About Barry Simpson

I fell into career coaching the way most people fall into anything useful: by accident.

I'd been a hiring manager for years, building teams, interviewing candidates, making offers. I got good at spotting the difference between someone who'd prepared and someone who was winging it. Between someone who understood what we needed and someone who just wanted a job.

Then I found myself on the other side of the table. And I realized that most of the advice out there was, to put it politely, rubbish.

Fill in this template. Use these power words. Track how many applications you've sent this week. None of it addressed the fundamental problem: job seekers were thinking about what they wanted, when they should have been thinking about what the employer needed.

So I started coaching people differently. Instead of handing them templates, I taught them to think. To understand the employer's perspective. To position themselves as the solution to a problem, not just another application in the pile.

It worked. It kept working. And after nearly twenty years and thousands of people, I started sharing what I'd learned on Reddit.

I expected a few hundred views. The first big post hit 700,000. Comments poured in from people who were exhausted, frustrated, and sick of being told to "tailor your resume" without anyone explaining what that actually meant. They wanted practical advice from someone who'd actually done this, not recycled tips from people who'd never hired anyone.

They also told me to write a book. Repeatedly. For months. So eventually I did.

"It's Not About You" is everything I've learned, organized into a system that takes you from "I just lost my job" to "I start Monday." It's the book I wish existed when I was starting out, and it's been shaped by real conversations with real job seekers who told me exactly what they needed to hear.

I'm a Brit who's been living in Massachusetts for thirty years. I've worked with people at every level, from recent graduates wondering where to start to senior executives wondering what happened. The advice is the same because the fundamentals don't change: understand what they need, show them you're the answer, and don't leave without a next step.