Method · Career Search
Career search with Claude.
A four-phase methodology I built running my own search through 2025
and 2026, before Facet existed as a product. The
structure is deliberate: each phase's output feeds the next, so by
the time you walk into a specific interview, you're working off
compound context, not a fresh prompt. The kit at the bottom is the
tools I actually used. Take the parts that fit. Throw the rest out.
Why this exists
Structured context beats raw intelligence
Most engineers prep the same way: skim the resume, grind some
LeetCode, Google a few behavioral questions, walk in. The problem is
not effort. The problem is structure. Generic preparation produces
generic answers, and generic answers do not survive a specific
conversation with a specific panel about a specific role.
I ran a different process. Four phases, each one feeding the next,
run in a Claude Project across about a week of focused iteration.
The output was an interactive study guide I opened before every
interview, a research doc with twenty-plus target companies, and a
repeatable per-listing analysis I could run in an hour.
This page documents the methodology. The kit at the bottom is the
artifacts that came out of it. Facet is
the product I eventually built so I could stop recreating the
manual setup every time.
Pipeline architecture
↓
Archetype
2-3 angles
Strength/gap analysis
archetype + angles + gaps ↓
Deep research
Interview formats
Stack overlap
20+ targets + formats ↓
Variant scripts
Deep dives
Interactive prep page
reusable prep artifacts ↓
Fit map
Gap framing
Company-specific tips
↓
🎯 Interview ready
The core insight
An LLM with your resume can give you generic interview advice. An
LLM with your resume, technical documentation, candidate profile,
market research, and gap analysis can give you a prepared answer
for the exact question a specific company is likely to ask about
the exact gap in your profile for their exact role.
The compound context is the product. Each phase builds on the
last.
Phase 1
Candidate profiling
Before you can prepare for interviews, you have to understand what
you're selling. Most engineers skip this and jump straight to "help
me prep," which is why they end up with generic advice for a
specific situation.
Resume, technical references, architecture decision records,
project docs, design docs. The more context, the sharper the
output. I provided around 170 pages of technical references across
four platforms. The technical docs were the highest-signal input
by a wide margin. They contained architecture decisions,
performance benchmarks, and tradeoff discussions a resume cannot
capture.
Not your title. The pattern of how you work. Mine
came back as "Builder": the engineer who gets
dropped into a situation where something needs to exist and
doesn't, then ships it end-to-end. That pattern held across both
companies. It is a more useful framing than "Senior Platform
Engineer" because it tells a story about how I operate, not just
what my title was.
Different ways to frame the same experience depending on who
you're talking to.
| Angle |
Headline |
Best for |
| Security platform |
"I build security infrastructure: edge sensors, fleet management, threat intelligence" |
WAF / AppSec, security startups, detection engineering |
| Platform / DevEx |
"I treat infrastructure as a product: build systems, developer tooling, self-service platforms" |
DevTools, IDP, observability, platform teams |
| SRE / Infrastructure |
"I find the bottleneck, build the system that removes it, then hand it off" |
Infrastructure, reliability, cloud platforms |
Output
Archetype identification
Output
2-3 positioning angles
Output
Strength/gap analysis with framings
Phase 2
Market research
Identify target companies where your profile has a genuine
competitive advantage. Not just companies that are hiring, but
companies whose interview process and culture reward what you
specifically bring.
Pass 1: builder-friendly interviews. Companies
with take-home assessments, paid work trials, portfolio reviews.
If your strength is demonstrable output, optimize for formats that
let you demonstrate it.
Pass 2: stack and domain overlap. Companies where
your specific technical experience maps directly to their product
or infrastructure.
For each target: specific open roles, documented interview
process, AI culture signals, stack overlap analysis, competitive
advantage narrative, compensation range, and application tips
specific to their process. The research identified twenty-plus
targets ranked by signal convergence. Not just "who is hiring,"
but "where does my profile win."
Output
20+ ranked target companies
Output
Interview format analysis per company
Output
Competitive advantage narratives
Phase 3
General study guide
Build a reusable preparation artifact. Something you can open ten
minutes before any interview and quickly navigate to the relevant
talking points. This is the eighty percent that's company-agnostic.
"Tell me about yourself" gets three versions
(Platform, Security, Builder), each leading with different
experience and tuned to a different company type. You pick the
variant based on who you're talking to. Each script is annotated
with a "best for" callout naming specific companies from the
research.
Built as an interactive web page: grid of
clickable tiles, floating header nav, modal system, keyboard
shortcuts. Click a tile, get the modal with your talking points,
arrow-key to the next section. Twenty-five-plus sections covering
openers, project deep dives, behavioral variants, and a key
numbers reference. Designed for the literal moment you're sitting
in a waiting room.
Grid layout
Modal system
Variant tabs
Keyboard nav
Floating header
Output
Interactive study guide (HTML)
Output
Variant scripts per angle × question
Output
Project deep dives + key numbers
Phase 4
Per-listing analysis
For each specific job listing, produce a targeted analysis: how your
profile maps to their requirements, where you're strong, where
you're thin, and how to talk about the thin spots. The twenty
percent that's company-specific, but the highest-signal twenty
percent.
Map each stated requirement to your actual experience. For each:
the requirement, your relevant evidence, fit level (Strong /
Partial / Gap), and if it's a gap,
prepared framing that's honest but redirects to adjacent
strength. "You don't have Go, here's how to handle it" is
more useful than pretending the gap doesn't exist.
Likely questions based on the gaps in your
profile for this specific role.
Interview tips tuned to their known process:
take-home strategy, pair programming approach, system design
framing. Company hooks: specific things to
mention that show you've done homework on this company. Not "I
like your mission." Specific technical decisions they've made that
you have an informed opinion on.
Output
Fit map with gap framings
Output
Predicted hard questions + answers
Output
Company-specific cheat sheet
Resources
Downloads
Standalone tools from the methodology. Use them in a Claude Project
or on their own. No account needed. The interview prep skill works
with any agent that supports skills; everything else is HTML you
open in a browser.
Screenshots
What you get. Click any thumbnail to expand.
Resume Builder
Vectors
Bullets
Targets
Profiles
Skills
Search Parameters
Languages
Filters
Preferences
Differentiators
Pipeline Tracker
List view
Details
Analytics
Add company
Interview Prep
Projects
Questions
Topics
Experience
Don'ts
Facet is this. On steroids. Lots of them.
Identity model that persists across every search, pipeline with
rounds and snapshots, prep decks that survive across weeks,
per-interviewer research, drift detection, the works. Same
methodology. Without the manual setup every time.