Notes on getting the interview
Most advice in this category is written by people selling the advice. These posts are written by people selling a tool, which is not much better, so the difference is made structural instead: every number below links to the study, statute or dataset behind it, and where the evidence runs out the post says so in the body rather than in a footnote.
- 3 min read
The question you should ask before you answer
A clarifying question is not a weakness. It changes what a good answer looks like, and it tells the interviewer how you think.
- 4 min read
"Responsible for managing": the bullet that says you had a job
One volunteer's list of the resume mistakes they see every week, and the single item on it that is about what you achieved rather than what you were called.
- 8 min read
A job posting is a question list in disguise
Interview questions are built from a job analysis, and a job posting describes that same job. Four worked mappings, and the limit of the inference.
- 5 min read
A rejected application is not a failed interview
An interviewer lists the reasons they did not hire someone who left thinking it went well. Almost none of them were visible from inside the conversation.
- 7 min read
Are unpaid internships legal in Ontario?
Unpaid internships in Ontario are mostly unlawful. The employee test, the narrow real exemptions, the 2026 minimum wage, and where to ask for a real answer.
- 4 min read
Five rounds, and a man in a car park
A candidate spent six weeks and five interviews to be told he had "lack of strategic alignment" by an executive who joined late, wore sunglasses, and asked about his GPA.
- 4 min read
Stagger your applications
The strongest account in the candidate research is not about referrals. It is about spending the applications you do not care about on being bad at something first.
- 8 min read
STAR is the wrong half of STAR
The structure in STAR is the half that raises interview validity. The scripted delivery is the reported failure mode. The incident brief to prepare instead.
- 8 min read
The 75% ATS rejection statistic is not real
The number is real and the claim is not. It is a keyword-match threshold from 2011, not a rejection rate. What ATS actually do, and what the evidence supports.
- 8 min read
The interview questions an Ontario employer cannot ask you
Ontario's Human Rights Code bars questions that classify you on a prohibited ground, directly or indirectly. What is barred, what is lawful, what to do.
- 4 min read
The salary question you are told to negotiate, and the one you are not
Advice about job searches is almost entirely about the number. The thing that decides whether there is a number at all is rarely discussed.
- 4 min read
What a 45-minute interview is actually costing you
The research behind this product contains exactly one measurement of what an interview process costs the candidate, and it is a single reply in someone else's thread. It is still the only one there is.
- 7 min read
What happens when you negotiate a salary
US survey data on what happens when you ask for more, why the employer's framing moves the number first, and the one risk nobody has measured.
- 4 min read
Your resume PDF might contain no text at all
A resume saved with text boxes exports as a file a machine can open and a person cannot read. How to check yours in ten seconds, and what to do when it fails.
The same material runs as a daily post on Instagram, in a form that fits a phone screen. This is where the sources are.