Hacking The Job Interview: Know What You ‘Suck’ At

I still remember my shock when a fellow panelist at a conference years ago told audience members that his biggest advice to get a job was to lie on your resume and in the interviews.

Coming off a decade in which there had been notable instances of people getting fired for having fabricated experiences on their resume, the ethics couldn’t have been clearer from my perspective.

A decade later, in an era where AI tools are helping people fine tune their resumes to match the skills and credentials asked for in job descriptions, if that’s one bright line in the sand that you still shouldn’t cross, how do you navigate the delicate balance between self-promotion and humility as you’re seeking to get a job?

One thing I’ve learned from my colleague Bob Moesta, co-founder of the Jobs to Be Done theory and a serial innovator and entrepreneur, is that when you’re developing a product or company, it’s not enough to know what you want it to do.

You also need to know what it’s going to “suck at doing.”

That’s true with individuals as well.

Although one of the most popular job interview questions is “What is your greatest weakness?”,