestyle the conversation. He never took the time to learn who he was meeting with.
My agency always said we would win pitches based on chemistry. My Chief Strategy Officer used to say he might not be the smartest person in the room but he was always the most prepared. We took that to heart — even in interviews with candidates we genuinely wanted to hire.
The Pattern
After thousands of interviews across advertising, technology, logistics, manufacturing, and marketing, the candidates who get hired consistently share one quality: a clear identity.
Chris and Mike had the same job title. But Chris knew what an Account Director actually is at his core. He knew the job was about building connection, doing the research, understanding the client before walking in the door. He applied that same discipline to himself. Mike knew his resume. Chris knew himself.
That is the difference.
Job titles do not give you an identity. An identity is built internally. It is clearly understanding who you are and communicating it with confidence. The job title is the product description. The identity is the brand brief.
What Most Candidates Get Wrong
STAR method. Behavioral interviewing. Quantified achievements. These are all valuable and hiring managers ask for them for a reason. The best predictor of future success is previous success. I am not dismissing any of it.
But that is not the only thing candidates should be preparing for.
The hiring manager already read your resume. They saw “improved conversion rate by 156%.” They may ask you to walk them through it. But there is another question running in the back of every hiring manager’s mind throughout every interview:
Do I want to work with this person for the next three years?
If your answers come off as short or disinterested the hiring manager wonders whether you will bring that same energy to the job. If you seem unsure of who you are they wonder if that uncertainty will show up in your work. Interview prep courses and career coaches teach you to lead with your output. I am challenging you to lead with your identity.
The best candidates do not recite their resume. They know what is on it, but they walk in knowing what they stand for. They can tell you exactly who they are and what they bring into every room they walk into.
My Own Brief
When I used to tell people I was a recruiter one of two things happened. Either they asked if I recruited for the military — I was in JROTC in high school but that is as close as I ever got to serving — or they said “oh nice” and changed the subject to the Mets.
That was it. End of conversation.
Developing my brief changed that. Now I can talk about the real estate market, the ad campaigns I helped staff, the pair of Nikes I sold in 2006. More importantly I can talk about my journey without immediately losing the room. I connect people with opportunity. That sentence opens doors that a job title never did.
Here Is What You Need to Do
Write down what you do for people. Not your job title. Not your responsibilities. The one thing you actually do for the people you work with and the people you serve.
Then compress it into one sentence. Practice saying it out loud until it feels natural, not rehearsed.
Connecting people with opportunities. Building leaders who will change the world. Analyzing data to help business leaders make informed decisions. You decide your brief and you tell the world.
The biggest lesson I have learned after 14 years of interviewing talent: the best candidates are not always the most qualified on paper. The resume gets you the conversation. What you do with that conversation is the competitive advantage that no resume optimization can duplicate.
