A practical guide for mid-to-senior candidates
AI is changing how people find jobs, apply for them and prepare for interviews. We all know a well-written CV is no longer difficult to produce. Neither is a polished cover letter, a company summary or a carefully constructed answer to a predictable interview question. That doesn’t make those things unimportant. But it does mean they are becoming less useful on their own as signals of whether somebody is genuinely good at what they do.
Recent analysis in Harvard Business Review has made a similar point: generative AI is making traditionally polished hiring signals, including CVs and highly structured interview answers, much easier to manufacture at scale.
So, the people who stand out won’t just be those with the best-presented experience. They’ll be the people who can demonstrate judgement, impact, curiosity and the ability to use technology intelligently without outsourcing their thinking to it.
Here are three areas we think are particularly worth focusing on.
1. Develop judgement, not just knowledge
At mid-to-senior level, employers generally assume you know your subject.
The more interesting question is what you do with what you know.
Can you look at incomplete information and make a sensible decision? Can you challenge an assumption? Can you recognise when a technically correct answer is commercially wrong? Can you explain a complex issue to somebody outside your function? Can you change your mind when the evidence changes?
These capabilities can't be automated.
Put this into practice before an interview
Use AI to accelerate your research, but don't let its summary become your opinion.
For example, ask it to help you understand the company's strategy, competitors, recent announcements and likely challenges. Then check the important points against original sources and form your own view.
Try going into the interview with three things clear in your mind:
What appears to be happening in this business?
What might that mean for the function you're joining?
Where does your previous experience give you something useful to contribute?
That changes the conversation from:
"I've led large transformation programmes."
to:
"From what I've seen, the organisation appears to be moving from the investment phase into execution. In my last role, we faced something similar, where the technology was actually the straightforward part — stakeholder adoption became the bigger challenge."
Now you're demonstrating experience and judgement.
A good question to follow with is:
“What are the biggest business priorities over the next 12–24 months, and where does this role have the greatest opportunity to contribute?”
You're no longer asking the interviewer to repeat the job description. You're trying to understand where the role sits in the business.
2. Become an AI force multiplier — not an AI passenger
We absolutely think candidates should use AI, but the question is how.
Use it to make yourself faster at the work around your judgement, research, preparation, analysis, structuring ideas and challenging your thinking. But don't use it to replace the thinking itself. Keep using those brain cells!
LinkedIn's own hiring guidance makes a useful distinction: using AI to research a role, practise interviews and refine application materials is encouraged, but candidates should still be able to explain and defend their own experience and thinking. Its live interviews are intended to hear directly from the candidate unless AI use has specifically been permitted.
Three genuinely useful ways to prepare with AI
Before an interview, try prompts along these lines:
Pressure-test the opportunity
"Here is the role description. Based only on the information provided, identify five business problems that may sit behind this hire. Separate facts from assumptions and tell me what I should ask the interviewer to verify."
That last sentence matters. AI should help you identify the questions, not convince you that its assumptions are facts.
Pressure-test yourself
Give AI a summary of your experience and ask:
"Act as a sceptical CEO interviewing me for this role. Ask me one difficult follow-up question at a time and challenge vague claims or answers without evidence."
Much more useful than rehearsing ten beautifully scripted answers.
Turn responsibilities into evidence
Instead of asking AI to “improve my CV”, give it a real achievement and say:
"Help me explain the business impact of this achievement clearly using context, action and outcome. Do not add facts, numbers or results I haven't provided."
That final instruction is crucial.
At TENTEN, we'd much rather hear an imperfectly phrased real example than an immaculate answer that falls apart as soon as the interviewer asks a follow-up question.
3. Build proof of impact — and ask better questions
One of the biggest differences we see between average and strong senior interviews is how people talk about their previous roles.
Responsibilities tell us what you were employed to do.
Impact tells us what happened because you were there.
Compare:
"I was responsible for the regional cybersecurity programme."
with:
"I inherited a fragmented regional security programme covering six markets. Over 18 months we standardised governance, clarified ownership and reduced the number of unresolved high-risk issues from X to Y."
Same job, but a completely different signal.
Before an interview, choose four or five career examples you know particularly well. Make sure you can explain the situation, what was difficult about it, what you specifically did, the result and, importantly at senior level, what you would do differently now.
Then use the interview to understand whether those experiences are relevant to the problem sitting in front of you.
Five questions worth having ready
You certainly don't need to ask all five. Two or three well-timed questions that build naturally on the conversation are much more effective than working through a prepared checklist.
“What is the most important problem you need this person to solve?”
This is one of our favourites as it moves the discussion away from tasks and towards the real reason somebody has authorised the hire.
Listen carefully to the answer. Then, if you have genuinely relevant experience, connect it:
"That's helpful. We dealt with something very similar when..."
You're not forcing another sales pitch. You're showing the interviewer that you understand the problem.
“If this appointment is really successful, what will be materially different 12 months from now?”
A job description tells you what you're expected to do, but this tells you what you're expected to change.
It can also expose any mismatch between the advertised role and the actual expectation, something that's very useful to understand before you accept the job. Although working with a good recruitment consultant would resolve this before the interview.
Current interview guidance and candidate discussions repeatedly come back to this idea of asking how success will actually be measured rather than simply asking about responsibilities.
“Why has the role become available now?”
Growth? Succession? A resignation? Transformation? A newly created capability? A role that's been open for six months because the brief keeps changing?
None of those answers is automatically good or bad. But they give you context.
A recent candidate discussion attracted attention precisely because a candidate politely asked whether a long-running search reflected selectiveness or an evolving scope. The important part wasn't the wording; it was that the candidate was trying to understand what had happened before they arrived.
“What tends to distinguish the people who really succeed in this team?”
Culture statements are easy, but real examples are much more revealing.
If the answer is “people who challenge us”, dig deeper and ask for an example.
If it's “collaboration”, ask what that looks like when there's disagreement.
If it's “entrepreneurial”, understand whether that means autonomy or fewer resources!
You're trying to establish how the organisation operates, rather than how it describes itself.
“What's the biggest challenge I would inherit?”
Every senior role has one. Perhaps it's an underperforming team, difficult stakeholders, outdated infrastructure, regulatory pressure, unrealistic growth targets or simply an organisation where nobody has quite agreed what the role should be.
Knowing that doesn't necessarily make the opportunity less attractive, for the right person it can make it more attractive. What matters is going in with your eyes open.
And don't forget the oldest career tool of all: people
Perhaps ironically, the more automated recruitment becomes, the more valuable genuine professional relationships become.
At TENTEN, around 80% of the candidates within our network either already have a relationship with us or come through personal recommendation. We've worked with our clients over many years and continued working with hiring managers throughout their careers. That's why we'd advise experienced professionals to continue networking throughout their career...stay in touch with former colleagues. Also work with recruiters who genuinely understand your market and take the time to get to know you.
Share useful knowledge rather than simply posting that you're “open to opportunities”. And have a coffee with somebody just to "catch up" with no agenda.
The takeaway
You don't need to compete with AI but you do need to use it intelligently. Let it make the repetitive things quicker. Let it challenge your preparation. Let it help you research more efficiently.
But keep hold of the things that make your experience valuable in the first place:
Judgement. Curiosity. Perspective. Relationships. And proof that you've made a difference.
Because particularly at mid-to-senior level, the best interview shouldn't feel like an examination.
At TENTEN Partners, we work with mid-to-senior professionals across Technology, Data & AI, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Finance, Risk & Compliance and Management Consulting across Asia and the Middle East.
If you're considering your next move, speak to our team. Even when there isn't an immediate role, a good career conversation is rarely wasted.
contact@tenten-partners.com
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