I received two emails from a listener. They are about one year and five months apart. Our listener, who we're going to call James, used this podcast to change his life, and you'll find out how, and some ideas for how you can do the same thing. James wrote to me, Matthew, I wasn't sure how to write this. It's kind of a long write up. P. S. It's not a long write up. I've been at the same company for 13 years and have been applying for management positions over the past 9 months and have had no luck. A new position opened up recently and my current management team let me know about it. I spent the last 4 weeks before my interview listening to your podcast and taking notes whenever I could and preparing as best I could. I'm so happy to say it worked. I was offered a management position at the highest pay scale managers at my company are offered. And I truthfully don't think I could have nailed my interviews without your insight and knowledge. I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who's eager to better their interview process and techniques to listen to this podcast. It can change lives and better someone's entire interview game. Without you, Matthew, I truly believe I wouldn't be accepting the best job offer of my career. Cheers, brother. P. S. If you want to read this on your podcast, you can call me James. Smiley face. So, I respond and say, James, thanks so much for the email and congratulations. I appreciate the permission to share your story. On the podcast, please stay in touch. Well, James did stay in touch, and his update is out of this world. I'll read that in just a second, but let's dig into his first email. First, and see how that helped him and what you can learn from it. I don't know how all of you listen to the job interview experience. I do know how I listen to podcasts. Getting ready for work while doing stuff around the house or yard. In the car, that's great and normal and all that, but James did something that I should have encouraged all of you listeners to do a long time ago. He took notes. He didn't just listen to the podcast. He studied it. It just makes sense. There's a lot of industry leading outside the box information that I share here. I write and record the podcast myself, and I can't even remember what I say. So you probably can't either. Whether it's on your cell phone, notes section, a Google Doc, or a piece of paper, consider taking notes on the things that stick out to you most on the job interview experience. You can take all those notes, the best of the best of what I say, and review them. Build yourself and your job search upon them. Then, what's best, it's your pre interview review tool. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses within the job search itself. You might be great at applying for positions online. You might be really disciplined about that, but maybe the conversation, the job interview, is where you struggle. You now have a document that you can review before each interview. Go over the most important parts of it. You can't listen to five episodes the hour before your next job interview, but you can review and study your notes if you take them. There's the idea of active and passive learning. Passive would be watching a video, listening to a podcast. Active learning would be taking notes, pausing to repeat what I suggest in your own words. Things like that. So taking time to work out what I say and suggest for your own interview, for your own career. A big piece of the puzzle here is also visualization. Visualize the interview scenarios I bring up. Visualize walking into the job interview. Visualize the video interview. Practice saying things out loud. Hear your own voice. Improve it. Learn from it. And keep working. Okay, so I see an email come into my inbox on my cell phone. It's James again. Does he have another question? Does he have bad news? I wasn't sure what to expect. Here's James second message, out of the blue, on a Sunday morning. I did ask him to stay in touch, and I'm really grateful he did. Hi Matt, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I contacted you a little over a year ago, thanking you and crediting your podcast for helping me prepare and ultimately get one of my dream jobs at the company I had been at for 13 years. I'd like to give you even more credit as recently another opportunity in the company I work for opened up and I began the interview process. I began revisiting your podcast, specifically the episodes where you talk about handling pre interview nerves, which helped me out a ton the last time around. I found out last week that I was awarded the position. I signed my offer and my first day in my new role is next week. I am so excited for my career to grow in ways I never would have imagined. And it's largely thanks to your podcasts. Thank you again for all you do. It has helped myself and others immensely. Feel free to use this on your podcast if you'd like, but please use a fake name. If you do, maybe I'll be sending you another email in a few years or so. As I don't intend for this to be my last stop with the company I'm at. Cheers and thanks again. Congratulations, James. Seriously. Receiving messages like this is like Christmas morning for me. Every time. Here's the thing, though. James isn't listening to this episode. He's not listening to the job interview experience. He graduated. He's making way more money now. In his dream position, one that's bigger and better than he ever imagined. That's why I'm here. For you. For James. That's my goal. For you to come here, learn a ton. My goal, the absolute best, very best information on job interviews in the entire world. I know quite a lot about these, and I push myself every day to create content that does just this, what it did for James. So let's review James message, and what you can learn and apply from it. In his first email, he shared that he got a crazy good promotion thanks to the job interview experience. The credit goes to James. Did you notice anything in his second email? He didn't stop. He didn't settle. He knew he was capable of even more. He got a promotion, but he knew he was capable of more. James revisited a lot of episodes. But he focused on his weak points, like pre interview nerves. I cover a bunch of topics on this podcast, and most episodes are broken down into single topics, so you can choose the episodes that apply to you the most first, and then listen from everything to everything else from there. So take a second to look within. What are your weak points in this process? Are your nerves getting too high? So high that they're affecting starts, what don't you know about? Or, what do you need to improve? What questions haven't you thought, interview questions haven't you thought through? Look through my episodes to find where I cover those areas, or send me your question on the voicemail bag at jobinterviewexperience. com. So look within, and with that self assessment, you can cover what needs you have that are most important first, and then you can keep listening. My hope is to bring up topics, ideas, and issues that you haven't thought of as well. Weaknesses that maybe you didn't know you have. To help open your eyes more and more about this process. James said something in his email. I want to cover again. He said, my career to grow in ways that I never could have imagined. Just like James, your career can grow in ways you aren't even considering right now. A big difference I see in people's careers is the work that they put into their career. Doing great work for a company is the foundation of that. But if you settle, your employer is likely to settle too. If you see more in yourself than your current role, you can do more, whether it's with your current employer or especially new opportunities. Do you believe in yourself like James believes in himself? You should. That's why I make this podcast, because I know you can do more. You have capabilities and talents that are unique, that can grow and that companies want. Maybe you haven't uncovered all of them yet. That's why I push you to do so, to get those accreditations, to learn new things. Maybe you have areas that you're not focusing on enough. That's why I talk about. Trying to be someone who you're not will just exhaust you and not make use of your natural talents. Your expertise is not job interviews. That's mine. That's my calling. My calling is this. Sharing this information with you. Helping James. Your calling is something else. My job is showing you how to connect dots between you for a company. Your job is to be great at whatever it is you're great at or whatever it is you're trying to be great at. So be like James. James. Don't settle. Believe in yourself. James listened to a lot of episodes. He took notes. He listened again. It's work. He went far, and so can you. You have capabilities and talent that are unique, that can grow, that companies want. If you don't apply, if you don't throw your hat in the ring, if you don't throw your resume in the ring, a company is never going to know about you. Sharpen your work skills, grow beyond your role, become dangerously good at your job, create new ideas, create new initiatives, better processes, find a book about your skill set, find a podcast about your skill set, about your industry, find an online training or certification to add to your resume in the next week, the next week from when you hear this. You can add it to your resume. You can talk about it at work. Make your boss nervous about how attractive you're becoming in the job market. Make yourself confident in how attractive you now are to other companies. Your career is in your hands. Help yourself grow. Invest in yourself. Do you know who gets the return on that investment? It's you, you, the people you love, the people that depend on you, the people that will be important in your life, maybe not today, but in the future. When you invest in your career, in your vocation, in your skill set, you get the return on that investment. Thank you, James, for following up, for the kind words, for the two huge life updates. I'm sorry, James, that you won't hear this episode. But I'm not sorry. James is busy leading, growing, making a ton more money. I bet James is working on his next move right now. Growing, strategizing, learning, visualizing, and pushing himself to the next level. This isn't the only message I've received like this. I get a lot. Listen to the podcast. Use it 100 percent selfishly for you, your income, your dream job, your career, your dream home, your relocation. The things that you need to thrive, the things that reward you for your hard work. Use this podcast selfishly for you. It worked for James. It will work for you. In the meantime, I'm here to help in every way that I can. I'm here for you and I'm here to help. Cheers James. Thank you for listening to the job interview experience.