---
title: "After the resume screen: what I look for in an interview"
description: "At the resume screen I'm sorting. In the interview I collect evidence: conditions, trade-offs, results, costs. What that means for candidates between boxes."
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-11/what-i-look-for-in-interviews-cover-en-2026-10-m.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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Organizations & Hiring

In this article

1. [I write down events, not adjectives](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s1)
2. [Four places I take you](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s2)
3. [Why I keep asking "at the time"](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s3)
4. [I don't ask what motivates you](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s4)
5. [People who can't name a failure](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s5)
6. [For people between boxes](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s6)

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2. [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)
3. [Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring)

# After the resume screen: what I look for in an interview

Adjectives don’t score. Only events go in the evidence box

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)6 min read

Contents6

1. [I write down events, not adjectives](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s1)
2. [Four places I take you](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s2)
3. [Why I keep asking "at the time"](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s3)
4. [I don't ask what motivates you](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s4)
5. [People who can't name a failure](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s5)
6. [For people between boxes](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews#s6)

At the resume screen, I'm mostly sorting into piles, and each resume gets less of my time than it deserves. 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.

Adjectives don’t score. Only events go in the evidence box

How I use my interview scorecard. Every line has a required evidence box

What the candidate saysOn the scorecardWhat I do

Candidate“I’m very driven”

→

An adjective. The evidence box stays empty

→

Set it aside and wait for the next line

A specific event comes up

→

Conditions, action and result get written down

→

Only now does the pen move and the score count

Head of sales strategy candidateDid this, did that

→

Asked to pick one, he stalls and goes back to listing

→

Very little ends up in the evidence boxes

If the evidence box is empty, the score next to it doesn’t count.

Figure 1. On my scorecard an adjective like “I’m very driven” never fills the evidence box, and a score only counts once the candidate gives an event with its conditions, action and result.

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, what I hear is a rehearsed success story.

The fourth is the one I care about most. Track records get noisy mostly because people mix up what the environment gave them with what they 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.

Rehearsed stories skip the conditions and the cost

The four places I take a candidate through on one event, in my interviews

1. 01The conditionsWhat state things were in, the authority, people, budget and constraints you had
2. 02The trade-offYou could have gone with A or B. Which did you pick, and why?
3. 03What you actually didWho pushed back, and how you handled it. Most people prepare only this
4. 04The result and the costWhat it cost you, and how much came from the market, your predecessor and you

Without the first and the fourth, what I hear is a rehearsed success story.

Figure 2. Taking one event through conditions, trade-off, action and result-and-cost shows that rehearsed answers cover the action but usually skip the conditions at the start and the cost at the end.

## 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. If you really weighed the other road, you can tell me what was on 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?" I already know the answer. Everyone gives roughly the same one.

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 between boxes

Last time I said people who are hard to classify lose out at the resume stage. The interview tilts things 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 here is 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.

This way of asking has a cost, and I see it from my side of the table. 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?

What a reference check in Japan can add after the interview is in [Reference checks in Japan: what you can actually learn](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/background-checks-in-japan?hsLang=en).

Picking the right person is not the same as getting them to join. See [Reading Japan's 65% offer decline rate](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-offer-decline-rate?hsLang=en).

For separating “we” from “I” inside a single event, see [“It was all me”: finding what a candidate really did](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/it-was-all-me-interview?hsLang=en). If you use AI to process interview notes, here is [the one step not to hand over](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/ai-interview-notes-limits?hsLang=en).

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

## Read next

1. 01[Reference checks in Japan: what you can actually learn](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/background-checks-in-japan?hsLang=en)6 min
   
   In Japan, former employers usually confirm employment and little else. What the law rules out, why checks come before ...
2. 02[Why do queues get long all at once?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/why-do-queues-get-long-all-at-once?hsLang=en)7 min
   
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3. 03[Disney's 66 Character.AI hires: a talent map block](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/disney-acquihire-talent-map?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Disney is taking about 65 Character.AI staff at roughly $60M a year in pay and bid $20M for a license. On a talent map, ...

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