I once hired a woman who came highly referred by a colleague I trusted. She was clearly capable. And early in the interview, she asked me, almost nervously, “Is it okay that I don’t have a bachelor’s degree? I only have an associate’s.”
I had not brought it up. I did not care. It was not on my mind at all. She was referred, she was sharp, and the degree was a non-issue to me. But she had walked in carrying it like a blemish, and by proactively flagging it, she almost made me start wondering if it should matter, when a second earlier it did not.
That is the trap, and it is so common. People walk into interviews and preemptively apologize for the things they have decided are weaknesses. The gap in the resume. The unrelated major. The nonlinear path. The credential they do not have. And here is the thing: most of the time, you are the only person in the room who sees it as a weakness. When you flag it, you do not get credit for honesty. You just teach the other person to see the flaw you have been staring at in the mirror.
Now let me tell you about someone who did the exact opposite.
I once interviewed someone with a PhD in Japanese studies.
She was American, with no family ties to Japan. She had simply fallen in love with the language, the culture, and the history, and she had chased that passion about as far as a person can chase anything. She became fluent. She did serious doctoral research that required her to earn the trust of strangers and interview them directly, which only her language skills made possible. And to keep visiting Japan on a student’s budget, she qualified to work as a flight attendant on Japan-bound flights. She built her whole life around a genuine obsession.
The role she was interviewing for was building educational travel experiences for students. Japan was part of it, sure, but the job was much broader than that. So on paper, you might look at a Japanese studies PhD and think: interesting, but is this really the right fit?
Here is why I could not stop asking her questions, and why I wanted to hire her.
Her Japan expertise was not actually the point. What got me was the tenacity. Anyone who pursues something that hard, that far, with that much self-direction, is going to bring exactly that same tenacity to their work. Her unusual path was not a quirky detour I had to look past. It was the single best piece of evidence in the entire interview about who she would be as an employee. She did not present it as something to explain away. She just told her story, genuinely and completely, and let it show me who she was.
So here is the lesson, and it is the same lesson twice, from both sides.
Own your real story, and stop apologizing for the parts you assume are liabilities.
If you have an unusual path, a strange major, a passion that seems unrelated, a winding route to get here, do not present it as something you owe someone an explanation for. Present it as evidence of a quality that will show up in the work. Tenacity. Curiosity. The ability to teach yourself hard things. Self-direction. The scholar did not say “I know this Japanese studies thing seems irrelevant.” She told her story with total conviction, and let me draw the obvious conclusion: this person goes all in on things.
And if there is something you have decided is a weakness, a missing degree, a gap, a job that did not work out, do not walk in and hand it to your interviewer as the first thing out of your mouth. If it genuinely comes up, address it honestly and briefly and move on. But do not volunteer your own perceived flaws. You are almost always a harsher judge of your background than anyone across the table.
The path itself is neutral. Nonlinear is not bad. An associate’s degree is not bad. A weird major is not bad. What determines whether these read as assets or liabilities is entirely in how you carry them. Own them, and they become the most interesting thing about you. Apologize for them, and you teach people to doubt.
You do not need a perfect, linear, credential-stacked background. You need to know how to tell the true story of the one you have, and to tell it like you would not trade it for anyone else’s.
Talk soon,
Jeff
Know someone heading into interviews who downplays their background? Forward this to them. If someone sent you this, you can subscribe at gethiredplaybook.com.
P.S. Hit reply and tell me: what is one part of your background you have been treating as a weakness? I will tell you honestly whether it is actually a weakness, or whether it is just a strength you have been apologizing for.