Chloe SpillaneYour personal career strategist - start here ↓

HOW TO PASS THE RECRUITER SCREENING. #interviewtips #recruiter #interviewhacks #interviewprep

12 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:30

In this monologue, Chloe Spillane shares a practical strategy for reading recruiter behavior during the screening stage. She explains that when a recruiter starts "selling" the job and organization—using language that places the candidate into the role and praises how the candidate’s experience matches the need—it signals that the recruiter already envisions the candidate as a fit. However, to guard against false enthusiasm, she recommends deploying the “competition card”: casually mentioning an offer from another company to see if the recruiter’s enthusiasm is genuine. A genuine recruiter will respond by asking what it would take to secure the candidate, while a recruiter who is merely bluffing will dismiss the concern. The advice equips job seekers with a clear cue to assess recruiter intent and a tactical response to confirm it.

Chapters

This little insight from when I was a recruiter is your biggest clue to know whether the recruiter thinks you can do the job or not. Pay attention to how much they sell the job and the organization to you. What that means is if you get to that point, you have done your job on selling yourself, and they are thinking, we really want this person, we've got to sell the shit out of this job. Okay, they're going to then have a light bulb moment where they realize, oh, this could be the person that we've been looking for. So then they'll start saying, we love how you spoke about your experience here because that's really what we want to be focusing on in this role. They will start referencing the work you've done to what they need someone to be doing. They'll also start using language like, oh, when you do this, or when you join the team. So they're literally like plonking you in the organization already before you've got the offer. Now I know there's going to be some people that say to me, oh well, they did all that and then they didn't give me the job. There is a way to avoid that though, and what that is is showing the competition card. Okay, so if they're giving you all this stuff on when you sign up or when you join us, when you do this, you got to call them out on their bullshit. Okay, so you'll say something like This is all sounding amazing. I'm so excited. Just to let you know, I have been given an offer from another organization. I do wanna make sure that I am doing both interview processes so I'm making the right decision. You'll know in that moment whether they're bullshitting you or not. Okay? Because if they're bullshitting you, they'll be like, oh, okay. Like, no worries. If they're not, they'll say, okay, what do we need to do to get you across the line? Because they'll really want you. So next time you're in an interview process, pay attention to how much they sell you onto the job. And if they do start selling you onto the job, pull the competition card to make sure you're calling them out on their bullshit.