Don’t Tell Me About Yourself

About Don’t Tell Me About Yourself

“Don’t Tell Me About Yourself” is where old-school hiring meets a modern reality check. Hosted by Expert Interviewers Co-Founders Lorna Erickson and Victoria Gates, this show blends their combined 40 years of real-world experience with the unfiltered commentary that made 340K+ people laugh, cringe, and rethink how interviews actually work. Each week, they tackle the biggest news in hiring, from chaotic interview moments to ghost jobs and questions that should have been retired decades ago. Whether you hire, apply, or just love a good interview trainwreck, this show is for anyone who’s ever sat on either side of the interview table. Real stories. Real data. Real talk about how to make interviews actually work for everyone. Because great hiring isn’t luck—it's a skill.

Publisher

WRKdefined Podcast Network

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Jan 2026

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

33 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Did Anyone Actually Teach You How to Interview? with Danielle Farage

   Episode Description: We train managers on leadership, performance, and compliance, but when it comes to interviewing, many are handed a resume and expected to figure it out. In this episode, we’re joined by future of work expert Danielle Farage to talk about why interviewing is still treated like an assumed skill, what happens when new managers are not given the tools to hire well, and how poor interviews affect hiring decisions, candidate experience, employer brand, and manager confidence. We also share what every new hiring manager should know before interviewing their first candidate and officially launch the New Hiring Manager Playbook, a practical guide built to help managers prepare, interview, and make better hiring decisions without needing years of experience first. Get the New Hiring Manager Playbook for $29.99:https://expert-interviewers.mykajabi.com/new-hiring-manager-playbook Created by Expert Interviewers in collaboration with Danielle Farage and delivered through Adobe PDF Spaces, the Playbook includes practical guidance, checklists, scripts, and interactive support designed for first-time interviewers and hiring managers who were never formally taught how to interview. Key Takeaways: Becoming a manager does not automatically make someone a skilled interviewer. Interviewing is often treated as an assumed skill instead of something managers need to learn and practice. Many interviewers inherit their approach from previous managers, outdated question lists, or their own experiences as candidates instead of receiving formal training. A poor interview process can lead to bad hiring decisions, cause companies to lose strong candidates, damage employer brand, and hurt a new manager’s confidence. Candidates are evaluating the company and hiring manager during the interview just as much as the company is evaluating them. Hiring managers should prepare before every interview by understanding the role, reviewing the candidate’s background, knowing what they are responsible for assessing, and preparing useful questions. Interviews should be treated as a two-way conversation rather than an interrogation or test of whether a candidate knows the unwritten rules. The interviewer owns the meeting and is responsible for asking good questions, following up, and collecting enough evidence to make a hiring decision. A candidate who interviews well is not automatically the candidate who will perform best in the job. New hiring managers need practical support they can use before, during, and after an interview. The New Hiring Manager Playbook was created to give first-time and undertrained interviewers the most important tools they need to get started. Your first few interviews should not have to be your training. Interviewing is a skill, and skills can be learned. Timestamps 00:00 Why managers are expected to interview without training 04:15 What happens when a new manager makes a bad hire 06:12 Why interviewing is treated like an assumed skill 09:28 What’s at stake when managers interview poorly 13:40 Signs an interviewer needs more support 18:20 Why “I’ll just wing it” is a problem 21:38 What every new hiring manager should know 22:36 Why interviewing should be a two-way conversation 26:34 The interviewer’s responsibility in the conversation 28:22 Why we created the New Hiring Manager Playbook 33:10 What’s inside the Playbook + Adobe PDF Spaces 34:17 The New Hiring Manager Playbook launch Keywords hiring manager training, new manager training, interview training, how to interview candidates, interview skills, hiring manager interview questions, candidate experience, interview preparation, structured interviews, New Hiring Manager Playbook

2. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Is Your Interview Panel Just a Group Vibe Check?

   Episode Description:Interview panels are supposed to bring more perspectives, reduce bias, and lead to better hiring decisions. But adding more interviewers does not automatically create more structure. In this episode, we break down why panel interviews often turn into repeated questions, conflicting standards, loud opinions, and groupthink. You’ll learn how to prepare interviewers before a panel, assign clear areas of evaluation, improve the candidate experience, score candidates independently, and run a debrief that focuses on evidence instead of who liked the candidate most. Key Takeaways: Adding more interviewers does not automatically make an interview process more structured or objective. A successful panel should not be five people interviewing the same candidate. It should be five people collecting different pieces of evidence. Interviewers should know exactly which skills or competencies they own before the candidate enters the room. Repeating the same questions wastes interview time and prevents the team from evaluating other important job-related criteria. Candidates notice when interviewers are unprepared, distracted, contradicting each other, or unclear about their role in the process. A panel interview can become a candidate’s first preview of how meetings, communication, and decision-making work inside the company. Interviewers should score candidates independently before discussing them with the rest of the panel. The first or loudest opinion in a debrief can influence everyone else, especially when interviewers have different levels of seniority. Disagreement between interviewers can be useful when the team goes back to the evidence instead of averaging scores or trying to reach immediate consensus. Having a structured interview process is not the same as having a structured hiring decision process. Calibration means interviewers are using the same definitions and standards to evaluate evidence, not that everyone has to give the candidate the same score. Good panel interviews define success before the interview, focus on job-related evidence during it, and use independent scoring followed by an evidence-based debrief afterward. Timestamps 01:21 Why interview panels make companies feel safer03:20 Why more interviewers do not mean more structure05:09 Why a successful panel starts before the interview05:59 The problem with repeated interview questions07:21 How candidates know a panel is unprepared09:27 When the debrief becomes a group vibe check10:21 What hiring managers told us about debriefs11:29 Why interviewers should score candidates independently12:41 How seniority and loud opinions influence decisions15:09 Why disagreement can improve a hiring debrief16:48 Structured interviews versus structured hiring decisions18:22 What a good panel looks like before, during, and after21:28 Are panel interviews actually bad? Keywords panel interviewinterview panelpanel interview questionshow to conduct a panel interviewpanel interview best practicesinterview debriefhiring debriefinterview scorecardstructured interviewsgroupthink in hiringhiring manager interview traininginterview biascandidate evaluationinterview calibration

3. 

   16 Sept 2026

   Did You Really Ever Have A Shot At That Promotion?

   Internal interviews can be harder to evaluate fairly than external interviews because managers already know the candidate, their reputation, their past mistakes, and their current performance. In this episode, we explain how to interview internal candidates fairly, how to avoid predetermined promotion decisions, why strong performance in a current role does not automatically predict success in the next one, and how to give useful feedback when an employee does not get promoted. You will also learn how structured interviews, clear job criteria, and neutral interviewers can improve internal hiring decisions. Key Takeaways: If the hiring decision is already made and no interview could change the outcome, do not put employees through a performative interview process. Having a frontrunner for an internal role is different from having a predetermined winner. Internal candidates can have both advantages and disadvantages because managers already know their strengths, weaknesses, reputation, and past performance. Being successful in a current role is not evidence that someone will automatically succeed in the next role. Internal promotions should be based on the requirements of the new job, not tenure, likability, loyalty, or whose turn it seems to be. Familiarity and personal chemistry can easily replace job-related evidence when managers evaluate internal candidates. Internal candidates need specific feedback when they are not selected so they understand what skills, competencies, or experience they need to develop. Feedback like “you are not ready yet” or “someone else was stronger” is too vague to help an employee improve. Internal and external candidates should still be evaluated against the same job-related standards and structured interview criteria. A neutral interviewer can help hiring teams separate familiarity, internal history, and bias from evidence about whether someone can do the job. Timestamps 01:22 Was the internal job actually open? 02:27 Frontrunner versus predetermined promotion 03:04 When an internal interview is already decided 06:09 Why internal interviews become awkward 07:22 Why high performance does not guarantee promotion success 09:11 Internal candidate advantages and disadvantages 11:29 How gut feeling affects internal hiring 16:45 Why internal candidate feedback matters 19:41 How to give useful promotion feedback 24:49 How to reduce bias in internal interviews Keywords internal interviewinternal candidate interviewinternal promotionpromotion interviewhow to interview internal candidatesinternal hiring processinternal candidate feedbackstructured interviewspromotion decisionshiring manager interview training

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

8 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

8 ratings

Contact Don’t Tell Me About Yourself

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.