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Rebecca Lee Doran started her job search in September and landed a job offer in October 🎉

To help and inspire fellow job seekers to build a career walking deck, she has shared her personal experience (in her own words, with minor edits for brevity) below:

When I interviewed with companies in the past, I’d always give answers that I knew interviewers want to hear to so that I’d land the job—but this ultimately led to a misaligned career. After parting from my last company, I wanted to find a job where the corporate culture aligned with my personal values.

For my most recent job search, I was upfront about my priorities and desire to find a mission-driven company with a culture that supported working parents with young children. While I can’t say for certain if my transparency was the reason why some interviews went south, this particular job search felt a lot more discouraging than what I’d experienced in the past.

I learned about the career walking deck a couple years ago

A while ago, I found Karen’s LinkedIn through mutual connections and saw her discussing Career Walking Decks. I’d never heard of it before but thought it was a cute and creative idea for the job search. I kinda forgot about it until I started my most recent job search in September 2025. I Googled the Career Walking Deck and found Karen’s blog.

I don’t have a traditional or linear career path

This current job market doesn’t have a lot of HR roles that aligned with my experience level and areas of focus. I also don’t have what people would consider a “traditional” or linear career path, so I came to realize it was going to take a lot more than a clean resume for me to properly showcase my experience, skillset, and the value I could bring to an organization.

That’s when I knew I wanted to incorporate a Career Walking Deck into my job search toolkit!

Building my career walking deck

I used Canva and studied Karen’s blog posts to gauge the most important information to include in a career walking deck:

• Goals
• Profile Assessments
• Growwth Opportunities

While it did take some time to ensure the right information was on there and make it visually appealing to employers, I really enjoyed the experience of building my career walking deck. The exercise gave me an opportunity to look inward and be honest with myself about my priorities at this time in my career. 

Building connections with the hiring team

When I attended a final round interview to meet with the HR team, the CHRO said he was so impressed with my Career Walking Deck because it had all the right information without being fluffy. He said it was “perfect!”

It meant a lot that all of the hiring team members actually took the time to look at my deck. I included some fun facts about when I had worked in the restaurant industry (name dropping David Chang of Momofuku as my former employer) which led to a great conversation with one of the interviewers who was a foodie!

A couple of days after meeting the team, they offered me the job!

Advice and inspiration for job seekers

Not only did my career walking deck tell the hiring team more about me—it also told me a lot about them!

Seeing that they were genuinely interested in learning about me is so important, especially as an HR professional who often feels like I’m just another number in the recruitment process. There’s a lot of ghosting out there, so going the extra mile to stand out amongst the competition is worth it.

The career walking deck is such a great way for you to show off more than just your job history:

• Creative capabilities
• Interesting facts that wouldn’t be on your resume (e.g. what you’re looking for in a company) 

While my deck may not have been the entire reason why I received this job offer, I do believe the hiring team felt more confident and excited about me after seeing it… so that’s a win!

As I start a new chapter at this company, my hope is that they’ll provide me with opportunities that align to the goals and interests in my career walking deck so that I can grow my impact!

Thanks for reading!

I hope Rebecca’s personal story and experience with career walking decks has inspired you to build your own. Please get started here where I share all my examples, templates, and resources.

You can also find hundreds of daily tips on my LinkedIn (DM me if you have any questions).

Best of luck!