I did this with an interview recently and I think it was the only reason why I got an offer.
I think the challenge is that you need to have related experience in order for this to work; if you don't, you will be scrambling for an answer. I didn't even realize I was doing this when I started directing the hiring manager to my related experience until after the interview.
It worked out that I didn't have direct experience with what they were looking for but have a lot of related experience in the same language but different domain as well as with other languages, all of which was visible on my github profile.
I recently had a mentoring session with a person going for a lead position, but they haven’t been an “on paper lead” before. I had to talk them through it but I think they understood at the end how to position themselves.
I do not find most people know how to adequately fill in the dots for people on the other side of the table because businesses aren’t always terribly forethcoming about what they are looking for. If you’re not an excellent communicator (which many people in IC roles are not) it can be easy to not pull sufficiently the information needed to position oneself sufficiently.
Honestly, I think it comes down to personal values.
I like doing unit testing even though my current employer doesn't; in that regard, when I was asked about testing experience, because I spent time writing packages in python, php, node, and ruby with full unit tests, it was really an easy question to answer.
The hiring manager asked about my testing experience at my current job. Explained that I have 0 testing experience at my current job, but have created packages in various languages on my own time, all with test coverage and static code analysis because I feel as though these are important for maintaining quality software.
I think a better term may be "culture fit" as the company I will be working at is more engineering focused than my current gig. It was simple to refer to related work because I believe automated testing is important which is very much in line with the needs of the role.
I think the challenge is that you need to have related experience in order for this to work; if you don't, you will be scrambling for an answer. I didn't even realize I was doing this when I started directing the hiring manager to my related experience until after the interview.
It worked out that I didn't have direct experience with what they were looking for but have a lot of related experience in the same language but different domain as well as with other languages, all of which was visible on my github profile.