Executive Level Interviews: 12 Steps to Win the Job

0:00 Welcome everybody. So great to have you. Today we've got something for the top dogs, the big boys and girls who are interviewing for those executive level positions. 12 strategies to succeed in executive job interviews. But this is not just for the top brass. If you are that senior manager or director or mid level resource looking to kick yourself up that ladder, this is great for you. If you're more of a mid level or junior resource, if you could do all 12 of these things that we're going to talk about today, I guarantee you will not just win your interview, but you will absolutely crush it.

0:37 But if you are an executive, if you're an executive, you gotta go 12 for 12. Let's roll. Got my note cards here. Number one. It's about the. I hope I have number one. I was shuffling these cards before. It's about the research. Okay, so what do I mean by research? When you go in to your interview at the executive level. And I don't care if this is a 10 minute interview with a recruiter or HR person or you're meeting the CEO of company, if your research is not this thick, you're going to be cooked.

1:08 I'm talking 10Ks, NQs, 8Qs, every press release that you can find. If it's a private company, you need to get into Hoovers or some of these others like data.com that will give you insight into the organization, competitive market analysis. Where do they sit? Where are their holes? Where is their competition beating them up? What's their products, their services? How do they go to market all of that good stuff? You need to know before you get into the interview.

1:38 Nothing is worse. The biggest mistake you can make at the executive level is asking a question that you could have otherwise found the answer to on your own. This is a big honking deal. This is a big honking deal. Now if you're at the junior level, you, you want to understand the company and you want to understand what they do. You're probably a little bit more focused on doing your job well. But at the executive level you have to be able to see the complete picture and where they are and where their opportunities are.

2:09 And where their opportunities are. So you got to have the research done now. I was trying to show off my artistic skills here. That's the world. Oops, sorry. That's the world. That's the world. You need to know how everything fits. Fits together. How everything fits together inside the organization and outside the organization. So what do I mean by that? So when you come in and I was talking about Organizationally, how are they structured? Products, the services, the departments, everything it takes in order to develop that product, bring it to market or service or whatever it might be well, you've got to know how all of that stuff fits together.

2:46 If you're at the junior level, you, you have to know how to do your job well. You have to know how to sell this product well or develop this product or write this software or create this marketing campaign or whatever it is. But if you are an executive, you have got to know how all of that fits together and not only internally within the organization. How does the baton get handed from one to the other? What are the causes and effects of doing something, not doing something, how does that organization integrate with, with its customers or its partners in the outside world?

3:19 So you have to be able to see the entire picture. That's very, very important that your working knowledge of that organization, its market or its service or its product or whatever it may be, you have to be able to understand what the entire blueprint looks like. So you got to be the general contractor, not the plumber, so to speak. So that's really important. Number three is everything that you discuss should be centered on the company and not the role.

3:52 So it's okay to talk a little bit about what you're going to do, but everything that you do, everything that you speak about, when you're telling your stories about your past or you're speaking about the company's future, you want to make sure that everything that you're discussing is within the context of, of the organization. So when you're answering questions, when you're asking questions, most of 90% of the discussion should in some way shape or form be focused on how what you're going to do is going to influence that organization or how what you did in your past influenced your organization or its markets or customers, increased its market share or whatever, more so than the bits and bytes of, of what you did.

4:36 So that's a huge deal. Now at the lower levels, you're probably talking a little bit more about your role and how you did that effectively as an executive. You have to speak about your role in the context of how it influenced the organization. That's number three. Number four. Number four, it is about how much, not how many. It's about how much, not how many. What do I mean by that? So when you think about, and actually anybody who's out there, that's in my boot camp or in my resume writing workshop or actually any of the Milewalk Academy members, because even the interviewing course is about this.

5:13 It's always about the benefits that you achieved. It's about the impact that you made. It's less important about how exactly you did it. But a lot of people at the executive level want to get hung up on how many people they managed to or how many groups they were in charge of. And that is much less important than most people think. And if you think about it, even CEOs of large organizations only have so many direct reports.

5:42 You know, they got the CIO and the CFO and the CMO and chief people officer or the chief of human resources or whatever it might be. There's only so many immediate reports that they have. Those reports have reports, and those reports have more reports and so on. So I don't want you to get too, too hung up on how many people you managed, how big your organization was. I'm not talking about the dollars you managed and EBITDA and profit margins and those kind of things, but I'm talking about people effectively.

6:09 So you want to talk about the impact that what you did had on the organization or the outside world or its customers or its partners or whatever. Number five, where we at? Number five. It's about their future, not your past. It's about their future, not your past. I just got done saying 90% of the interview, right. Needs to be focused. Where? Well, actually, this is another 90 percenter because 90% of what you're speaking about.

6:41 So before I was talking about company and role. Now I'm talking about past and future. 90% of the context of what you're speaking about needs to be about their future. If you are spending a substantial amount of time speaking about your past, the interview is not going well. It's not going well when you speak about your past and you start talking about exactly how you were doing things. The interviewer is in evaluation mode of you. When you start talking about their future, you're shifting the discussion so that they are less evaluating you and more imagining what it would be like to have you leading an arm of their company.

7:23 So if you can talk about the future and how you're going to change it and what you would do to change it, what needs to be changed, how much of this, how you would go about it, and so on, I can envision what it would be like to have you in my organization and the impact that you will have in changing it. That in and of itself will give me an indication of your working knowledge of the past and the things that you've experienced and what that's taught you and the expertise it's given you.

7:50 If I'm hanging out in your past, then that means I'm not convinced that you know how to do this. So you want to constantly shift the discussion to the future. To the future. So you want to make sure that you're talking about situations in their environment that have yet to occur. Yet to occur. That's your yardstick. It's not yet occurred. And whether it's something they desire and they already know because it's in their strategy or it's something they're asking you about, what would you do?

8:19 That's okay. All that stuff's cool. And if that's where your discussion is, you know you're in the right spot to score major points. Okay, let's also, you know, kind of in the same vein, number six, here you're sequencing your story. Sequencing. Now, stories. That's. This is my terminology. But basically, anytime you're responding to a question where you have to respond for some minutes at a time where you have to tell a story about your past or their future, that's just story sequencing.

8:46 So just any kind of response that you're making to something that they asked you, your sequencing is very, very important. It never should ever start from the bottom and go up. You always need to start at the highest level, and you need to talk about the macro viewpoints and then work your way down. And you, as an executive should never reach the bottom. You should never reach the bottom. You should get stopped about, I don't know, maybe, maybe two thirds of the way through.

9:16 And I'll give you an example. We'll hang out on this one for a few minutes. So it's always important, and I mentioned this in one of the earlier ones, that you want to be talking about the benefits and the impacts that you're making. Your stories should start either there or at one step higher. So you want to be speaking at the macro level. Here's what the goals were, or here's what the strategy was, or here's what we were chartered in doing.

9:42 Here's the impact that we had, and here's what we achieved. And if you get to that spot, a great interviewer who's interviewing you at the executive level will immediately shift you to the future and say, okay, how would you apply that to what we want to do here? If they let you keep going down to okay, and here's exactly how I did that, and then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this.

10:06 You know, you want to start Shifting them to the future. So if this is what I did and here's what I achieved, I'd love to know how I could apply that experience to what you need me to do. Move it, Move it. You control the interview and move it into the future if you have to. So, you know, if I'm chartered with, you know, building a sales organization, hey, we want you to be the vice president of sales nationally or globally.

10:31 You know, we're not. We know our charter is we need to grow revenue. And we've got multiple products, we've got three products, and we're not sure which one to take into the new markets. Maybe that's their issue. And they're looking for somebody to come in and develop the products or sell the products or whatever. And now they're asking your opinion of how you go about doing that. So when I say start at the macro level, what I mean is it's not okay.

10:56 I would start hiring salespeople and I would move them into a market and so on. That's starting in the middle of the story. Well, the first thing that I would need to do is I would need to evaluate these products and I want to look at the history and the customer segmentation and so on. Then what we would do is we would look at where those products are aligned in the US Then what we would do is we would start and I would need to put salespeople in the right markets that align with those customers who buy that product in that particular region.

11:24 Then what I would do is. And so on. And that's what I mean by starting it at the highest level. So you almost, almost want to go back to the homework part, the research part, the product development part, the service development part, whatever it might be. And if they have a strategy in place and they say, we know we've already done that, here's what we would do, then just say, okay, well, if you've decided that, then here's how I would go about executing that and so forth.

11:48 So your sequencing is really important. It has to start at the top and trickle down strategy first evaluation strategy, then implementation. So story sequencing is a big, big deal. Is a big, big deal. If they start you with, well, how'd you build that sales organization? You can't start with the tactics. So if they go to your history and they say, how did you build your sales organization previously? You need to go all the way back to the beginning and tell them how the strategy was developed.

12:17 It's a big deal. It's subtle, but it gets the interviewer knowing that you're looking at the right stuff first and you're not immediately going to what you think the answer is you. Because there are a lot of mistakes made because people make assumptions about how they should grow this market that develop this or that. Okay, so and number seven, multiple questions. And I don't mean you need to have a lot of questions. You do need to have a lot of questions because there's a lot of stuff you need to evaluate.

12:47 I'm talking about you need to have a multi line of questions for, for any area that you are going to be investigating. So what do I mean by that? Well, I have my criteria. Of all the things that make me happy, that's the first thing that I need to do to make sure that I know how to evaluate you as a company. And then from the criteria I generate questions that help me understand whether you can satisfy my needs and the things that are important to me and my needs fall into a couple different categories.

13:20 And, and I'm always trying to ascertain whether you are a good company and whether you are a good company. For me, those are two separate questions. They could be a great company and not a great company for you. So. And they could be a great company for you and maybe just not a great company as far as the market is concerned or the way they treat their employees or whatever it might be. But you need to get answers to all of that.

13:40 So you line up your questions. But executives need to be able to have a multi part line of questioning for every question that they ask. So when you ask a question as an executive, if I give you an answer and you move on to the next question, what you're telling me is you're just kind of skimming the surface. You're not really a great investigator because no executive is going to be able. If the topic was worthy of you asking me to investigate it for yourself and I gave you a one word answer or a one sentence answer or something that was very quick and, and you were able to shut that down.

14:18 Then you're just kind of, you're puddle surfing here, you didn't dive deep enough. And as an executive you need to make sure you're getting a complete suite of information to make educated decisions. So you need to ask a question and then as an executive you need to be prepared for every possible response. Yes, no, maybe, I'm not sure. Hey, we thought about it. Here's what we were speculating. Anything that could possibly come back at you. Then you need to have Your next question lined up.

14:47 That's right. You need to have five variations of your next question and you need to know what those are or you at least need to know the flow of where you would take the discussion depending on how they would answer the question. So when I would go into an interview, the last time I went in for a job or anybody that I was interviewing, I'd have all my questions and then I'd have their potential answers and then I'd have my next questions and so on.

15:11 So what that is doing is it's sending a message that you are going to be a well informed executive. And well informed executives make educated and good decisions most of the time. Sure there's things that can happen, but still it's the subtle messages that you're sending me. If you don't have a multi, if you don't have multi part questions, then I know you're just skimming. You're just skimming and you're leaving a lot of holes. You're leaving a lot of holes for yourself.

15:38 So you need to make sure you got these multi part questions. Now the rest of these eight through 12, these are really more characteristics, traits and those kind of things. But this one, this one here, integrity, leadership, character, all that stuff, all your stories need to show how you did this by example. Not what you commanded, but what you did for your troops. Leaders build more leaders, they don't build more followers. So how did you do that?

16:09 So your stories have to be very clear on how you led by example and what you did with your troops to make them love you and go into battle for you and all that good stuff because you are on the front of the boat getting splashed with the waves coming at you or the arrows or whatever analogy you want to use. But you got to make sure that if you're going to get into how you've led, you need to talk about how you led by example.

16:34 And it needs to be very, very clear. So that's very important. Number nine is you've got to have good communication skills. So this goes both ways. So not just what comes out of your mouth, but also your listening skills and your just your ability to interact. And communication is not just speaking and listening. It's reading the verbal and nonverbal cues. It's recognizing the situation.

17:04 It's, it's not just that you're a great orator or that you can communicate or speak well. I know a lot of people speak well. They sound great and they're terrible communicators. So are you reading the room? Are you demonstrating that you are a good communicator in every sense of the word? Actually, speaking of interview intervention, you know, I talk about your communication quotient, you know, an effective and a high CQ communication quotient about an accurate exchange of verbal and nonverbal exchange of information verbally and non verbally.

17:40 So that's what I'm talking about. Hey, don't forget to get your interview intervention book, by the way. All right? Number 10. Number 10. Look the part. Please look the part. Don't go in dressed in goofy stuff. I wore my nice comfy black favorite T shirt. For you executives today, when you go into the interviews, suits, ties, ladies. A good suit, skirt, I guess, or pants is okay, but look the part. Be polished, okay? I think I even shaved a little and showered for you guys today.

18:12 Just make sure you look the part, okay? It doesn't matter what you look like physically, but your appearance that is totally within your control should be. Should be dialed up pretty good. You need to look like you're an exec. Well, and you need to talk like one. And I'm not just talking about the communication. So communication itself deserves an item, but so does positive talk, as in no negative talk. So never should you ever utter a word that has any negativity into it.

18:46 I'm not saying you need to be inhuman. I'm just saying in an interview, when you go in and everything that you're focusing on needs to be in a positive light. If you screwed something up royally and it wasn't your fault, I don't care what'd you learn? What did you do as a result of it? Why was that beneficial for you to experience? Everything needs to be positive. So I'm not just talking about. Don't use negative words.

19:13 I mean, everything that has ever happened to you in your life, no matter how miserable it might have felt at the time, there was a positive outcome from that. The experience, what it taught you, how you applied it and how you reacted. That's what I mean. So positive talk in all its forms. And I know I'm missing one here. Oh, here we go. Number 12 is da da da da. Confidence, confidence. Got to have it.

19:44 Got to have it. There should not be a hint of insecurity in you. I'm not talking about, you know, bravado over the top. I just mean I'm confident. You can be humble and confident at the same time. At the same time, just make sure that you are displaying that confidence. You know, good things are going to happen. You're going to make them happen. You take responsibility and you're confident that you can do the job and move the needle in their company.

20:13 Okay, so there you have the 12. I'm not going to go through all those. You can hit the replay on the recording. If you are loving this, do me a favor. Make sure you're subscribed. Hit the thumbs up.