Show Notes
Job interview prep after redundancy is a weird little moment where you finally get the interview and your body reacts like you’ve been booked in for something far more dramatic than 'a chat about your experience.' In this episode I talk through the pre-interview prep that helps me show up clearly when confidence is wobbly and my brain is prone to going blank. I share how I build an 'evidence bank' of what I’ve actually done, how I go line-by-line through my CV so I don’t get caught out by my own bullet points and how I research the role and company without disappearing into productivity-shaped panic. I also cover the part that's more important than I first realised getting your examples out of your head and into your mouth. I practise saying them out loud so the impact lands without me taking a scenic route through the backstory and I keep the focus on what I did, what changed, and why it mattered. Finally, we get into the day-of nerves: simple cue-card prompts, a mindset shift that stays firmly on the right side of “manifesting,” and a breathing technique I use when my heart rate starts doing its own interview. If you’re job searching after redundancy and you’ve got an interview coming up or you just want a calmer, more structured way to prepare this will help you represent yourself in your best light without turning prep into a second (unpaid) full-time job.
More from Now What? - Life after redundancy
After the best part of a year and somewhere north of a hundred applications, I've been offered a role and this episode is the honest version of what that actually feels like, recorded a while before I've even started, with none of the hindsight smoothed in yet.
There's a particular kind of unlucky where one thing goes wrong and you can just about laugh about it. Then there's Dan Roberts's 2025, where the wrong things queued up to take turns; right up until the week he finally caught a break and then redundancy turned up two days later like it had been waiting for an invite.
Most people navigating redundancy have spent years being good at their jobs. The doing was never really the problem. The bit that catches people out is the presenting — interview panels, networking rooms, video calls with recruiters — where suddenly you have to articulate your value out loud, to strangers, in real time, without your brain quietly filing everything under unavailable.
Most people treat a recruiter like a fire extinguisher — ignore it completely until something's on fire, then hope it works first time. In this episode, I'm joined by Neil Johns, Director at Merje, a specialist recruitment business working with everyone from startups and FinTechs through to national banking groups and global organisations, to find out what the job search actually looks like from the other side of the desk.
The salary conversation is one of the most anxiety-producing moments in any job search — and when you're coming from redundancy, it's even more loaded. Your last salary exists but it may not reflect what the market currently pays. The pressure of needing a role changes what you're willing to say out loud. And the advice available is either negotiation-bro overconfident or so hedged it's useless.