Welcome to Move Up.

I'm your host, Matthew Sorensen.

I'm a former executive recruiter, search firm owner,

director of town acquisition talent VP, and world's leading interview coach.

Today I'm taking you behind the curtain into the one room where every high-stakes career move is decided.

A room most of you have never been in where your fate is determined

every single time. We're going to talk about the closed door meeting that happens after your

interview. Now I'm going to show you how hiring decisions are really made. So I'm going to start

with this story. Years ago, when I was a

talent VP, we were hiring for a senior director role and it came down to two candidates. Like it

almost always does. Sometimes there's three, but it's actually two. On paper, they were identical. Same years of

experience, great resumes, both interviewed great. Candidate A was polished, gave perfect textbook

answers, and never said a word out of place, maybe a little too polished. Candidate B was also

polished, but at one point, he challenged one of our

assumptions about a market trend. It was risky. One person in the room, I could tell, like, didn't love it

in the moment, but it was done respectfully. It was a risky but respectful move. After they left,

we met in the conference room. The decision took about 10 minutes or less.

Candidate A got a polite rejection email.

Candidate B got a $180,000 offer and I think wrote a sign-on bonus of like $40,000.

Why?

Because that closed-door meeting in that meeting, we weren't just discussing

their qualifications. We already figured that out. We were discussing which one we trusted to

...