u/Several_Exchange8912

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Corporate America can be very harsh, but this situation hurt me in a way I didn't expect.

About nine months ago, I recommended someone strongly for a senior role at my company. We had worked together before, so I figured I could definitely trust him to be honest with me about what was happening above my job level.

Turned out to be the wrong decision.

A little over a month before I was laid off, and after another colleague had been removed from the job, I directly asked this person to give me a heads-up if my name started coming up in any conversations.

And then it happened. A random meeting appeared on my calendar, and I sent him a direct message: Do I need to be worried about this?

"Not at all, it's just a quick sync."

Honestly, I've lost all the trust I had in management.

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I'm the CEO of a product/dev agency, and I've probably sat in dozens and dozens of interviews over the years. One time, a candidate asked me this question, and honestly, it stuck in my head - I could immediately picture him on the team and progressing afterward, and I remember literally making a mental note of the question. In the end, he got the job, and later we started using a similar version of it in client discovery calls because it works extremely well.

Anyway, here's the question. It's best to save it for the part where they ask you: "Do you have any questions for us?":

"Let's say everything goes well, and you offer me the role, I accept, and I start working with you on Wednesday. Now imagine that 14 months from now, we're sitting together again, but this time because you're giving me great feedback and talking about the next step up. What would I have done during that period? What would working with me have looked like? What goals or metrics would I have achieved...add anything appropriate for the specific role... For you to feel that I deserved a conversation like that?"

The reason this question is so powerful is that it first makes the interviewer imagine you already working there, and more than that, it makes them tell you what they care about. They're basically going to describe their ideal employee, how they define success, what problems they want solved, what "good" looks like in their mind, and so on.

It also gives you a much better read on the company. If they can answer clearly, great. If they ramble or only speak in vague buzzwords, that tells you something too.

Hope this helps - curious what you think.

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LPT I'm a hiring manager. I can usually quickly spot the skills and work experience I'm looking for in a resume.

I've also been on the other side before, looking for work when my wife's job had us moving from place to place around the country. So yeah, I know both sides of this weird hiring dance.

When I'm hiring, I look for information that's relevant to the role. Not just "look at this huge wall of bullet points!" That doesn't impress anyone. Tailor it to the job description. Make it relevant to the posting. RELEVANT.

Start with a strong base resume that shows what you can do, then trim it down to two pages at most. Seriously. Unless you're applying to be VP of Finance or the person who designs Mars rovers, most hiring managers are asking one question: "Does this person show the right experience and potential?" Keeping it concise forces you to do the hard work: decide what matters.

It's about 70% self-evaluation and 30% matching your background to the specific job post. Do that work. Adjust your information to fit what they're asking for. You're trying to get to the interview, and when you get there, you should bring a LIST of questions for them. What does onboarding look like? How does the company handle remote work or flexibility? "How is sick time calculated?" That answer can tell you what you'll get, and also how they think about people when they take time off. If you want to know something, ASK.

Maybe this should have been 4 separate LPT posts, or maybe I need to put it in a pamphlet. Either way, I hope it helps.