The candidates who get my offer at the senior level usually aren’t the most polished interviewers.
They’re the ones who aren’t trying to be interviewed at all.
They come in for a conversation. The questions go both ways. I’m working out whether they can do the job. They’re working out whether the job is worth doing. Nobody is performing.
The conversation goes both ways
The polished candidate treats the interview like a test to pass. Rehearsed answers, the right frameworks, a tidy story for every competency. It’s competent. It’s also forgettable, and at the senior level it quietly works against you.
The candidates I end up hiring do something different. They ask real questions about the role, the team, and the problems I actually need solved. They push back when something doesn’t add up. They tell me what they’d want to understand before they’d say yes. That isn’t arrogance. It’s what a person does when they have options and know their worth.
When the questions run both directions, I learn far more than any rehearsed answer would tell me. I find out how they think, what they care about, and how they handle being pushed. That is the thing I am actually trying to assess.
Why performing backfires
At the senior level, I’m not hiring someone to recite the right answers. I’m hiring someone to be in the room when something hard happens and the answer isn’t obvious.
A performance hides whether you can do that. A conversation reveals it. The candidate who spends the hour managing my impression of them never shows me how they actually think. The one who settles into a real exchange shows me constantly, without trying to.
By the end, neither of us is really deciding anything. We’re just saying out loud what the conversation already made clear.
If you’re the one interviewing
This is the part to take with you. If you’re interviewing for senior roles, stop trying to perform.
That doesn’t mean show up unprepared. Know the company. Understand the role. Have your own questions ready. The shift is from delivering answers to having an exchange. Treat it as a two-way evaluation, because that’s what it is. You’re deciding about them as much as they’re deciding about you.
It matters even more right now, because the senior market has gotten narrower and you don’t get many at-bats. When you do get in the room, the goal isn’t to impress the person across the table. It’s to work out, together, whether this is the right fit. The candidates who approach it that way are the ones I remember, and usually the ones I hire.
The signal
When an interview is right, it feels like swimming downstream. Easy, but productive.
That ease isn’t a lack of rigor. It’s the sign that both people are being honest about what they need. Get there, and the decision tends to make itself. For both of you.
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