How to flip the interview

I jumped on LinkedIn this morning only to find another incredible talent, a friend, had been victim of yet another tech layoff.?I am not sure why this wave of layoffs has hit me so hard, but it’s been weighing on my heart and mind. I have been in technology sales for close to a quarter of a century - been through reorgs and layoffs but this one seems to have affected many close friends and colleagues.?

I feel compelled to jump in and help! Those who know me, know my network is always open and I’ll go out of my way to help make connections. But connections aren’t enough if you can’t close the interview, so that’s the focus of this article: I’ve mentored hundreds of people through the interview process and have developed an interviewing strategy that works 99% of the time. It’s time intensive in a good way, as it helps qualify if you’re serious about the position. It’s helped me, my family, my friends, and my mentees land our dream jobs. The concept is simple, you create a business plan to you flip the interview to your advantage - and this helps to drive the interview conversation around your plan.?

This is how to flip the interview - It will be a multipart series, and this is the first installment. In addition to the guide below I’ve also included a template you can use to build your interview business plan: 5 Slide Interview Business Plan

Skip ahead in the series:

Part 2: When to use your plan

Background: I first flipped the interview when I was going after an Account Executive position with 苹果 Education. I was still six months shy of getting my college degree and the position required 5-10 years of sales experience. I knew I could excel at the job, but I didn’t have the resume experience to compete. At the time it was my dream job, so I called every single one of my mentors asking for advice.?

One of my mentors, Jay Matheson, EdD , recommended I build a business plan for the interview. It was obvious - by building a business plan I could out-prepare the competition, demonstrate my creativity, tenacity, drive, and take control of the interview. I knew it would be a ton of work without the guaranteed payout of the job, but I wanted to put myself in the best position for success. Flipping the interview is work, but if you put in the work up front, you’ll land the job. A side benefit of this approach is that you have set some initial expectations with your hiring manager, and you have a framework for a plan to hit the ground running when you start your job. It starts from the moment you identify the position.?

Step 1: Start your research

One of the simplest ways to outmaneuver your competition is to out-research them. Before you have your initial conversation with the company, you should know the following:

• What is the company’s mission??
• How did it get started??
• What are the companies top three strategic priorities??
• Who are the company's greatest competitors??
• How does this company stack up against competition??
• Is it currently making or losing money? Does it outperform the market??

The fastest way to gather this information if the company is publicly traded, is to listen to/read the 10k or earnings call transcripts. The best sources to find this information:

• Seeking Alpha - https://seekingalpha.com
• Yahoo Finance - https://finance.yahoo.com
• Crunch Base (for start ups. Expensive after free trial!!) - https://www.crunchbase.com

I’ve also found great information in the CEO’s letter to the shareholders, DEI reports, and sustainability reports. If you are looking at a privately held company, find out the CEOs name and search it on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. More than likely you’ll find a recording of them at a conference talking about the company’s product or mission. This works for publicly traded companies too.?

Armed with the above, you’re ready for the initial interview.?

Step 2: The initial interview

Your initial interview is likely to be with a recruiter or someone from HR. If you’re lucky, you may get the hiring manager. Their job is to cull down an initial round of candidates from the hundreds of resumes they’ve received. This is a vetting call and a filter to make sure your resume represents a highly motivated, articulate human. If you have made it this far, you have your foothold. If you want to advance further and be prepared for the real interview, your job is to accomplish the following in the initial conversation:

• Help your interviewer understand you know the company's mission and are excited to help contribute.
• Help the interviewer interpret how your background and experience can help drive the company’s mission forward.
• Learn as much about why they are hiring the position.
• What is the challenge they are trying to solve by hiring this position??
• What is the state of the current business??
• Is it a start up? Turn around business? Sustaining business??
• What is the urgency/timeline??
• What are the stages of the interview process??
• Bonus: Are they looking internally or externally for the position? Why??
• Bonus: How many other candidates do they plan to advance to the next round??

Step 3: Prepare for the real interview

Here is where the work begins. Your job is to coalesce the research you did in the first two steps into a business plan. I’ve gone a bit extreme in building these in the past, but you can likely get this done in a simple 5 slide deck. You can download a sample deck here: 5 Slide Interview Business Plan

Slide 1: About me. Here is where you have a chance to humanize yourself and talk quickly about what drives you, your hobbies, previous work experience etc. I usually do this in a quadrant slide and add pictures and icons to break it down:

Hobbies

• The key here is to be authentic.
• What do you do for fun away from work??
• Anything unique that would make you stand out.

Previous work experience

• Great to include the logos of your previous employers.
• Make sure to key in on the experiences that have helped you prepare for the current position.

Volunteering Opportunities?

• How have you or are currently giving back to the community??
• These don’t always have to be formal volunteering opportunities, you can call out current/previous mentoring experiences.

Family/Pets

• Totally optional but I’ve always included this. In fact, my resume calls out the order of operations Father, Husband, Sales leader - in that order.?
• This is another way to further humanize you for the panel.?

Slide 2: Company/Product profile: This slide is where you can condense the research you did in step 1 and 2. It should include at a minimum:?

• Company name and logo
• Revenue
• Current share price?
• Key Competitors?
• Top 3 strategies the company is currently pursuing.
• Product value prop if you are applying for a specific segment of the company.

Slide 3: SWOT Analysis: This is your standard Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Below I break down some questions you should ask yourself to approach each section:?

Strengths:?

• What are the company's strengths??
• What is it its unique value prop??
• How is it stealing market share (or potentially stealing share)?
• Do it products displace something or is it creating an entirely new market??
• Has it hired world class leaders? Culture??
• Is it taking a unique route to market??
• How does the division you're applying for participate in the company’s growth??

Weaknesses:

• Note: I have historically struggled with this one for two reasons:
• 1. You are interviewing for the position - are you sure you want to call out the weaknesses of a company? My answer is yes. It shows a maturity in your business acumen that you can recognize those weaknesses. You can score a lot of bonus points if you have some creative solutions on how to solve these weaknesses (especially if hiring you is part of that solve).
• 2. What is the fundamental difference between weaknesses and threats? The most simple and elegant way to think of this: Weaknesses are internal weaknesses to the company. It could be product challenges, route to market, shareholder pressure, lack or awareness, etc. Threats are challenges from competition external to the company. This could be a more competitive product, competition over spending on marketing awareness, strength of competitor brand, etc.?
• Here are the questions you can ask yourself for Weaknesses:?
• Is the product challenged in anyway??
• Does the company have proper brand awareness in the market (in the right segments?)
• Is the company going through a transition??
• Is there shareholder pressure (activist or otherwise) or lack of recognition of the company's strategies in the market?

Opportunities:

• This portion looks at the overall trends in the market that you see are favorable for the company. You can use the section to highlight some of the strategies you want to put in place to address threats and weaknesses.
• Is the market changing to favor a certain product??
• Are the company's competitors disadvantaged??
• Are there unexplored routes to market??
• Are there internal processes or tools the company could adopt to make them more efficient?

Threats:

• These are the external threats facing the company
• Is the market changing in a way that is not favorable for the company or product??
• How are the competitors threatening the market??
• Is customer sentiment changing in a way that will negatively effect the company or product??

Slide 4: Resources and Processes. This slide should cover everything you think you’ll need in place to be successful (team, funding, systems, partnerships, customer relationships, internal partnerships). This can help demonstrate what you’ve done in past and what you know about the industry. Feel free to be creative here and bring some new disruptive ideas forward. This is also an excellent opportunity to have a strong set of questions ready that address the company's readiness in each of these areas. I typically draw this as a brainstorm/mind map to keep it open and get the interviewer excited about brainstorming alongside me.?

Here are some starters for each other topics you should cover - team, systems, partnerships, customer relationships, internal partnerships. Questions:

• What’s currently in place??
• Is the company willing to invest/grow in this area??
• Who is bought in (execs, external partners, internal teams) to help drive this product/part of the business??
• What do the supporting teams look like? What do you need??

Slide 5: 90 day plan: Always good to close with a view on what you’ll accomplish in the first 90 days on the job. There are several more in-depth resources out there you can explore. The go-to resource on this is the book: The First 90 Days

I usually break down the 90 day plan into 3 sections: First 30 days, 30-60, 60-90. The best 90 day plans tend be some variation of the following:?

First 30 days: Meet

• Who do you need to meet in the first 30 days??
• Your team: Who is on your team? How is it structured??
• Your peers: Who are all the peer level contacts you’ll be working with??
• Your partners: Which external partners are critical for your business? Will you be responsible for those relationships??
• Internal stakeholders: Other leaders you should know outside of your direct reporting line.
• Cross-functional teams: Which other teams do you need to work with to be successful??

30-60 Days: Learn

• What do you need to learn in the first 90 days??
• Understand the rhythm of the business - when are the critical meetings? What is the cadence??
• What are the critical items you’ll be responsible in the first 90??
• When does the company do its strategic planning??
• Do you need to submit a financial plan??
• A forecast??
• What systems do you need to know to be successful??
• ERP? CRM? Financial system??

90 days: Plan?

• In this section you’ll call out how you’ll use the information you learned in the first 60 days to refine your plan.?
• You’ll be able to assess whether the business is sustaining, start up, or turnaround.
• What changes do you need to make to the resources and process (while most recommendations state you shouldn’t change anything in the first 6 months, it’s always a good idea to start building your plan)?

Now that you have your plan built, you’re ready for the interview. In my next post, I’ll discuss interview tactics and the proper way to introduce your plan in the interview. If you have some great interviewing strategies or tactics please make sure to post in comments.?