The ROI of Interview Coaching: Continuous Learning that Creates Client Wins

Clients don’t pay interview coaches to help them get to the next round of interviews.  They hire us to help them WIN.

That win is the real ROI of interview coaching. For clients, it’s a new job, a new paycheck, a new future. For us, it’s the glowing testimonial, the referral, the reputation boost that makes people say, “That’s the coach you need to work with.” The more our clients win, the more our own ROI grows.

But here’s what we can’t forget: every client is playing a different game with different rules. If we coach them all the same way, they might make it to the final round, but they won’t walk away the winner. And second place in interviews doesn’t come with a silver medal. It comes with a rejection email.

I learned that fast. When I was hired by the Fulbright program to coach a cohort of their post-doctoral researchers, I knew I was out of my lane. Academia has its own quirks, its own priorities, its own politics. So I went straight to my network. I zoomed with professors and tenured faculty from Ivy League schools, small liberal arts colleges, R1 research institutions and community colleges. I asked what hiring committees actually look for – and some of the answers I got  really surprised me. Those conversations gave me what I needed to coach my clients to compete and win on that stage.

Then there were the medical residency interviews. Thanks to my husband John, an emergency physician (and my number one cheerleader), I get a steady stream of referrals to work with graduating med students on their residency interviews. These interviews are brutal. One conversation can decide whether a student matches at their dream hospital or does not match at all and cannot complete their specialized training. Again, I had to lean on my network. I asked residency directors and the docs that conduct residency interviews what mattered most in those rooms. Their feedback shaped how I prepared my clients for one of the highest stakes interviews of their life.

And then came tech. In 2021, Topcoder hired me to train their members for gig interviews: I knew that I did not know enough about how tech hiring really worked. So I went back to my network. I spoke with senior engineers and hiring managers. I asked them what made candidates stand out, what made them crash and burn, and what turned a good interview into a great one. Their insights became the backbone of my coaching.

Three industries. Three totally different games. Same takeaway every time: you cannot coach in isolation. Our clients do not win if we do not know the rules. And the only way to know the rules is to keep learning and to have a network you can tap for answers.

That is why I am so excited about the new PARWCC Interview Institute. None of us should be trying to figure this out alone. The Institute is our hub, the place where we share insights, stay on top of trends, and sharpen our skills together. We keep our ROI strong by building a professional home base for expertise.

And right now, the game is shifting again. AI assessed interviews are moving from the edges to the center of hiring. These are not human conversations. They are timed recordings scored by algorithms with literal rubrics. Different rules. Different pressures. And if we do not understand the game, our clients will not win. (For everything you need to know about those types of interviews, join me for the  October Interview Institute Master Series “Preparing Clients for AI-Assessed and Asynchronous Interviews”)

As interview coaches, our ROI is not about how many hours we coach or how many sessions we sell. It is about how many of our clients walk out of an interview with an offer. Wins create testimonials. Testimonials create referrals. Referrals create reputations. And that cycle only works if we stay curious, stay connected, and keep learning.

Our clients don’t pay us to help them get better at interviewing. They pay us to help them land the job. When we know the game, we can coach clients to win. That is our responsibility. And the best investment we can make, in them and in ourselves, is continuous learning.