What do you do if you want to showcase your business startup and growth experience in an interview?

For example, if you're interviewing with a tech startup that emphasizes rapid innovation, you might say, "At my previous company, we faced a significant market challenge when a competitor launched a similar product. I led a team to revamp our offering, incorporating customer feedback to enhance features and usability. Within three months, we regained our leading market position. This experience taught me the importance of agility and customer-focused innovation, values I see reflected in your company's mission." This story directly ties your experience to the company's values and the role's requirements, making a compelling case for your candidacy.

Know Your Audience: Research the company and role thoroughly. Understand their values and pain points. Tailor your narrative to showcase how your startup experience aligns with their needs. Highlight instances of innovation and adaptability that resonate with their goals. By aligning your story with their requirements, you'll demonstrate your understanding of their challenges and your ability to contribute effectively.

Prior to every interview, it is critical to understand your audience. Make the time to carefully investigate both the business and the particular position you are pursuing. Examine their goals, ideals, and difficulties. Write your story with their needs and goals in mind. For example, if they value creativity and adaptability, emphasise your history of effectively managing changes in the market or executing client-driven adjustments in your prior positions. Customising your narrative to align with their needs shows initiative and strengthens your application.

The key is to avoid sounding like an infomercial. Utilizing case studies and sharing personal stories can be highly effective and engaging, serving not just to convey information but also to ensure it has a lasting impact.

To showcase your startup experience in an interview, start with the vision behind your venture, emphasizing the problem you aimed to solve. Detail the challenges faced and how you overcame them, showcasing resilience. Highlight key growth milestones with quantifiable achievements to demonstrate progress. Discuss your role in this growth, focusing on leadership and strategic decisions. Reflect on lessons learned from successes and setbacks, showing adaptability. Mention team building efforts and leadership style. Conclude with how this experience shapes your future goals. Tailor your narrative to align with the job you're applying for, demonstrating how your journey adds value to the potential employer. Keep your story engaging and relevant.

Using my experience, I've continually made sound decisions, allowing for smart high-risk endeavours. Recognising market gaps (Situation) and leveraging my extensive industry knowledge enabled me to successfully assess risks and possibilities. I took decisive action by investing in innovative enterprises with calibrated risks and using my insights to mitigate any drawbacks (Action). As a result, I've witnessed significant growth and expansion, demonstrating the value of informed decision-making while managing high-risk situations (Result).

Frameworks are good and use them where appropriate. Almost always, frameworks end with an R, results. Augment this with an L each time, every time. Share what you learned from this situation that you are describing. Not what the business or the customer learnt but your personal internal learnings from the situation.

In interviews, prioritize selecting key moments from your professional journey over quantity. Tailor examples to the role and company, using the STAR method for clarity. Highlight achievements in areas such as project leadership, innovation, collaboration, problem-solving, or strategic planning to showcase your capabilities effectively.

Select Wisely: In an interview, prioritize quality over quantity by focusing on key examples from your business journey. Choose instances that showcase your skills, achievements, and lessons learned. Tailor your examples to align with the role and company, highlighting your impact and growth. Utilize the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your examples, ensuring clarity and conciseness. Whether it's validating ideas, acquiring customers, scaling operations, fundraising, or crisis management, select examples that best illustrate your capabilities and relevance to the position.

The problem with the STAR method is that we tend to take a lot more time to describe the situation and task separately. Please understand what really matters in these stories is the course of action you took and the result those actions brought about. That's why I suggest the CAR method. Context-Action-Results. Take less than a minute to cover the context by describing the problem, and jump straight to elaborate the action and the result.

Emphasize skills such as leadership, strategic planning, innovation, problem-solving, and adaptability. Provide specific examples and quantifiable results to illustrate how you've applied these skills to drive business growth and overcome challenges. By clearly articulating your skills and linking them to your entrepreneurial achievements, you can demonstrate your value and suitability for the role.

For us, this is the first step and the foundation for building Entrepreneurial skills at The Entrepreneurial World. We believe people need to know what they are bringing to the table so they can verbalize their contribution to the company's growth.

My business experience has honed skills crucial for any role, including problem-solving, decision-making, communication, collaboration, resilience, and self-motivation. In highlighting these skills, I specifically discuss how each was developed through my business journey. For instance, I might describe resolving a customer complaint through innovative solutions, negotiating favorable terms with a supplier, fostering a successful partnership, or growing from a failure. I support these claims with specific, quantifiable evidence of my achievements, such as improved customer satisfaction scores, cost savings, revenue generated from partnerships, or lessons learned and applied to subsequent projects.

Durante entrevistas, é fundamental destacar suas habilidades e experiências de negócios, evidenciando competências como resolu??o de problemas, tomada de decis?es, comunica??o, colabora??o, resiliência e automotiva??o. Em minha trajetória na Cuponeria, pude desenvolver essas habilidades ao lidar com desafios como resolver reclama??es de clientes, negociar com fornecedores e colaborar com parceiros estratégicos, sempre buscando aprendizado contínuo e resultados mensuráveis.

Emphasize Skills: Leverage your business experience to highlight a range of valuable skills applicable to any role. Showcase your prowess in problem-solving, decision-making, communication, collaboration, resilience, and self-motivation. Share anecdotes illustrating how you honed these skills throughout your entrepreneurial journey. For instance, discuss resolving customer complaints, negotiating with suppliers, collaborating with partners, or learning from failures. Bolster your claims with specific, quantifiable evidence of achievements. By emphasizing your transferable skills, you'll demonstrate your ability to excel in diverse professional settings.

Demonstrating passion is crucial. With passion, one can learn the ropes, design a unique product or service offering, find allies and collaborators, be proactive in identifying issues, come up with solutions to a problem statement, and more. Any obstacle or challenge then becomes merely an opportunity to learn and grow, including becoming more resilient, and to improve the business and sharpen its unique value proposition. The skills and experiences gained from one's passion project can also easily translate to other work contexts, distinguishing one as the better candidate with the toolkit and energy who can get things done.

Passion with Purpose. All communication and in fact, all interactions are best performed if you are clear as to your purpose. Your purpose, your why, is what drives you, the scratch you have to itch, the obsession that is always front and central in your mind. However, when you try to share this passion, this purpose with others. it is easy to overcomplicate your explanation, to muddy your points with reasons that only really make sense to you and will only confuse your audience. Simplicity is the key. Take a breath. Consider your audience. Answer the question "What will make sense to them". Don't allow your passion to confuse your message. Then with honesty in your heart begin. Every success and be sure to share how you get on.

To showcase one's business startup and growth experience in an interview with the right passion, it's crucial to narrate the journey authentically. By articulating the challenges overcome, milestones achieved, and lessons learned, the passion for the venture shines through. Expressing enthusiasm for the vision that fueled the startup journey resonates with interviewers, creating a compelling narrative. Through genuine storytelling, one can convey the dedication, perseverance, and excitement that propelled the business forward, fostering connections and potential collaborations.

Your startup journey isn't just a rollercoaster of challenges – it's Pandora's box filled with transferable skills and valuable insights. But how do you translate this experience into a captivating story that grabs the attention of potential employers , partners and investors. Tailor Your Story: Ensure your narrative aligns with the precise skills and experiences sought for the role. Be Concise and Impactful: Keep your story focused and engaging, aiming for 2-3 minutes. Be Honest and Genuine: Let your true personality shine through. Honesty and genuineness will make your story even more compelling. Let Your Passion Ignite the Room: Deliver your story with fervor and conviction. Let your enthusiasm for your startup odyssey radiate.

Como co-fundador da Cuponeria, acredito que a experiência de negócios n?o apenas demonstra competências, mas também revela nossa paix?o pelo que fazemos e pelo propósito que nos impulsiona. Durante entrevistas, é essencial transmitir esse entusiasmo, compartilhando nossa vis?o, valores e motiva??es por trás da cria??o da startup, destacando o impacto que buscamos gerar e a inspira??o que nos guia, sempre de forma autêntica e humilde. Essa conex?o emocional pode fazer toda a diferen?a ao nos destacarmos e nos conectarmos verdadeiramente com os entrevistadores!

After the interview, don't forget to ask questions. Not the most obvious and cliche questions. And for god's sake, don't ask how you did and how to improve. Ask intelligent questions that create an impression that you want to succeed in the role and that you are thinking ahead. A great question to ask would be: "Suppose you have hired a candidate, could be me or someone else, what would you like that hired candidate to achieve in the next 6 months to call it a successful hiring." This will give a lasting impression to the interviewer.

Interviews are often uncomfortable, not only for the applicant but also for the interviewer(s). Use this fact to your advantage. Don't wait until the end of the interview to answer the question, "Do you have any questions?". Instead, study the company and interviewer(s) in advance. Know their needs, wants, goals and means. Understand their challenges. Talk about them, not you, from the start of the conversation. You'll put the interviewer at ease because people are always more comfortable talking about themselves. You'll show a level of understanding that exceeds that of most or all the other applicants. You'll already have begun to dig in, be a team player and help problem solve. You'll stand out as the obvious choice.

In my experience, it’s good at the end of the conversation to ask pertinent questions about how can we partner? What is your view on a possible collaboration??

Fuel curiosity and engagement by asking insightful questions that not only demonstrate your keen interest but also reveal your depth of understanding. Inquire about the organization's challenges, their vision for the future, and how your unique blend of skills and passions can contribute to their journey. Seek to understand the culture, the team dynamics, and the opportunities for growth and innovation, showing you're not just looking for a role, but a place where your contributions will make a meaningful impact.

Questions are not just questions - let them all be open ended so the conversation keeps flowing. It’s all about the interaction

If they’ve reached out to you they’ve already discovered that you have the experience and expertise they’re looking for. The interview is just to confirm that they like you and that you’ve really done what your profile says you’ve done. So be yourself and answer their questions as best you can.

It is literally the first 7 seconds of an encounter with another human that sets the leverage for the conversation. Look people in the eyes, smile ?? in fact smile in two different ways to deliver a real positive impact.

Honesty and authenticity are essential in conveying your experiences effectively. It's important to articulate your journey simply and sincerely.

Be honest and establish a connect with audience. The best practice I follow is - start with a question. If it's live talk or an interview get someone from the audience to ask you a question or you ask them - could be about your startup. Questions are great as ice breakers and to set the context of what you will be speaking ahead in the interview.

Don't complicate it. Talk less, yet do more. Understand timing. Have in mind you're selling two platforms: Yourself as a brand and your company as second. PS: Pitch your ideation if you have some slides. I hope this helps. Cheers!