A mentee said this to me a few months into working together: "I was working hard, but in the wrong direction."
He had a data science degree with distinction. He was firing off twenty job applications a day. He was doing mock interviews on the weekends. He was studying on his night shifts between his healthcare assistant role.
He was doing everything right.
Except nothing was landing.
Somewhere around month three, we sat down and worked out why. He wasn't aimed at the roles the market was actually hiring for. His CV wasn't telling the story hiring managers wanted to hear. His interview prep was answering questions nobody was asking. He was climbing the wrong hill, at full speed.
So we stopped. And we changed direction.
Nine changes we made
The same person doing the same work. What changed was the angle. Nine months later he was on a bus in Wales when the call came: NHS Senior Data Engineer, Band 7, £46,000. Band 2 to Band 7 inside a year.
None of what we changed was clever. Almost all of it was correcting angle, not adding effort.
1. One-page CV, "so what?" on every line. Two pages became one. Every bullet had to answer what changed because he did the thing, rather than describing what the thing was. Recruiter calls started coming within a fortnight.
2. Twenty applications a day, tailored. Consistency ate quantity for breakfast. Spray-and-pray got scrapped. Each application shaped to the job description, even when it cost an extra ten minutes.
3. Six STAR-formatted answers, ready to reach for. Situation, Task, Action, Result. Six real stories he could reach for in any interview instead of freezing and improvising.
4. Weekly mock interviews. Every Saturday for three months. Interview prep exists to build pressure tolerance. Weekly mocks are how you actually build it.
5. Multi-cloud portfolio. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Databricks. Roles cross vendors. Portfolios that only show one look thin the moment the JD widens.
6. Certifications the market was actually asking for. He ignored the trending certs and what his peers were chasing. He pulled thirty target job descriptions, saw Azure Fundamentals and Azure Data Engineering come up over and over, and did those two.
7. LinkedIn as an inbound channel. Profile rewrite. Five to ten new connections a week. Two or three thoughtful comments a day. Six weeks in, recruiters were finding him instead of the other way round.
8. Cover letters and supporting statements at full length. If the form said 500 words, he wrote 500. Half the applicants leave 200 words on the table and then wonder why the culture-fit call never comes.
9. Aim higher on the level. After a Band 5 reserve list (close but not quite), he stopped applying at Band 5 and Band 6. He aimed straight at Band 7. The gap between "overqualified on paper" and "underqualified" is usually confidence, not skill.
Direction beats intensity.
Every one of those changes cost him time he was already spending. The applications, the studying, the projects, the interviews. Same effort, redirected.
If something hasn't landed for you in three months of steady work, it is almost never the effort. It is usually one of these nine, quietly bent at the wrong angle.
The full playbook
I wrote up the version I use with every mentee. What actually separates candidates who get hired, the skills matrix hiring managers use, a 90-day plan, and the five projects worth building. Free 17-page playbook. Written for DevOps, but the interview prep and portfolio thinking apply to any tech role. Direct link, no signup page:
The mentee above used the same frameworks for a data engineering role. Direction is portable.
💬 What's the hill you're climbing right now? Certifications, portfolio, applications, interviews, or something I haven't listed?
Reply with HILL and one sentence about the one you're on. I'll tell you if I think it's the right one. I read every reply.
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Shola
P.S. Last four Tuesdays I said this newsletter is weekly again. This is week five of the promise. Feel free to keep counting.
P.P.S. Missed last week's build breakdown? The seven decisions behind the multi-agent Bedrock sample I shipped are right here: Seven decisions behind my agent build.