Would you see this feedback as valid?

[Monzo1ss]

I posted before about turning down a senior job as it wasn’t the right fit for me. I was just reflecting on some casual feedback from that process and whether I can just disregard it! Would you see this as valid?

for context, the job was a head of data position. The interview process was a meeting with HR, 2nd virtual meeting with current post holder and their direct manager, then final stage interview with the CEO and other executives in person. They ultimately offered the job but I withdrew my application.

When I had the meeting with the HR lady, she was really nice and gave me some informal feedback during the call. She said she’s shortlisting me but “just as a pointer I would have liked to hear more about your experience with X company so in the next interviews talk about what you did there.”

My CV has dates on it. X company is a big household name retailer that I worked at between like 2015-2020. I’m late 20s so it was early early career for me. The work I have done more recently is much more complex/senior/skilled etc. So I found that weird because quite clearly, I’ve progressed a lot since then. And I wouldn’t have examples on the same level of depth/seniority from my time there, so to me the experience isn’t interchangeable. I’m not sure what to do with that feedback, whether to disregard it or if it’s a worthwhile thing to change on my CV to make that job more prominent?

I would disregard unless there is something unique about your time and experience there that is relevant even though it was early career.

For example, if the job with X company was “junior analytics engineer at a now successful fintech startup”. (Unique point would be e.g. I learned data before abstractions existed)

Thanks,well at the moment that job has about 4 points on my CV ie quite basic.

the only unique feature is the name of the retailer or possibly the sector being more common.

Most of my experience since then is government. So I suppose, my old role was more commercial and linked to sales. Government isn’t really revenue-generating. But the feedback mainly came across more that they were interested in the retailer themselves!

If they wanted to hear more, why didn't they ask about it?

I wouldn't change anything based on this feedback.

I think it's relevant, but primarily regarding your mindset. If your first and therefore forming experience is commercial, I would hope it's given you a rather more efficient, professional, goal oriented and possibly customer focused way of working than someone who's always been in the public sector. The challenge is to phrase that nicely without insulting all the lifers though!

This is a really good point actually

I’d say that retail role was about being good at your job, as everyone else was good at theirs. So it was quite competitive and I was high performing but in a good way, progress was made at pace etc

Whereas it can take 500 years to get things done in government, doesn’t matter how high performing or ambitious you are.

but it’s like you say, hard to word it without saying “it’s shit”!