Imagine you’re in an interview. You tell the story you trust. It has a clean arc. It ends where it should. The interviewer nods, maybe even smiles, and you feel that small internal release that says, Okay. That landed.
Then the follow-up arrives.
Not hostile. Not dramatic. Just a normal question, the way someone asks you to clarify a decision.
“What did you try first?”
You answer the way competent people answer.
“I mean… I aligned with stakeholders, got buy-in, that kind of thing.”
The interviewer nods again. There’s a pause. Not long. Just long enough to notice.
“And when that didn’t work?”
You keep your voice steady.
“I escalated. I reset expectations.”
Another nod. Another pause. They type some notes.
“Okay,” they say. “What were you avoiding?”
They might phrase it differently. What was hard for you? What did you not want to do? What would you do differently now? The words change. The moment doesn’t.
Because this is where a neat story starts to feel thin.
Most interview stories are assembled. The rough parts are sanded down. The uncomfortable parts are removed. The human parts are replaced with language that sounds competent. It feels plotted.
Situation. Task. Action. Result.
Tidy. Familiar. Safe.
And that safety is usually the problem.
Because tidy stories skip the hinge.
They skip the moment you hesitated. The moment you delayed the conversation. The moment you chose the comfortable move instead of the necessary one. The moment your first instinct was wrong and you didn’t want to admit it.
So the interviewer keeps digging.
They’re not asking for more detail. They’re listening for the missing scene. The scene that proves you can look at yourself without flinching. The scene where your behavior changes.
That’s judgment. That’s what senior roles pay for.
And that’s why follow-up questions feel sharp. They aren’t poking holes in your story. They’re searching for the part you skipped.
This is why writing your stories on LinkedIn matters.
It’s the same experiment, just scaled.
You write. Someone reads. You never meet. You never speak. But they still form a picture of how you think.
Sometimes it shows up as a message that’s almost casual.
“I saved this.”
Not praise. Not applause. Just a signal that you entered their head and stayed there.
If you write the missing scene well, trust forms before you ever show up. Over time, that trust becomes a reputation. It travels across teams and companies because it’s tied to your judgment, not your title.
This is what the video teaches you to find.
The video below is a live walkthrough of how to find that missing scene and write it without melodrama, without over-explaining, and without polishing it into something fake.
If you’ve ever walked out of an interview thinking, I answered well, why did it still feel flat? There’s a good chance the answer is simple.
You skipped the part that proves you can change.
Watch the Masterclass ☝️
Don’t take notes first. Watch it once without pausing. Notice where your attention spikes and where it fades.
Then watch it again, slower. Pay attention to the follow-up questions that keep appearing, because those are the same questions interviewers use when they’re digging for the missing scene.
If you want to go further
This video is a recording from my weekly Saturday meetup. Each week, we select one topic and go in depth. This week’s topic was Storytelling on LinkedIn to build reputation.
The weekly meetup is $17/month.
If you enroll in Top Engineer or Top Tech Leader, the meetup is included for all of 2026 (a $204 savings). Use code LTT25JE for a limited-time discount on both courses.
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