Why you need a second document before your next interview

Picture a tax manager who is a step short of the senior manager role he is interviewing for. His CV shows strong technical grounding, but he hasn’t yet held a few of the responsibilities in the brief. On paper, he is a stretch. In the room, though, he clearly explains why he wants the move, what he has already done to prepare for the extra responsibility, and why that company and sector are where he wants to build the next stage of his career. The interviewer stops focusing on the gap and starts focusing on the energy and the intent.

This example shows what a CV cannot do. A CV does its own job very well. It sets out your experience, your background, your education, and your career to date, and it is a good document to prepare ahead of any interview. What it cannot tell an interviewer is why you want this role, in this company, at this point in your career. For that you need a second document: your story in essence.

Your story is a short, honest piece of writing that you prepare for yourself. It covers your motivations, career achievements, what you want to do next, your personal story, your strengths, and your weaknesses. You do not need to hand it to anyone. Writing it down matters because it forces you to find the words before you sit across from an interviewer who forms an impression in the first few minutes.

Motivation is usually the hardest part to put into words, and there are understandable reasons for that. Many professionals do not want to sound negative about their current employer, so they stay vague about why they are looking to move. They also haven’t built trust with the prospective employer yet, so they stay a little guarded about their real reasons. In the tax community, this is amplified. It is a small world, and tax professionals can be very nervous about who may know whom. The result is a safe but flat answer, and an interviewer who cannot tell whether the interest is real.

The way through is to separate what pushes you away from what pulls you forward. You can speak positively and specifically about what draws you to a company, a sector, or a type of work without saying a word against your current employer. In the example above, that would have meant clearly saying she wanted the role because of the company and the industry, and addressing the over-qualified question head-on rather than leaving it unspoken. Writing this down in advance lets you choose your words carefully, which is exactly what guarded professionals need.

Articulating your experience is the second challenge, and it is one I see regularly with tax professionals. Most are very busy doing their jobs, and they rarely stop to think about how they do what they do, or why. Work that feels like normal business-as-usual to them is often complex, technical, and valuable to someone outside their team. When asked about achievements or challenges, they can struggle to translate those everyday tasks into something worth talking about. Your story document is where you do that translation. Go through a typical year and ask yourself what you handled, what was difficult, what you changed, and what the outcome was. You will usually find more than you expected.

So before your next interview, prepare two documents. Let your CV tell the interviewer what you have done. Let your story tell them who you are, why you want this role, and what you will bring to it. Professionals who do both walk into the room ready to answer the question every interviewer is really asking: Do you want this job?

Want to discuss your tax or treasury career?
Contact Kate Flanagan at kate.flanagan@Barden.ie or via LinkedIn to organise a confidential advisory chat.