Essay 01

What If Every Interview Question Was Really the Same Question?

Last week I asked an executive a simple question. "What do you think the interviewer is really trying to find out when they ask, 'Tell me about yourself'?" He paused. Then he smiled. "I suppose they want to understand my background." That's what most of us think. We hear: "Tell me about yourself." "Walk me through your experience." "Why should we hire you?" Different questions. Different words. Different interviewers. But I don't think they're different questions at all. I think they're all disguises for the same one.

For more than twenty years, I worked in brand management. Before launching a product, we spent months understanding one thing. The customer. Not the product. The customer. What problem were they trying to solve? What frustrated them? What did they need to believe before they would choose us? Only then did we build the message. When I started working with executives, something immediately struck me. Most prepared in the opposite direction. They started with themselves. Their CV. Their achievements. Their promotions. Their story. But companies don't hire executives because they have interesting stories. They hire them because they have business problems. That was the moment everything changed for me.

A company doesn't create a senior leadership role because it enjoys recruiting. It creates the role because tomorrow needs to look different from today. Growth has stalled. A transformation is failing. A new market needs to be built. A business needs to scale. Performance needs to improve. Trust needs to be restored. Every executive hire begins with a business problem. The interview simply exists to answer one question. Can you help us solve it?

Once you see interviews through that lens, your preparation changes completely. You stop asking: "How do I explain my career?" You start asking: "What change is this company trying to create?" That question determines everything else. Which stories you tell. Which achievements matter. Which experiences you leave out. Because the goal isn't to prove you've done many things. The goal is to prove you've created this kind of change before.

This is why I believe every executive hire is a bet on change. Companies aren't buying experience. They're buying confidence. Confidence that you've already moved an organisation from where it was... ...to where it needed to be. That's what your stories need to demonstrate. Not activity. Change. Not responsibility. Evidence. A CV records what you did. Evidence explains why it mattered.

The strongest candidates don't answer the question they hear. They answer the question behind the question. And I believe that question is always the same. Can we trust you with the change we need to create?