--- title: "After the 30-second resume read: what I look for in an interview" description: "Reading a resume, I'm sorting. In the interview I'm collecting evidence: conditions, trade-offs, results and costs. What that means for candidates, especially career switchers." image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/what-i-look-for-in-interviews-cover-en.png --- [Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) [Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en) [日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog?hsLang=en) [English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog?hsLang=en) [Career](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/career)[Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring) # After the 30-second resume read: what I look for in an interview ![Diagram of moving from a 30-second resume sort to interview evidence: conditions, trade-off, action and cost](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/what-i-look-for-in-interviews-cover-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=what-i-look-for-in-interviews-cover-en.png) A resume gets about 30 seconds from me, and in that time I'm sorting it into a pile. The interview is different. There I stop sorting and start collecting evidence. That's the half I left out of my last piece, [Your resume is a request to be put in a box](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/classification-is-destiny?hsLang=en). ## I write down events, not adjectives Every line on my scorecard has a box next to it for evidence, and it's required. I don't write "strong communicator." I write what the conditions were, what the person did and what happened. If that box is empty, the score next to it doesn't count. So when a candidate tells me "I'm very driven," I set the sentence aside and wait for the next one. If the next one is a specific event, I start writing. What the candidate says“I'm very driven”set aside, wait for the next lineWhat I write downConditions: authority, people, budgetAction: what they actually didResult: what happened, and the cost **Fig.1**If the evidence box is empty, the score next to it doesn't count. I once interviewed a candidate for a head of sales strategy role. He had done this, he had done that. It sounded like he'd seen it all. Then I asked him to pick one and walk me through the conditions and the call he made. He stalled, then went back to listing things he'd done. When the interview ended, there was very little I could put in the evidence boxes. ## Four places I take you When a candidate tells me about something they did, I use follow-up questions to walk them through four places. 1. The conditions. What state things were in when you took over, and the authority, people, budget and constraints you had. 2. The trade-off. You could have gone with A or B. Which did you pick, and why? 3. What you actually did. Who pushed back, and how you handled it. 4. The result and the cost. What it cost you, and how much of the result came from the market, from your predecessor and from you. Most people prepare only the third. Without the first and the fourth, it sounds like a rehearsed success story. The fourth is the one I care about most. The biggest source of noise in a track record is mixing up what the environment gave you with what you did. Plenty of people had a tailwind in the good years. I don't mark that down. I just want to know how strong the wind was. 1Conditionsauthority · people · budget2Trade-offA or B, and why3Actionwhat you did, who pushed back4Result & costwhat it cost youMost people prepare only thisWhat rehearsed stories skipWhat rehearsed stories skipmarketpredecessoryou **Fig.2**Four places. The first and fourth are what rehearsed stories usually skip. ## Why I keep asking "at the time" You can memorize an approach. The conditions are much harder to make up. How many people you had, what budget, how much your boss let you decide. Two follow-ups in, people who weren't really there start to get vague. I also ask about the option you didn't choose. Rehearsed stories only have an upside. Asking about the road not taken shows whether you really weighed it. And I'll come back to the same event from a different angle a few questions later. First the result, then later, what the person who pushed back hardest actually said. Where the two don't line up, I take notes. This isn't about catching lies. Most people aren't lying. Memory just smooths the story. I want to see it before the smoothing. ## I don't ask what motivates you I rarely ask "Do you care more about money or growth?" Everyone gives roughly the same answer. I ask why you really left each of your last few jobs, and why you picked the next one. What people say and how they vote with their feet often differ. If someone says they value growth and all three moves were for a pay rise, I read them as someone who moves for pay. That's fine. I just need to know. I wrote about money and retention in [another piece](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/a-50-raise-and-he-still-left?hsLang=en). ## People who can't name a failure I always ask about a failure once. Not to test modesty. How someone bends under pressure doesn't show when things are going well. If a candidate can't give me a real failure, I leave that box blank. Blank isn't zero. It means the next round keeps asking. If it's still blank by the final round, I start to worry. ## For people who've crossed boxes Last time I said people who are hard to classify lose out at the resume stage. In the interview, things tilt back a little. Boxes are drawn by title and industry. Evidence is recorded by event. Titles don't travel, but the conditions, trade-offs and costs inside an event do. A call you made at a logistics company makes sense to an interviewer at a payments company. When I moved from engineering into HR, the whole interview tested one thing. I had no HR experience, so could what I already had carry the job? My title was no help. All I could offer was what I'd done. So my practical advice: don't spend much time explaining why you've switched tracks so often. Pick two or three events and take each one through all four places. Let the interviewer put you in their box. ## What I haven't worked out From the interviewer's side, this way of asking has a cost. It favors people who tell stories well. It isn't always fair to people who do the work well but explain it less well, especially in a second language. I haven't found a good answer yet. For now, I ask "at the time" one more time and give them a way into the specifics. What's the most specific question you've been asked in an interview lately? [← All articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Get in touch →](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en) ## Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages. [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Get in touch](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en) Nobu Sato Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages. [info@nobusato.jp](mailto:info@nobusato.jp) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/) [X](https://x.com/nobusato5888) © 2026 Nobu Sato. All rights reserved. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement" : [ { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en", "name" : "Home", "position" : 1 }, { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog", "name" : "Articles", "position" : 2 }, { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews", "name" : "After the 30-second resume read: what I look for in an interview", "position" : 3 } ] } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Nobu Sato", "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/author/nobu-sato" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-21T20:05:52.221Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-21T20:05:52.000Z", "headline" : "After the 30-second resume read: what I look for in an interview", "image" : [ "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/what-i-look-for-in-interviews-cover-en.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/nobusatojp-1.jpg" }, "name" : "nobusato.jp" } } ```