Two people can use the word “impact” in the same interview and be describing two completely different jobs.
What candidates usually mean is bigger than the job description. They want to do good work with their skills, sure, but a lot of them are also thinking past that, toward something closer to meaning. Does this company make things better in the world in some real way. Is the work worth doing beyond the paycheck and the resume line.
Hiring managers want that too. I don’t think that part’s fake. But most of them are also being measured, every week, on something much narrower. Did the stakeholders get what they needed. Is upper management satisfied. Did the thing ship on time and hold up.
That’s the actual tension, and it’s not that one side is shallow and the other is noble. Both sides want the work to matter. But a candidate is optimizing for meaning over a career, and a manager is optimizing for satisfaction over a quarter, and those two timelines pull in different directions even when the underlying values are the same.
A hiring manager who never talks about the bigger picture isn’t being dishonest. They’re usually just so deep in stakeholder management that the larger purpose becomes something they assume rather than something they say out loud. A candidate who hears “impact” and pictures changing the world, then spends six months fielding status update requests, isn’t wrong to feel like something was oversold. Nobody lied. Nobody named the gap either.
If you’re hiring right now, it’s worth saying the quiet part in the interview. Tell candidates plainly what a good quarter looks like from where you sit, and let them tell you plainly what would make the work feel meaningful to them. If those two things can coexist, say so specifically. If they’re in tension sometimes, say that too.
Are you as clear with candidates about what “impact” means in your building as they are with you?
If you want to think through how a role is really structured before you write the description, I’m happy to have that conversation with you.
