What My Interview Taught Me About the Power of HOW

Last December, I went into what I thought would be a routinely great QA interview. I’d been stable in my QA role for over 7 years now, I was recruited without formal interviews in the past. I felt confident - maybe too confident. That confidence became my biggest mistake.

The Interview Story

The interviewer and I had a great conversation. But when the interviewer asked me to describe a specific bug I'd found, my mind went completely blank. Seven years of testing experience, hundreds of bugs logged, and I couldn't recall a single example. I nervously laughed it off saying, “I've found so many bugs I can't even remember them all.” The interviewer's expression told me everything - I'd just demonstrated exactly what they didn't want to hire. A few days later, the feedback confirmed exactly what I feared:

Growth area feedback

Prior to this interview, I'd spent months perfecting my WHY for my QA work: creating spaces where teams feel safe to innovate while maintaining quality standards. Here's exactly what I had refined:

My actual mission statements - months of work that meant nothing without concrete examples

But in that moment, I realized having a strong WHY means nothing if you can't properly demonstrate HOW you deliver results.

Several mentors had told me 'show, don't just tell' or as quoted by Angie Jones “Work out loud” - but this time the lesson hit differently.

When I started blogging in 2021, I wanted to document my learnings for others making similar transitions. What I didn't realize was that I was also building my own reference library - proof of my hands-on experience that I should have been ready to share during that interview.

As I always say, failure is a lesson and we should Fail Fast and Fail Forward.

Fail forward cycle

So here's what I'm doing about it.

That interview failure sparked the creation of this new series: a way to document the HOWs I should have been ready to share.

Hands On Wisdom

New: Hands On Wisdom Series

Every week, I'll share specific examples of HOW I solve real QA challenges - the concrete details I wish I'd had ready in that interview room, using this format:

H - One Hack/Habit you can implement immediately

O - One Observation from my project experience

W - One 'What if' question to expand your thinking

Each post shares real testing knowledge in bite-sized pieces that we can all reference later.

If you're job hunting right now, start documenting your HOWs today.

Don't make my mistake - don’t wait until you're sitting across from an interviewer, scrambling to remember what you actually do.

Your experience has value - but only if you can articulate it.

Next week, I'll kick off the series with my first HOW post, showing how I integrated AI into my testing workflow and reduced test case creation time by 60%.

P.S.: Job hunting is hard. Working without clear examples of your impact is harder. Pick your hard and start building your proof.

Thanks for reading!

Good luck on your next interview and happy testing!