The Hiring Manager's Scorecard

Candidates prepare by imagining what they want to say. Hiring managers decide by working through a list of things they need to be true. Those two activities are barely related, which is why strong candidates sometimes lose to weaker ones who happened to answer the actual question. This is the eight things being scored, the three that are fatal, and how the decision actually gets made — which is rarely a spreadsheet and usually a short conversation between two or three people the next day. Six of the eight are about behavior rather than experience, and every one of them can be evidenced from a job in another industry — which is the reason career switchers get hired at all. Score yourself honestly, name your two lowest, and you will know what to prepare instead of trying to prepare for everything.