At some point in most interviews, particularly for senior or leadership roles, you’re asked to step back and reflect.
“Talk us through your career.”
It’s an open question, and the interviewer is asking you to go beyond what’s already on your CV to show how you’ve navigated choices and what has shaped how you think as a leader.
How your career story lands in an interview
Very few careers, particularly in social purpose organisations, follow a neat or linear path.
Roles shift as organisations change, funding comes and goes, leadership moves on and the opportunities you hoped for don’t always arrive when you expect them to. And sometimes, if we’re honest, things don’t work out as planned.
All of that is normal. What matters in an interview is whether someone else can follow the decisions you’ve made and understand the motivations behind them. Often, it’s the roles people try to move past quickly that prompt the most discussion.
They’re trying to make sense of how you’ve moved from one role to the next and how those experiences have shaped how you think now.
You don’t need to tell a perfect story, but you should prepare a cohesive narrative.
To do that, it helps to ask yourself:
- Can you explain each move in a way that makes sense to someone outside your organisation?
- Where might someone question your decisions or want more context?
- Are there points in your career where the reasoning feels less clear when you say it out loud?
What interview panels are listening for
When panels listen to someone talk through their career, they’re not just taking in the details; they’re also paying attention to how it’s explained and the judgement behind those decisions.
They notice where the story feels grounded and where it feels less certain, and whether there’s real reflection or things stay closer to the surface. They’re trying to understand how decisions were made and how you respond when things aren’t straightforward.
It’s easy to stay at the level of roles and responsibilities, moving from one job to the next and explaining what changed, but that only tells part of the story.
Prepare by reflecting on a couple of questions:
- What did you learn from that role beyond the responsibilities?
- How did that experience change how you approach your work?
- What would you do differently now, knowing what you know?
What the interview panel is really listening for is what you took from those experiences, how they’ve shaped your thinking and how they influence what you’re looking for now.
That’s often the point where they start to see how you operate, not just what you’ve done.
Not every part of a career is easy to explain
There are always moments in a career that feel more difficult to articulate, like a role that didn’t quite fit, a move shaped more by circumstances than choice or something that ended sooner than expected.
Some candidates tend to move past these quickly or keep things at a high level, but these moments can say a lot about how you think and how you handle difficult situations.
It can help to ask yourself:
- Which parts of your career do you tend to move past quickly?
- If someone asked you to explain those moments in more detail, what would you say?
- What did you take from those situations that have shaped how you work now?
It’s easy to assume these parts will raise concerns, but with a bit of context and some reflection, they can actually go a long way to building trust.
When they’re rushed or smoothed over, they can leave people unsure about what actually happened.
It’s less about the situation itself and more about how you make sense of it.
How we approach this as search partners
As an executive search partner, we see both sides of this.
We work with organisations making careful, long-term decisions about leadership, while also supporting candidates whose careers reflect real lives, real constraints and often a mix of planned and unplanned moves.
Our role is to help people explain their decisions in a way others can follow, rather than tidying them up or making them sound more straightforward than they are.
We tend to ask questions like:
- What would you want someone to understand about your decisions that isn’t obvious from your CV?
- Where might you need to slow down and give more context?
When a career story is well understood, it allows everyone to focus on what matters most: the contribution someone can make and the impact they can have.
Making sense of your own career
Taking the time to step back and look at your own career isn’t just about preparing for an interview. It helps you understand what you’ve been doing and why.
That isn’t always obvious when you’re in it. It takes a bit of distance, and sometimes a bit of prompting, to see it clearly.
The more clearly you can see your own path, the easier it is for someone else to follow it.
In a process that comes down to trust, that makes a difference.
Clare Chesworth is passionate about recruiting executive and board leaders for organisations tackling social justice. With an empathetic and driven approach, Clare can find the right leaders to suit your mission.
