The interview story bank: 7 Claude prompts

You do not forget your work. You stop noticing it. Five years of projects collapse into three resume lines, and when a recruiter asks "tell me about a time you handled a conflict," you reach for the same two stories you always use. The stories are still there. Nobody has pulled them out and written them down.

At the end you have one Claude Project holding 15 to 30 tagged career stories, each written to be spoken out loud in 90 seconds, plus a named list of the competencies you currently have no evidence for, and what to go collect to close each one. It works in interviews, performance reviews, LinkedIn posts and cover letters. Same story, four lengths.

How to use this guide

Run the seven prompts in order, in one Claude Project, in one sitting if you can. Prompt 1 is a conversation: answer it the way you would if someone asked you out loud, and do not rush. Everything after it is built on what you said, so a thin extraction gives you a thin bank. Budget 45 minutes for the first run, then 10 minutes a month with the loop at the end of this article.

Start here

Act as an interviewer building my career record. Interview me one question at a time about the last five years of my work: the projects, the problems, the people I had to convince, the things that went wrong. Do not write anything until you have the full picture.

From everything I told you, pull out every moment that has a clear before, a specific action I took, and a result. List all of them. Include the small ones I skipped past.

Tag each story with the competencies a hiring manager actually scores: ownership, influence, judgment under pressure, conflict, ambiguity, delivery. One story can carry more than one.

Rewrite each story to be told out loud in 90 seconds: the situation, what I did, what changed, and one number if a real one exists. Cut anything I would not say in a normal conversation.

Which competencies have no story behind them? Tell me what kind of evidence I need to go collect in the next three months to close each gap.

For each story, tell me where it belongs: interview answer, performance review, LinkedIn post, cover letter paragraph. Same story, different length and framing.

Pick my three weakest stories and ask me the follow up questions a sharp interviewer would ask. Keep going until the story holds up.

Project setup

The prompts work once. The Project is what makes the bank last: Claude stops asking who you are every time you open a chat. Paste this into the Project instructions.

You are maintaining my career story bank.

Context:
My role and level: [fill in]
My industry: [fill in]
The kind of role I am aiming at next: [fill in]

Rules:
Never invent numbers, results, titles or dates. If a figure is missing, ask me or leave it out.
Write everything in the voice I use when I speak, never in corporate register.
Every story must have a clear before, a specific action I took, and a result.
Tag every story against: ownership, influence, judgment under pressure, conflict, ambiguity, delivery.
When I add a new story, tell me which existing story it is stronger than, and why.

The story card template

One card per story. Keep it in the Project so it grows instead of resetting.

The monthly loop

Ten minutes, once a month, and the bank never goes stale.

Here is what I worked on this month: [paste]. Add any new stories to the bank, tag them, and tell me which existing story each one is stronger than. Then update my gap list.

Why this changes everything

Interview prep feels awful for one precise reason: you always start from zero, the week you need it, under pressure. Run this system once and you never start from zero again. Then run the monthly loop and the bank quietly gets better while you do nothing.

Run prompt 1 tonight. It is the one that does the work.