🔸 TLDR
- Don’t list projects. Tell stories.
- For EACH project / product / component on your CV, be ready to answer the 6 reflection questions below. This is how you prove impact, maturity, and self-awareness — not just “I worked on X.” 💼🔥
🔸 HOW TO PREP YOUR CV BEFORE THE INTERVIEW 📝
For every line on your resume (service, module, feature, microservice, platform, etc.), map these 6 angles 👇
🔸 1. CHALLENGE 💪
▪️ What was hard about this project/component? (scale, latency, security, legacy, politics, impossible deadline…)
▪️ Why was it a real problem for the company?
▪️ What did YOU personally do to handle it?
🔸 2. MISTAKE / FAILURE 😬
▪️ Where did this project go wrong? (bad assumption, wrong design, outage, misunderstanding with product…)
▪️ What was your part in it — honestly?
▪️ What changed after that so it wouldn’t happen again?
🔸 3. WHAT YOU ENJOYED ❤️
▪️ What part of this work actually made you happy? (debugging deep perf issues, mentoring juniors, cleaning tech debt, shipping a feature users loved…)
▪️ Why did you enjoy it?
▪️ What does that say about where you’re strongest?
🔸 4. LEADERSHIP MOMENT 🧭
▪️ In this specific project, when did you act as a leader?
▪️ You unblocked people?
▪️ You made a call and others followed?
▪️ You brought structure in chaos?
▪️ Leadership = influence, not title.
🔸 5. CONFLICT / DISAGREEMENT ⚔️
▪️ Where did humans collide on this project? (tech choice, priorities, scope, quality vs speed…)
▪️ How did you handle it without burning bridges?
▪️ Can you show you can push for good engineering AND stay collaborative?
🔸 6. WHAT YOU’D DO DIFFERENTLY 🔁
▪️ If you had to restart this same component today, what would you change?
▪️ Focus on process and decisions, not just “I’d use a different framework 😎”.
▪️ This shows growth and critical thinking.
🔸 WHY THIS MATTERS IN INTERVIEW 🎯
▪️ Most senior/hiring questions are basically: “Tell me about project X on your CV… but prove you actually lived it.”
▪️ This grid gives you 6 ready angles per project = instant depth.
▪️ Depth beats buzzwords. Every. Single. Time. 🎤
🔸 TAKEAWAYS ✅
▪️ Your CV is not bullet points. It’s case studies.
▪️ Prep each project with: challenge, failure, fun, leadership, conflict, hindsight.
▪️ That’s how you sound senior, even without “senior” in your title. 🚀
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