“I got roughly 30–40% more interviews and the number of final round interviews at least doubled”
Neo* knew his value, but employers weren’t seeing it. He’d just left a company because he knew they were undervaluing him, and his job search was proving frustrating. He was applying for roles he knew he could do, but his applications weren’t generating interviews, and even when they did, the interviews weren’t turning into job offers.
At first, this was baffling. He had a CV and LinkedIn profile which showed he was capable. He knew the value and importance of the work he’d been delivering. But as weeks of job searching turned into months, his confidence began to crack.
Neo was stuck in a cycle – the more roles he got rejected from, the more he lowered his expectations and applied for roles he could do in his sleep, but didn’t light a fire in him. He was attending interviews he often didn’t care about, then feeling rejected when they didn’t make an offer. And that rejection lowered his expectations further. As he put it, “I had the confidence in me, but it was buried by the situation.”
I had worked with Neo a few years before, when we’d done some general job search and interview coaching. Now it was clear that we needed something more nuanced. Last time was about getting a job he could do. This time, it was about finding the right role: one that would recognise his contribution and give him room to grow.
Looking at his CV and LinkedIn profile, it became clear that Neo was relying on his audience to read between the lines and see his worth. He was taking a strictly factual view, and assuming others would be able to intuit his full breadth of abilities and interests. Reflecting now on his old documents, he says:
By just stating the facts, it doesn’t really strengthen your confidence… it doesn’t really help you to get your job that most suitable for you.
But when we discussed career storytelling as a potential solution, Neo wasn’t sure:
My main concern was that I’ve only got less than two years experience. So career storytelling, but less than two years experience… I thought it probably wouldn’t make a big story.
This is a common misconception about storytelling, which is that there’s not much of a story to be told. The thing is, the story is bigger than the roles you’ve held or the duties you’ve fulfilled. Neo knew this, because he had recently parted ways with an employer who had just seen him as a cog in the machine, but he hadn’t yet made the link between his more rounded view of himself, and presenting a more comprehensive story in his professional documents.
So our first step was to help others see what he was seeing. In other words, show that his previous employers and job titles were only a part of the story. Neo noticed this approach as soon as he started completing my Career Storytelling Building Blocks questionnaire:
I was answering who I am, not who I am as a candidate… It’s not just about telling your career story, it’s more about telling who you are and what your personality is and how you work, and just to present the more complete version of yourself.
Neo was certain he could fill a senior role, but he couldn’t get this across on paper. Whilst he hadn’t had a senior job title, he had worked in a small team, carrying out senior-level duties as part of his role. By writing and iterating this experience together, we found a positioning that gave him appropriate credit for the work he had done, without veering into inauthenticity or falsehood. And this led to a key realisation:
Your self-doubts about seniority previously probably just doesn’t matter in the actual job… It probably just never should have existed in the first place. It’s just your self doubts talking. It’s not true.
This is such a clear example of how finding the right words can change the whole story you hold about yourself. In the process of articulating his capabilities and achievements in the context of more senior positions, Neo saw more clearly how he fit into senior positions, and began to feel more comfortable targeting them, confident that he was giving the right message.
I don’t want to oversimplify this – finding the right message was tricky work. We presented it slightly differently in all three of the documents we worked on: CV, LinkedIn profile, personal brand positioning statement. Each had its own unique take, but all held well together as part of a cohesive career story.
So, by finding the right message and positioning, we broke the cycle. Neo went from applying for roles he felt overqualified for and unexcited about, to presenting a clear message about who he was, what he wanted, and the work he felt he should be doing.
This fresh approach was validated just a couple of months later. Neo had interviewed for a role he genuinely wanted and felt the conversation had gone well. When the rejection came through, it hit different. Rather than feeling defeated or resentful, he challenged the decision. Not argumentatively, not telling them what they’d got wrong, but politely asking them to reconsider.
This was a different kind of confidence to the one he’d started with. Early in his job search, Neo’s certainty about his own value had sometimes come across as frustration, perhaps even a slight resentment toward employers who couldn’t see what he was offering. Now, that same certainty was showing up differently, as a calm, constructive conviction that he belonged in this role. The company saw it too. They reconsidered, and he got the job.
I want to bring value to the world, to the society. I want to make a difference. I want to do good things, which is what this company does… it’s something that aligns with my values.
After our work together, Neo estimates he got 30-40% more interviews, and at least doubled his rate of reaching final rounds. But his new role shows that those numbers are only a part of the story. What changed wasn’t just his response rate, it was his ability to pursue roles that mattered to him, and to convey the kind of confidence that employers wanted to say yes to.
This should really be where this post finishes – we rewrote Neo’s story and he landed the role he wanted. But when we caught up to reflect on the service and his journey, Neo kept coming back to something I hadn’t expected to be so central:
I can talk to you about my job search, I can talk to about how I feel when I was in the interviews… which was very exhausting for me by just doing it by myself.
As important and creatively engaging as it is to frame this work with narrative theory and career insights, this is such a strong reminder of a fundamental truth: job searching and career development are often something that we feel totally alone with.
Neo had been carrying the weight of his job search without any support. Having someone to talk to ended up mattering at least as much as getting the words right on the page.
His advice to anyone in a similar position:
Just talk to people… just having one person to be there for you and having that person just hear you talking, that can be really helpful.
When I asked Neo what he’d want other job seekers to take from his story, he didn’t talk about CV tips or interview techniques. He didn’t feel he’d discovered some great secret or solved a puzzle. Instead, he talked about trust. Trust in himself, in his instincts, and in the version of him that had known all along what he was worth:
I didn’t actually solve job search problem. I really didn’t solve it. And what I did was just me being myself and do things that feels right to myself… Being yourself, doing what you truly believe in – this feels good in this dark period. Your instincts are actually trying to make yourself better.
* Client’s preferred pseudonym
