How To Answer The “Walk Me Through Your Resume” Question in a Real Estate Interview

It’s extremely likely that you’ll be asked the “walk me through your resume” question at some point during the real estate interview process, and in my opinion, this is a really good thing.

If you answer this question correctly, this can be a huge opportunity to shape the narrative around your background, your qualifications, and why you’re a natural fit for the job. But it’s also easy to mess this up, especially if you’re not prepared.

So to make sure you’re ready in case this question is thrown your way during an interview, this post walks through how to answer the “walk me through your resume” question, and what to avoid in your response to this at all costs.

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Part 1: Start with What Drew You to Commercial Real Estate

If you end up being asked the “walk me through your resume” question, the first thing I’d recommend talking through (especially if you’re new to the industry) is what initially drew you to the field of commercial real estate.

This could involve mentioning a family member who worked in the real estate industry when you were growing up, this could be an interest in the physical aspects of real estate from a very young age, or this could just be a general interest in finance and how that applies to where people work, shop, and live.

And if you didn’t grow up knowing that you wanted to be in real estate, this is also a great opportunity to talk through any experiences that put real estate on your radar in the first place, and what ultimately solidified your interest in this career path.

For a lot of people, this ends up being an experience in college that exposes them to the industry for the first time, often in the form of a class they took, an event they went to, or even a specific conversation they had with someone in the industry.

For Non-Traditional Backgrounds

This point is especially applicable for people with a major that’s not directly related to real estate or finance, and if you fall into this category, this can be a great opportunity to talk through the steps you’re taking to catch up and learn more about the industry.

This could involve highlighting additional college coursework you took after you decided on real estate as a career path, this could involve taking real estate courses online to improve your technical skills, or this could even involve getting a real estate license to learn more about the transaction process.

The goal here is to make sure that the interviewer knows that real estate is where you want to be, even if your academic background or your work experiences don’t make that clear.

Part 2: Proactively Address Any Red Flags

Once you’ve talked through your interest in real estate, the next thing you’ll want to do is proactively address any short stints or gaps in your resume that might raise questions or be seen as red flags.

Control the Narrative

While recruiters and hiring managers can read your resume themselves, these people will automatically make assumptions related to certain experiences or timelines that you’ve added, and this is your chance to explain why you chose certain jobs over others and why you chose to move on from each opportunity.

This is especially relevant for people who have jumped around a lot in their careers or have a major gap in their resume. While there’s no shame in moving on quickly when something isn’t the right fit or struggling to find your next opportunity when you lose a job unexpectedly, how you choose to explain these things matters a lot.

Short Stints: Focus on What You Moved Toward

When you have a short stint in a full-time job (which would usually fall under the category of less than about 12 months), you generally want to keep the focus on what you were moving towards, rather than what you were moving away from.

This means that if you left a job after only 6 months because of a difficult office environment or a manager you just couldn’t stand to work for, this isn’t the time to talk negatively about your former employer. Instead, you’ll want to use this as an opportunity to talk through why you were so excited about starting the next job you took.

Layoffs and Gaps: Show Intentionality

If you found yourself unexpectedly laid off and without a job for 6 months, instead of focusing on how difficult the hiring process was, this is an opportunity for you to talk through how this gave you time to reflect and helped you be even more intentional about the next job you took.

This is a part of the interview where you can really control the narrative around your background in a way that just isn’t possible on paper, and you have the opportunity to explain anything on your resume that you think could be misunderstood or seen in a negative light.

Part 3: Create a Highlight Reel of Relevant Experiences

The last thing you’ll want to include in your answer to this question is a highlight reel of the specific work and academic experiences that have made you uniquely qualified for the role you’d be taking on.

Don’t Just Read Your Resume

What you don’t want to do when answering this question is just read through your resume in chronological order. Instead, you want to go into the interview knowing which experiences you want to highlight that can make you a clear fit.

This inevitably involves doing some homework up front and sitting down with both your resume and the job description side by side, with the goal to connect what you’ve done and what you know to what would be required of you if you were offered the position.

This is also your opportunity to get specific about why you want to work at this company over other options in the industry, including how you fit in with the company’s culture, your interest in the specific property type or geographic region you’d be working on, or even your desire to work for a bigger or smaller company than the one you’re currently working for.

Stand Out from the Competition

In a competitive hiring market, there may be many candidates who fit the general description of what a company is looking for, but there are often very few candidates that stand out from both a qualifications and fit perspective. If you can find something that makes you stand out and connect with the company beyond just your skills and experiences, this can make you a much more attractive candidate when going through this process.

Two Critical Things to Remember

Before we wrap this post up, I want to mention two more things that are really important components to your answer to this question.

Keep It Short: 2-3 Minutes Maximum

The first thing is that, even though it might feel like the interviewer is asking you to talk through your entire work history from start to finish, your answer here should only take about 2-3 minutes in total.

Your main goals when answering this question should just be to proactively address any potential red flags on your resume that might come up later on in the interview, while also concisely explaining why you’ve made the career-related decisions you have up to this point.

Never Talk Negatively About Current or Former Employers

The second thing is that, even though you’re interviewing for a new job and you’re ready to move on from your current role for a variety of different reasons, you never want to talk negatively about a current or former employer.

Even if you’re having a bad experience that has nothing to do with you, badmouthing your team or company will almost always end up hurting you in the long run. The default assumption is usually that you’re contributing to the problem, and you’d likely bring those issues wherever you go next.

Real estate is also a very small industry, meaning that whatever you say in an interview setting will very likely get back to the people you’re talking about. So again, even if things aren’t great in your current position, placing the focus on what you’re excited to move towards is going to be a lot more helpful than talking negatively about what (or who) you’re trying to move away from.

How To Land More Interviews

If you want more help with the real estate job search and interview process, and you want to make sure you have the technical skills you’ll need to pass an Excel modeling exam that might be given to you by commercial real estate investment, development, and/or brokerage firms, make sure to check out our all-in-one membership training platform, Break Into CRE Academy.

A membership to the Academy will give you instant access to over 120 hours of video training on real estate financial modeling and analysis, you’ll get access to hundreds of practice Excel interview exam questions, sample acquisition case studies, and you’ll also get access to the Break Into CRE Analyst Certification Exam, which covers topics like real estate pro forma and development modeling, commercial real estate lease modeling, equity waterfall modeling, and many other real estate financial analysis concepts that will help you prove to employers that you have what it takes to tackle the responsibilities of an analyst or associate at a top real estate firm.