Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Recruiter Built a 4000 Monthly Side Hustle in Interview Coaching
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this recruiter named Sarah — works in-house at a mid-sized tech company in Austin. She's been hiring for about six years, placed over a hundred engineers, marketers, and product managers. And last year she started a side hustle that's now bringing in around four thousand bucks a month. Luna: Interview coaching, right? I've seen a bunch of those pop up on LinkedIn lately. Lucas: Exactly. But what I found interesting about Sarah's approach is how she spotted the opportunity. She told me that after every rejection call she made, candidates would ask for feedback. And she noticed a pattern: most of them had the technical skills — they'd passed the take-home test, they had the right keywords on their resume — but they couldn't sell themselves in the interview. Luna: That's a classic blind spot. You can be brilliant on paper and still freeze when someone says 'Tell me about a time you led a project.' Lucas: Exactly. So Sarah's insight was: she's seen hundreds of interviews from the other side of the table. She knows exactly what hiring managers are looking for. And she realized she could package that knowledge as a service. Luna: How did she start getting clients? Did she just post on LinkedIn or what? Lucas: She started small. She created a free PDF — a STAR method cheat sheet with a few sample answers. Then she reached out to people who had recently been laid off or were openly job-seeking on LinkedIn. Just a casual DM: 'Hey, I saw you're looking. I put together this cheat sheet, hope it helps. If you want to do a mock interview, I offer paid sessions.' Luna: So the cheat sheet is her lead magnet. That's smart — low barrier to entry, builds trust. Lucas: Right. She started with five clients in the first month, charging a hundred and fifty dollars per session. And she requires a minimum of three sessions — so that's four hundred fifty dollars per client. Her pitch is: the first session is strategy and identifying gaps, the second is a mock interview, the third is a debrief and fine-tuning. Luna: So the minimum commitment helps with consistency, both for her and the client. Lucas: Yeah. She says it prevents the one-off session where someone just wants to vent, and it forces them to actually practice. After three months, she had about ten clients a month — that's her current capacity — and she's grossing four thousand dollars. Luna: Ten clients a month at three sessions each... that's thirty sessions. That's like one a day if you're doing weekdays, assuming you're not doing them all back to back. Lucas: She actually blocks out Tuesday and Thursday evenings from six to nine, and Saturday mornings from nine to twelve. So she's doing about seven to eight sessions a week, spread out. She keeps her calendar completely locked otherwise — no spillover into her day job. Luna: That discipline is key. A lot of people would try to cram in more and burn out. Lucas: She also built a templated feedback system. After each mock interview, she sends a one-page PDF with three strengths, three areas to improve, and two specific action items. She spends about fifteen minutes on that per session, but it makes her look incredibly professional and it's repeatable. Luna: So she's basically productizing her expertise. The templates mean she's not reinventing the wheel every time. Lucas: Exactly. And here's the thing — she's not a career coach in the traditional sense. She's a recruiter. She has insider knowledge about what hiring managers actually think but don't say. For example, she tells clients: 'If you talk for more than two minutes on any behavioral question, you've lost them. Keep your STAR stories to ninety seconds.' Luna: That's the kind of specific insight you can only get from being on the other side of the table. Lucas: Right. And she also coaches on the unspoken rules — like, don't badmouth your previous boss even if they were terrible, because the interviewer is thinking 'Will this person badmouth me next year?' Or, if you're interviewing for a startup, emphasize adaptability over process-following. Luna: That customization based on the target company is high-value. I can see why clients are willing to pay a hundred and fifty per session. Lucas: And she's actually charging on the lower end compared to some career coaches. But she says she wants to keep it accessible, and also she's not a full-time coach — this is a side hustle. She doesn't want the pressure of charging five hundred dollars a session. Luna: That makes sense. But let me ask the obvious question: is there an ethical issue here? She's a recruiter at a tech company, and she's coaching candidates who might apply to her own company — or to competitors. Lucas: She thought about that. She has a clear boundary: she won't coach anyone who is actively interviewing at her company. And she doesn't use any confidential information — no interview questions from her own pipeline, no inside scoop on specific roles. Her coaching is purely based on general best practices and her experience from past roles. Luna: That seems reasonable. But what about the optics? If a hiring manager at another company finds out a candidate worked with a coach, does that hurt the candidate? Lucas: Sarah says it's actually the opposite. She encourages clients to be upfront: 'I worked with an interview coach to prepare.' Most hiring managers see that as a sign of initiative. They'd rather have a candidate who is prepared and polished than someone who's winging it. Luna: That's a good point. It shows you're serious about the opportunity. Lucas: So the question is: is this replicable? You don't have to be a recruiter to do this. Anyone who has deep experience in a specific hiring process — whether that's tech, finance, consulting, or even academia — could potentially offer interview coaching. Luna: But you need to have seen a lot of interviews, right? One or two years of hiring experience probably isn't enough. You need pattern recognition. Lucas: Sarah thinks the sweet spot is at least four to five years of active hiring. But beyond that, you also need to be good at giving feedback in a way that's constructive. Some people are natural coaches, others aren't. Luna: What about the business side? Does she have a website? Is she using any platforms? Lucas: She keeps it simple. Her main channel is LinkedIn — she posts once a week with interview tips. That drives inbound leads. She also has a Calendly link for booking, and she uses PayPal for payments. No website, no social media beyond LinkedIn. She says she wants to keep overhead close to zero. Luna: Smart. The last thing you want is a side hustle that turns into a second full-time job. Lucas: And she's strict about hours. She only takes clients during her blocked time slots. If someone wants a Tuesday morning session, she says no. That's her full-time job time. Luna: I think that's actually a huge part of why she's been able to sustain this for over a year. A lot of side hustles fizzle out because the person tries to do too much. Lucas: Yeah. And she's not trying to scale to fifty clients a month. She's happy with ten. She makes an extra four thousand dollars a month, which for her covers a nice vacation fund and some extra savings. She doesn't need it to replace her income. Luna: That's a healthy mindset. It's a side hustle, not a startup. Lucas: If this episode helped you think about a skill you could turn into a side hustle, or even just gave you one or two ideas — honestly, if it was worth a coffee to you, that's the link. You can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it keeps us ad-free and allows us to keep diving into stories like Sarah's. Every little bit helps. Lucas: So back to the replicability piece — Sarah actually gave me a framework for how to spot your own coaching opportunity. She says ask yourself three questions. First: what is a process I've done at least a hundred times that other people struggle with? Second: what feedback do people consistently ask me for? Third: what would I pay someone to teach me? Luna: That third question is key. A lot of people undervalue their own knowledge because it feels obvious to them. Lucas: Right. Sarah says she almost didn't start because she thought 'interview coaching is a saturated market.' But once she realized her specific niche — tech recruiting, mid-level hires, behavioral interviewing — it wasn't saturated. There are thousands of general career coaches, but very few specialize in the exact pain point she addresses. Luna: So the advice is: go narrow, not wide. Lucas: Exactly. And the other thing she emphasized is that you don't need to be an expert in everything. You just need to be better than your client at one thing. If you've interviewed fifty people, you know more than someone who's never been interviewed. Luna: That's a great reframe. It lowers the bar to entry. Lucas: So if you're a hiring manager, a senior individual contributor who sits on interview panels, or even a recruiter like Sarah — this could be a four thousand dollar a month side hustle waiting to happen. Luna: And you don't need to build a brand, a website, or a course. Just a LinkedIn profile and a few template documents. Lucas: Yeah. The overhead is basically zero. The hardest part is the first client. Sarah says she got her first client by offering a free thirty-minute session to a friend. That friend got the job and referred two others. That was the snowball. Luna: Referrals are huge for this kind of service. If you do a great job, people will tell everyone they know who's job hunting. Lucas: And job hunting is something almost everyone does several times in their career. It's a recurring need. So this isn't a one-time boom — it's a steady stream. Luna: Alright, so for anyone listening who's been on the hiring side of the table, what's the first step you'd recommend? Lucas: I'd say start by writing down your top five interview tips. Just five things you see candidates mess up most often. Then put that into a one-page PDF. That's your lead magnet. Then start offering free fifteen-minute consults to people in your network who are actively job searching. See if you can help them. If they get value, ask if they'd consider a paid session. Luna: And don't worry about being perfect. Just start. Lucas: Exactly. Sarah's first session was a mess, she says. She was nervous, she over-explained. But the client still got value because she had genuine insight. You'll improve with practice. Luna: Nice. So interview coaching as a side hustle — it's real, it's doable, and it's hiding in plain sight for anyone who's been on the hiring side. Lucas: Yeah. And four thousand a month for ten hours of work a week? That's a pretty good trade.