So I received a long WhatsApp message from my friend Phoebe. Phoebe is one of my mentees. She’s the daughter of my friend Dana, and she’s a real whippersnapper. She’s one of those kids that’s always been a hustler. She’s always worked as the camp counselor, the babysitter when she was too old to be a babysitter. She’s that kid who raises their hand to do anything to make an extra buck. She’s organized, motivated, and she thrives on hard work. In working with her, one of the things we’ve been doing – and it’s not only with Phoebe, it’s with a couple of other people – we talk about how to shape their story. It’s easy to feel when you’re in a job search or you really want something that you have to sell yourself, and you focus on what the company wants, what the job is, what you think they want to hear. And I like to bring it back to the person and get them to be really clear on the three or four things they want people to know about them.

In the case of Charlie when he was looking for a job and interviewing – Charlie is one of my friends I’ve spoken about in the past, the son of one of my besties, Lisa – and one of the things I told him to say in the job interview is that he’s always been an early bird gets the worm type of person. And he’s always been the guy that hustles for a dime. He was selling toys when he was like10 years old. He’d go and collect people’s unwanted toys, take them in a wagon to the schoolyard and sell them. And in an interview you can sound personable and reveal something critically important about yourself that a smart interviewer will pick up on.

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