Last Updated on December 30, 2025 by Fly High Coaching
Host and CEO Porschia is joined by executive career strategist Gina Riley, creator of the Career Velocity framework and author of Qualified Isn’t Enough. She reveals why a great resume alone isn’t enough to land a new opportunity and how to communicate your value with clarity and confidence.
They discuss the difference between a unique value proposition and an elevator pitch, the five components that make it powerful, and how to tailor it for interviews, networking, and performance reviews. Gina also shares tips for practicing with trusted advisors and aligning your story with your values.
Gina Riley is a former Intel HR leader and executive search consultant who has led top executive searches, trained hundreds in interview skills, and helps leaders navigate career transitions with a proven system.
What you’ll learn:
- Why a unique value proposition is more powerful than a “golden resume”
- The difference between a unique value proposition and an elevator pitch
- 5 essential components that make your value proposition compelling
- How to structure your career story using the “three-thirds method”
- Tips to practice and refine your value proposition for interviews
- How to tailor your story for different interviewers and networking situations
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about sharing your unique value proposition In an interview with Gina Riley. Gina Riley is transforming how executives approach job search and career transitions. With nearly a decade in corporate HR at Intel, an experience as an executive search consultant for talents group, she has LED C-E-O-C-O-O and CFO searches across industries, trained hundreds in talent selection, and gained unique [00:01:00] insight into what stands out in competitive leadership searches.
She developed the career velocity framework and action oriented system helping executives navigate successful transitions. Riley holds a master’s degree, is a certified Umap coach and a behavioral interview skills training expert. She is an official member of the Forbes Coaches Council and will release her first book.
Qualified Isn’t enough. Develop your story, land the interview, win the job. Riley shares her comprehensive understanding of both sides of executive hiring. Hi Gina. How are you today?
Gina: I am awesome. Thanks for that beautiful intro.
Porschia: We are thrilled to have you with us to discuss sharing your unique value proposition in an interview.
But first we wanna know a little bit about you. So tell me about 7-year-old Gina. Oh
Gina: [00:02:00] goodness. I would say precocious. So I would say my 7-year-old self was sandwiched in between two better years of six and eight with awesome school teachers and whatnot. For some reason, seven was a tough year for me, as I recall, what I loved the most was reading Porsche.
I loved to read. I have a lifelong, love affair with, just. Reading all kinds of books. Reading anything I could get my hands on, actually go to the doctor’s, appointments and I’d be reading magazines and the highlights, kids book, magazines and such.
Porschia: Yes. I was an avid reader as well.
So I could be with you at that library, Gina. So what did you wanna be when you grew up?
Gina: When I was really young, I’m not sure if I had a specific aspiration, but what I can tell you is the timeframe when I did have a good read on where I was heading, and that was when I was 15 years old and I got selected to [00:03:00] go to a leadership seminar for a weekend at what is now my alma mater, Arizona State.
It was called the Hue O’Brien Youth Foundation Leadership Seminar, one sophomore from. Every high school in the state got selected to go. And so I got to hear a lot of content about leadership development and so on. And then when I turned 16, I became a member of an organization called the All Stars.
And it was a group of motivational speakers that traveled all around the country. And they came to our city in Phoenix and took 50 students from three of the rival high schools away for a weekend and gave us very deep programming on relationship building skills and communication skills. And.
Something snapped like in the best possible way. I was I thought to myself, I wanna be like those men and women who brought that programming to us. I wanted to inspire other people to communicate better so that they could build better relationships. And here we fast [00:04:00] forward, I’m in my mid fifties, and that’s exactly what I do, is I help people sharpen their communication.
So that their stories land and resonate with the people that they’re communicating with.
Porschia: Love it. I love it. And we are definitely gonna talk about that today. But first, Gina, I want you to tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
Gina: Yeah. Pivotal moments, I think in my career was it actually goes back to college.
I had a hard time figuring out what to study because there wasn’t. The modern human resources that there is today. It was called personnel and it was something different. And so I was trying to navigate and find my way into what I knew then as training and development. But the whole field has morphed and there’s all these different niches within that.
But one pivotal moment was getting an internship in college with a man who had developed his own communication program. It was [00:05:00] amazing. Like the binder, Porsche, the binder was a three ring binder that was like four inches thick. And he would get, he would go into companies like Motorola in Phoenix and he, I got to go with him and watch him deliver the content to, roomfuls of engineers who were struggling.
To, communicate better with each other. They had the technical skills, but not maybe the people and the relationship building skills I learned so much. So that was one. And then I would say as I got swept into human resources in my early career, it was a couple of those key moments. Where I ran into a brick wall, wanting to get a certain kind of job, and then leaning in and listening to mentors and sponsors and making the hard choices to do the things I needed to do to set myself up for success.
And again, that’s one of those things that I, those memories that I leverage when I’m talking, to my clients, is there’s certain things that you have to do and confront within [00:06:00] yourself to make a change sometimes that otherwise is really difficult to do.
Porschia: I love what you said. So what do you think is one of the most common things or challenges that your clients have that they have to confront to reach their goals?
Gina: Part of it will be the perfect segue into our conversation today is it has been said that it’s hard to read the label when you’re inside of the jar. And so I jokingly refer to myself as a Jar label reader because what my clients struggle with is explaining their unique value proposition.
Porschia: Love it. Love it. So what motivated you to become a coach? Gina, we hear that you were really into the communication and the training side of things.
Gina: Yes. There was a pretty specific window of time of what happened. So I had 10 years in corporate hr, like you mentioned in the bio. I worked for Intel and had a couple different kinds of positions.
Fast forward, I worked, I [00:07:00] now still am affiliated with Talents Group and they’re an executive search. Company firm and I have led searches. But what I was asked to do at one point was to satisfy a need for when people in our network would come to us and ask us for support, can you review my resume?
Do you have any jobs for me? Some of those questions, I was asked to develop a solution for those questions. And when I did that, I created a mini program and I had five beta clients and barely got paid, and it was, that grind. And what I learned through that process set me on this path.
I learned that when I was working with these very mature professional people who were very successful in their careers, unable to explain their story and all thinking it starts with the resume. When I peeled back the layers of the onion and I started to try to help them fix a resume, I had to go all the way back to them telling me their story.
And so that’s what set me on this path of becoming a coach, [00:08:00] is I love to develop programs and systems that’s, I wanna make things efficient. And so what I did was I spent 18 months studying how to make a career transition. I listened to 120 podcasts, I read 20 books. I synthesized all that information, and then I developed career velocity.
Porschia: I love it. I love it. And you touched on something, Gina, that I want to echo because I see this a lot and I think it is perhaps one of the number one myths that people believe, and I call it the myth of the golden resume. And I think you know what that is just by me saying it, but it is someone who believes that, Hey, all I need is this great resume and it’s gonna be a tool and it just get me in the room and I’ll land the job.
Everybody loves me. These are things that I’ve heard from so many [00:09:00] people in, over a decade. And that’s, part of the reason why I’m so excited to have you on today because the myth of the golden resume is not accurate. We’ve had so many clients and I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
- Where so I have a team of professional resume writers, so sometimes we did just their resume. They went out and said, oh, the resume worked. I had five interviews, but I didn’t get any job offers. And so they believed in the myth of the Golden Resume and didn’t support themselves with, to your point, telling their story and explaining all of that in an interview.
So when I
Gina: say that to
Porschia: you,
Gina: what are your thoughts? Oh yeah. My, my brain is going completely bonkers because we cannot be more aligned. The resume is a conversation starter. It’s, it can maybe be a door opener, but most likely it’s someone who’s introducing you to someone that is the door opener.
80% of our time should be spent having conversations and not applying through an a [00:10:00] TS and not trying to knock on recruiter doors, expecting them to have a job in their back pocket. When you either have a resume developed for you with a company like yours, and I’ve heard such amazing things about your writing team whether you invest in that or whether you write it for yourself, if you cannot talk to the stories on the page, the resume’s going to not serve you anyway.
Porschia: I completely agree. So Gina, back in episode 94, we discussed how to talk about yourself daring an interview. Why do you think the ability to talk about yourself during an interview is important?
Gina: Oh gosh. Humans hire humans. Portia. Humans hire humans. So at the end of the day, the decision makers want to know.
If they can get along with you and that you’re going to be a good fit. And a lot of times we’ll hear, oh, I need to be a culture fit. And not, I don’t necessarily like that phrase, I like to say fit to [00:11:00] values because we all come from different places. And so the world, the word of cult can be a little bit.
Of a misnomer. I like to think, will your values and how you show up as a person and as a worker align with your teammates and with the company at large? So as you interview for a job, you’re interviewing them as well for your fit. And if you’re not paying attention to your values and whether or not they are in alignment with how that company works.
You will not feel right in that role.
Porschia: I love that the fit to values over the culture fit, I think that is a really significant point. So what is a unique value proposition?
Gina: A unique value proposition is essentially a job seeker’s story. It doesn’t have to be a job seeker. You and I have a unique value [00:12:00] proposition as well, and we’re not job seekers.
So it’s our story in a nutshell that helps grab attention and start a conversation. And I do distinguish, especially in the book that I’ve just written the difference between an elevator pitch and a unique value proposition. So every job seeker is going to be asked dozens and dozens of times, tell me about yourself. And the first line in my book, Porsche, essentially, is me doing storytelling about a CEO candidate that I was interviewing. And this is someone who was really mature over 60. We were on Zoom and I was leading the search. I was the one working with the board. I knew what they wanted.
I had eight skill-based questions, behavioral questions that I needed to ask the candidate. So I was very transparent. I had an hour and I said, please. In just five minutes or less, gimme a quick highlights reel about you. Tell me a little about yourself, and then I have eight scale based questions that I need to get [00:13:00] through in this hour because that is what I’m assessing you against.
All the other candidates. Take it away. He spoke for 20 minutes, 20 T minutes, and I have been asked by some people Gina, you’re the professional, you’re the recruiter. Why didn’t you cut him off? Leading the search. My job was to assess leadership skills and one of the things that I was assessing was executive presence.
And part of executive presence is communication, and part of communication is reading the room. I gave him every chance to read the room. He was sitting in with me and he didn’t read it. How would that person be? Someone I would put in front of a board of directors to compete for the job. I couldn’t do it.
So let’s go back to your question. What is a unique value proposition and how important is it? It’s not a, it’s not a catchphrase, it’s not a branding statement. It’s a quick highlights reel that explains to the person [00:14:00] that you’re interviewing with. Where you’ve been and where you’re heading. And so I walk through this in painstaking detail in my book.
The first five chapters are literally developing every aspect of the unique value proposition. And the result in chapter five is an exercise I call the three thirds. So what we do is we’re taking people’s. Career histories, creating a simple table and just writing down a couple bullet points about what was happening in the early career, mid-career and more recently.
And again, I am working with people who are over 40, up to 69 generally, so they have a longer career history. So if someone is listening to this podcast and they’re earlier in their career. It’s maybe not gonna be three thirds, and for someone with a really sticky history, it could be four quarters, but the three thirds is this.
It’s about 30 seconds explaining. Here’s what I did in my early career. Here was my education and what launched me into where I am today. Here’s what I was doing in my mid-career. [00:15:00] Oftentimes there’s a highlights reel of those early managerial roles and the skills that were being built. That led to the third.
Third, which is explaining, okay, as the senior leader. Here’s what I’m responsible for today. These are the products and services that I deliver on. These are the team sizes that I support, and the reason why I’m here interviewing with you today is because this job is in such great alignment with where I am now and where I’m heading.
That’s the highlights reel.
Porschia: Wow, there was a lot of great information in there. I want to touch on a couple of things and echo them. Then also get your thoughts, one, that story that you shared was so powerful about the executive candidate who talked for 20 minutes instead of five. We talk a lot about self-awareness with our clients, and I think that also leads into what you were saying that he was missing there.
It’s really easy to forget these things when [00:16:00] you really are want a job or you’re really interested in a position or. Anything like that. But having that self-awareness is so important. I have heard Gina that. The, and I think your three thirds exercise actually is in alignment with this, but I have heard that the ideal length of time to answer a question in an interview is between 20 seconds and two minutes per question.
This was in a book that I read and they had I believe, surveyed recruiters, and the idea was. Any answer, of course, these are not yes or no questions, but any answer that was less than 20 seconds. And a lot of times the interviewer didn’t know if the candidate knew the amount of detail that they were expecting in the answer, and then anything over two minutes and.
The interviewer’s mind could start to wander. They could worry about if they were gonna get to the rest of their questions and then, perhaps make assumptions about the candidate based on that. [00:17:00] So when I share that with you, what are your thoughts?
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Show notes.
Gina: My ideal of the, tell me about yourself.
Answer. Is what I’ve built up for that unique value proposition, like explaining it. And I think it’s okay to come in the three to five minute window and if someone has a pretty dense history to give that launch pad from, they may even want to start with, I’m gonna give you a quick highlights reel.
That’ll be about three or four minutes. Now, if they go into that four and a half minutes, I think it’s okay because now you’re like. I’m prepared to give you a highlights reel. [00:19:00] I’m coming confident I know what I’m gonna say to you. Now for all the other questions I’m gonna say it depends. So it depends on the level of candidate and the role that they’re applying for.
So a lot of the people that I’m doing my interview prep with, they’re, let’s just say the sweet spot is that they’re in their fifties. They’re potentially leading, teams of 200 people across three international sites. They may be they may have technical expertise as an engineering director or vp, but then they also have the people leadership things that they need to be describing.
I’m gonna give you an example of why it might take just a couple more minutes than two. I had a senior leader of an IT organization at a major global bank, and when he would start to tell his SOAR stories, I use SOAR because it aligns best with behavioral interview questions, et cetera. So he was telling his sore stories, the situation, obstacles, actions, and results.
He would start down the path of the technical issue that [00:20:00] he was he had encountered, but then he would pause and say, oh yeah, there was this other thing that was going on, and then he would do it again. Oh, yeah. There was this other thing with my team and I had to let somebody go. The situation was so complex that what we did was we actually created two buckets for him to explain the story and that he would be ready to tell the interviewer.
This is such a complex story. I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell it in two parts. Part one is gonna be, I’m gonna explain all the technical challenges I was facing, so you understand that I’ve got technical chops. And then I’m gonna tell you all the leadership issues I was encountering and how I manage that because I had cross-functional issues, or cross-functional influencing I had to do without position power.
And then I had some team things where I had to reorganize some seats on the bus in order to serve this. Purpose. Here’s what, here’s the reason why I told this in a very long manner, is if you can tell upfront why and how you’re [00:21:00] going to tell the story, the person listening has the safety and confidence in you that you’re gonna finish and stick the landing.
That’s the point. You’re having a conversation with someone. So just give them insight like, I’m gonna tell you a my, one of my most complicated stories and I’m gonna do it with two silos so that you understand how difficult it was. That’s part of my answer for that. So I love that career. Two minutes or less.
Sure.
Porschia: Yeah,
Gina: I love that. I think,
Porschia: And you make a great point, there are a lot of complex stories. I think the rationale was pause at two minutes and then check in, with the interviewer and see do they want you to elaborate or. Provide more detail on something, but thank you.
I think that is a great example and will help a lot of people specifically, probably people in those leadership and interviewing for leadership roles. I love how you touched on behavioral interviewing. We have talked about behavioral interviewing quite a [00:22:00] bit on the podcast. In episode 47, we have a whole episode on behavioral interview questions and answers.
So we go through. What we think are some of the ones to be prepared for. Something else you said, and I think you started explaining this, but I wanna make sure everyone catches it. You mentioned that there’s a difference between the unique value proposition and the elevator pitch.
So what do you think is the biggest difference between the two of those?
Gina: I think that an elevator pitch, the way that a person should think about it is if you literally jump on an elevator and you’re only on it for 60 to 90 seconds. What are you going to say that’s so sharp that it invites the person listening to go, oh my God, tell me more.
That oh, for me I will try to use myself as an example, but I’m putting myself on the spot at the same time. But if I’m jumping on an elevator and, or I’m maybe at a cocktail party and it’s it, and I know it’s gonna be a quick thing, I’m not telling my five minute unique [00:23:00] value proposition.
I might say something like this. You know how when people get to a certain place in their career and they’re more mature, they’re 40, 50 years old, they have a lot of experience. And then they have to go on the job hunt, but they haven’t had to really interview for a really long time. And then that person nods just as you did.
I’d say. I developed a program called Career Velocity where I help leaders explain their stories and interviews so that they can land the job. I. Something a little bit more clip now. It’s not perfect ’cause I didn’t prepare. It
Porschia: sounds perfect to me. Gina Sounds perfect to me. So in my years as a coach, I’ve seen many different ways of creating a unique value proposition.
What do you think are the essential components of a unique value proposition? That’s an easy
Gina: one. That’s chapters one through five of qualified isn’t enough. So starting with so I use a tool called the U Map which has your unique strengths. [00:24:00] Values motivated and burnout skills and your personality, and what am I drawing from with that assessment or that profile is primarily the strengths, the natural talents that people bring to the world and their values, because later we’re going to use that not only in interviews, but to assess whether or not a job is gonna be a good fit for us.
The second component to the unique value proposition is one’s leadership approach, and for those who are listening and you’re thinking, I’m not a leader. I disagree. Every single one of us is a leader from our seat on the bus, whether or not we’re a team player or whether we’re actually the VP in charge of a whole business unit.
So what is a person’s leadership approach? I use the adaptive leadership model because it’s a really economical way for me to get a quick hit and understand how that person self assesses their approach to leading people during times of change and transition. The third component is. Is really going through and understanding one’s career story, that story [00:25:00] is the thing that really leverages us into that three thirds, piece that I talked about earlier.
Journaling out one’s entire story, and in my book I actually explain exactly how I would do that, and I give a lot of prompts for that. But start with your education and start to look at what I call the themes and patterns of your career because the themes and patterns. Are the things that inform that awesome story that you’re gonna tell.
I’ve worked with people who have had a couple of different major career switches, and going through your story helps you explain it with fluidity and so that it resonates and makes sense and it also makes you sound like a really interesting and unique individual. So that is the, that’s the third component then.
The fourth component is the career results. So that’s the part that when you’re working with people, Porsche, you and your team on people’s resume, you must know what those resort results are aligned with the career story and all the jobs that you had. And then that last piece in developing the unique value proposition is creating that three [00:26:00] thirds story so that you can answer, tell me about yourself.
So that I spend so much of my time in the book, just getting people to that point, because if you don’t get it right, then you’re gonna struggle with chapter six and seven and eight, which is resume development, LinkedIn development, job search strategy, interview prep.
Porschia: Exactly. I love how you laid that out.
Are there any tips you can tell us about sharing your unique value proposition in an interview?
Gina: Oh. I think the first thing is to make sure you develop it in the first place. Don’t wing it. You should absolutely know what it is that you’re talking about. I would also say to do a little homework research on each of the people that you interview with, if you have that luxury.
And most of the time we can ask and find out, but start to think about what will those people connect with the most, and you may wanna double down on that as you explain your story. And it’ll show that you did a little research like, oh, I noticed that you did [00:27:00] these things, and this is some things that align in my career history as well.
And then the last thing is I would practice. I would practice actually saying it to, people that are trusted, advisors, mentors, sponsors. I wouldn’t necessarily trust people who are, yes, people who love you no matter what, and they won’t tell you the hard things. So whether or not you’re paying for a coach, which, when we’re working with people are paying us for our.
Our absolute opinion, and I have to tell people the hard things, but if you’re gonna ask, people in your advisory circle, just make sure it’s people that are going to make sure that you give, they give you the hard feedback and tell you whether you should clip yourself or shorten something, et cetera.
Porschia: Yeah. I love how you made that distinction, because I talk about that a lot. I call it your career support system and. While your family members, your friends, even your current coworkers, to your point, love you or not, right? [00:28:00] But they generally have a biased, right? They see you in a certain way and, usually they are not the best to give you objective feedback because they’re biased, right? Inherently. I love how you made that point in your opinion, Gina, what are some other ways that a unique value proposition can be useful outside of the interview world?
Gina: Oh my gosh. I love this question. So very much you can use these skills or all of these stories, the storytelling on the go. You are at a cocktail party, you’re, you go to a conference and you’re meeting people for the first time. There are tons of situations where I think just understanding exactly who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re heading.
Is a part of connecting well with other people. And you don’t have to lead with it. You can always lead with curiosity about other people first. We’re [00:29:00] not walking up to strangers and just telling people our story, our stories, but I also talk about inter even interview skills, asking effective questions and using curiosity as your go-to lead.
Will serve you better than almost anything, even more than just having your unique value proposition ready. When my husband has asked me to go on a, a dinner date with another couple, and I’ve never, I haven’t met with them ever before, and he knows maybe the coworker, for example, I’m starting from scratch.
So when I’m leading with curiosity and if asking great questions that create stories from those people. Then they feel more attached to me as if I’m an interested person and interesting as well, people love to talk about themselves. So I’ve walked away from dinner dates like that where my husband’s I didn’t know that stuff about Greg.
Wow. I learned so much stuff about him. Because I’m asking [00:30:00] questions that allow people an opportunity to talk about parts of their lives that they don’t normally get asked about.
Porschia: I love it. So networking it sounds is definitely another place to use that unique value proposition.
And then I think also, and I’d love to know your thoughts on this during your performance reviews. Because I think you can slip in some of that so smart that you developed from, the process that you laid out earlier into showing your value to your boss, right? Again, to maybe position yourself for a promotion or really just make sure that your boss or your manager saw the value that you brought right in that interim before the review.
Oh
Gina: my gosh. I could not love what you just said any more than I do. So when you think about what I was saying about the unique value proposition, those, the results that you got during the year, I. Are the things that ultimately would go onto your resume, those are the things that you’re [00:31:00] being rewarded for, and now are a part of your overall story.
And I know you just had three, three episodes in a row on like you know how to get promoted. I have had my clients use their unique value proposition. To then write and pitch their own job descriptions and been promoted because of it into newly created roles or opportunities that existed, but were molded more around their toolkit because they understood their toolkit, they understood their unique value proposition.
So what you just said there was like, so great.
Porschia: I love it and I love how you’ve helped your clients to do that. Gina, tell us more about your business.
Gina: Oh, gosh. So I primarily work one on, do one-on-one coaching with leaders and execs. And I, I take them through the career velocity model.
I typ typically am engaged with people for many months, like up to a year because it takes leaders a lot longer to [00:32:00] transition. There’s, if you think of the tip of the triangle, there’s just less jobs in the hierarchy and so it can take a lot longer and not only just a lot longer today, but not only a lot of times people are not finding.
What they want at all. But then once they get into the interview process, sometimes they come in number two and it can just take a very long time. And I’ve had a number of clients come in with a job interview already in play. They start my program, we’re enrolled for nine months together. Four months in, they’ll find out that they’re number two, four to six months in.
However, as I work with people like that, sometimes other opportunities will percolate from those initial, interviews. But I’m working with people on helping them get promoted, finding the next opportunity, and it’s all buoyed by that, career velocity program that I’ve created helping them do this all really systematically.
And as the real [00:33:00] juice after you do all of this work is job search strategy. That’s the most important thing, and so I’m a thought partner and a strategist, but. When people really understand and take hold of their role in their job search strategy is when people get traction. And so what I would say to the listeners is don’t outsource your own job search strategy.
No one can do it for you. No coach can do it for you. I’ve used the analogy of a player’s agent versus a talent scout. A scout. In baseball in particular, there’s a limited number of teams to go and scout out and draw in talent. But if you’re gonna pay an agent to be, somebody who’s finding you a job, I’ve never seen a model that exists that a person actually got a great job because they paid someone to go find it for them.
So I was a long way of saying. I’m a partner for that job search strategy. That’s like the longest part of the engagement ’cause [00:34:00] the unique value proposition, resume development and the LinkedIn. That all happens in the first, however many weeks.
Porschia: Great. Great. We will be providing a link to your website and your social channels in our show notes so people can find you online.
Now Gina, I wanna ask you our final question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Gina: There are so many. I would lead with upskilling, making sure that whatever is that cutting edge I. Piece of knowledge, expertise that they need for their toolkit to make sure that they are staying abreast of that and reading.
And whether it’s LinkedIn courses, there’s the LinkedIn learning, a lot of them are free, especially like if you pay for a subscription, you can. The toolkit is huge there of the coursework, but maybe it doesn’t have to be an advanced degree. It could be a course, it could be a certification. Make sure it’s something that’s [00:35:00] valuable though.
Don’t just run off and get a certification to put it on your resume. ’cause it’s not always something that’s necessary. So it just, it all depends. So I would say upskilling is one thing. And then I would say a secondary thing, which is leadership approach. Jobs are one, based on your behaviors and your leadership approach.
If you’re in an interview ecosystem, you’re already in the interview process you’ve met some table stakes to be there, and you must assume everyone else that you’re competing against is qualified to get the job. And so this is why I wrote the book, and it’s called Qualified isn’t Enough because the Edge, as you asked me about.
The edge is how you do what you do. Those are your natural strengths from StrengthsFinder, and that is your leadership approach. And that’s where I start with my program, is trying to understand that about my clients.
Porschia: I love it. I love it. I love the title of the book, as I told you earlier, and I definitely agree that qualified is not [00:36:00] enough.
And that’s something I tell our clients, especially in an interview a lot of times, and definitely by the point when they’re making the final selection, you’ve gotta assume that everyone has similar credentials, similar education. Probably a similar background, right? And they’re looking a lot of times for, to your point, leadership approach or sometimes it’s even just more general personality.
Who do they like being around? And I’ve told clients that, and some people are like that’s not fair. Technically it’s not right. But you’ve gotta understand that. So thank you for highlighting that for us, Gina. You have shared a lot of wisdom with us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers and with their interviewing.
We appreciate you being with us. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
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