After many years of being headhunted and recommended for new roles, sales professional Hossein suddenly found himself back on the job market after being laid off.

With more than 20 years of experience in technical sales and key account management, he had a strong professional background. But this time, getting interviews was not enough. He needed to learn how to present his experience differently and show hiring managers that he was more than a technical expert.

This is the story of how Hossein changed his job search strategy during our mentorship and eventually received 4 job offers.

About Hossein and his professional background

Hossein is an electrical engineer by education with over 20 years of experience in sales. He started his career at Ericsson as a design engineer before moving into application engineering and, in 2007, into technical sales.

Since then, he has worked in technical and software sales, including at Ansys and Romax. Most recently, he spent six years at NXP in a major key account sales role, selling RF power transistors to the infrastructure market.

Looking for a job in 2026

Hossein hadn’t searched for a job for many years. In fact, he had never really had to actively search for one. Usually, opportunities came to him through headhunting or recommendations from colleagues, so he had never had to seriously navigate the job market on his own.

This time was different. 

Of course, the job market environment also played a role, and he felt that this year had not been an easy one. He was getting interviews and making some progress, but he realised that he wasn’t prepared enough for the interview stage. In fact, some good opportunities were lost because he wasn’t able to perform at his best during the interviews.

At the same time, he was at a point in his career where he was thinking seriously about the next 15–17 years before retirement. He wanted to make a thoughtful decision about where to go next and felt that having someone help him sort through his thoughts could be valuable.

That was what led him to start looking for support. He eventually came across the Get Hired in Finland website and felt that Lidiia’s background was a good fit. As a technical professional, he felt it was important to work with someone who understood the environment and could relate to his experience.

Why work with a career coach 

For Hossein, one of the most useful parts of the mentorship was the questions and challenges Lidiia brought into their conversations.

She pointed out that he was sometimes selling himself too low or too easily, and that he needed to polish how he presented himself to potential employers. This made him think more critically about what he needed to change and, importantly, how he wanted to be perceived.

The mentorship was not simply a series of 60-minute sessions where they discussed a topic and moved on. There were many back-and-forth discussions where Lidiia challenged him with questions such as, “What do you think if you say it this way?”

Those conversations encouraged him to start asking himself the same questions.

He also found the way Lidiia approached job descriptions particularly useful. When they looked at a role together, she went through the description line by line and identified what needed to be addressed. This helped him think more strategically: How could he demonstrate that he had what the company was looking for? What could he prepare to make that clear?

This led him to ideas such as preparing a presentation to better demonstrate his experience.

For Hossein, it felt like a journey they were doing together rather than simply receiving advice.

The mock interviews were another important part of the process. Even though they were practice interviews, they created a different level of focus. He felt that he needed to prepare and perform as if it were a real interview.

The mock interviews became a form of training, helping him practise how he presented himself and giving him an opportunity to apply what they had discussed during the mentorship.

Change in a job search process

Because Hossein was already getting interviews, the biggest change was not getting through the door, but changing what happened once he was there.

He started making his sales experience much more visible. Although he had more than 20 years of sales experience, it had sometimes been overshadowed by his technical background. The PowerPoint presentation he developed helped him bring those achievements forward and present them in a clear, structured way.

For example, he could demonstrate a €800K customer deal and explain how he had built a customer pipeline. The presentation also showed hiring managers that he had taken the time to understand their company, products and market.

He began approaching interviews more like a sales process. Instead of only talking about his own experience, he started thinking about what the company and the people he would work with actually needed.

He researched the market, identified potential customers and even mapped out people he could contact if he joined the company. His thinking was: if they hired him on Monday, he should already have an idea of where to start.

For one particularly challenging company, where he was coming from a different industry landscape, he researched the organisation and started thinking about how he could work with different teams, including application managers and service managers. He identified topics that were relevant to them and showed that he was already thinking from their perspective.

This shift helped him move from simply presenting his background to demonstrating how he could create value in the role.

As he put it, it was almost like “selling a house”: he wanted the hiring manager to be able to imagine him already working there and know that he would not need to be shown where to start.

By the end of the process, Hossein had received four job offers, with a fifth company also considering him as a strong second-choice candidate.

Advice to other sales professionals

Hossein’s advice to other sales professionals is to go beyond simply applying for jobs and really research the market.

He recommends identifying the top companies you could potentially sell to, understanding their products and thinking about how those products could be used in the market. At first, the picture may be unclear, but step by step, this research gives you a much better understanding of the company, its customers and the role.

He also believes it is important to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. A hiring manager lives and breathes that business every day, so if you can show that you have already taken the time to understand their market, customers and challenges, you can demonstrate that you are already thinking like someone in the role.

At the same time, remember that you are interviewing the company too. Hossein wanted to understand who he would be working with and asked to speak with people he might interact with in the role.

He compares the interview process to buying shoes: you don’t buy a pair without trying them on and walking around first. An interview gives you the same opportunity. You get to “walk” in the role, understand the people and the environment, and decide whether it is the right fit for you too.

Hossein’s story shows that sometimes the challenge is not getting interviews, but making sure hiring managers see the full value of your experience.

By changing how he prepared and positioned himself, he turned his technical background into a strength and ultimately received four job offers.