Margaret Buj
Talent Acquisition Lead and Career Strategist with 20+ years of global hiring experience across tech, product, marketing, and business functions.
Last trained 10 days ago
About Margaret Buj
Margaret Buj is a London-based Talent Acquisition Lead, Interview Coach and Career Strategist with over 20 years of experience in recruitment and career coaching. She has coached more than 1,000 professionals on interviews, LinkedIn profiles, resumes and job search strategy, and has recruited for global companies including Expedia, VMware, Avanade, Cisco, Microsoft, King, Box, Typeform and Mixmax. Her career advice has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Fox Business, the Financial Times, Management Today, CIO Magazine and other leading media outlets.
Frequently asked
How do I get my resume shortlisted for more interviews?
- The key is tailoring your resume to each specific role rather than sending a generic version everywhere. Mirror the job description language, prioritise the most relevant experience, quantify your impact and cut what doesn't serve the application. A stronger resume is not just a list of responsibilities. It should show the level you operate at, the problems you solve, the scale of your work and the outcomes you have delivered. Tailoring does not mean stuffing the CV with keywords. It means making the most relevant evidence easy to find. Lead with the experience that matches the role, use the language of the job description where it is accurate, quantify impact where possible, and remove or reduce anything that distracts from the target role. If the recruiter has to work too hard to understand the fit, the CV is not doing its job.
How should I prepare for a senior-level interview?
- Preparing for a senior-level interview is fundamentally different from earlier in your career. Stop trying to prove you're qualified — start thinking like an insider. At senior level, they are not only asking whether you can do the job. They are asking whether you think, lead and operate at the right level. Frame your answers from that perspective. Senior-level interview preparation is not about memorising perfect answers. It is about proving that you can think, lead and operate at the level required. Your examples need to show judgement, ownership, scale, stakeholder influence, commercial awareness and measurable outcomes. The interviewer should be able to hear what decisions you made, what trade-offs you considered, what changed because of your involvement, and why that matters for the role. A common mistake is giving long descriptions of projects without making your own contribution clear enough. Strong preparation means choosing the right examples, tightening the story, quantifying the result and linking your experience directly to the challenges of the role you are interviewing for.
How do recruiters assess candidates in competitive markets?
- Recruiters aren't just asking "can they do the job?" — they're evaluatingreturn on investment. The questions running through their minds are: What problem will this person solve? How fast will they add value? Is the salary justified? In competitivemarkets, being qualified is the baseline. What separates candidates is how clearly their profile communicates impact — specific outcomes, scale, and evidence — not just responsibilities held.
How can I improve my LinkedIn profile for job search?
- Start with your headline. Most people default to job title and company name, which is instantly forgettable. Your headline should communicate your value, not just your position. Your About section should answer one question: why should a recruiter message you right now? And your experience bullets need outcomes and numbers, not duty lists. "Managed a team" tells a recruiter nothing. "Built a team that increased pipeline by 180% in 8 months" does.
How can I negotiate salary more confidently?
- Before quoting a number, understand the range for the role and geography — use market data to anchor your position, not just gut feel. Connect your ask to the value and seniority of the role and what you specifically bring to it. If asked early, it's fine to say you'd like to understand the full scope before discussing numbers. Confidence in negotiation comes from preparation: knowing your market value, knowing what the role requires, and being able to articulate why your background justifies the number you'reasking for.
Why am I applying to lots of jobs but not getting interviews?
- Volume rarely fixes a positioning problem. The most common reasons are: your resume reads like a job description rather than a value story, your applications aren't tailored to each role, your achievements don't show clear impact, and your value proposition isn't obvious within the first 10 seconds. Ask yourself honestly — does my resumemake it immediately clear what problems I solve and what results I've created? If a recruiter has to work to connect the dots, they'll move on.
What do hiring managers look for in engineering and product candidates?
- Beyond technical ability, they want to see evidence of real ownership and business impact. Vague bullets like "responsible for backend development" don't land. What lands is specificity: what did you build, what did you change, what did it cost or save, and what was the measurable outcome? For product candidates, they'll also want to understand your decision-making process and how you've influenced cross-functional teams.The question they're really asking is: does this person's background mirror what we actually need right now?
Straight from the source
“The professionals I coach who earn the most aren't always the most qualified. They're the ones who got comfortable asking. Not aggressively. Not with ultimatums. Just clearly, with evidence, and without apologising for it.”
“A resume works when the right recruiters quickly understand four things: what you do, at what level you operate, what problems you've solved, and what a credible next role looks like.”
“At the senior level, interviewers aren't hiring a personality. They're hiring someone who can drive outcomes and influence across the business. Specific decision. Real result. That's what senior-level thinking looks like.”