VIP interview preparation guide

Who will interview you?

You will be speaking with an experienced member of our senior leadership team.  Our hiring company executives pay us to conduct these first stage interviews on their behalf and take our recommendations (for and against) seriously.  As such, this won’t be just a token “going through the motions” interview - if the depth and breadth of your skills and expertise, and potential culture fit for the company turn out to not be a match, we will advise you immediately. We will be respectful of your time and will be working constructively to try to secure a positive interview result, and to support your ongoing career success.

Format for the interview?

This particular interview will be conducted using the Microsoft Teams visual & audio tool – it overcomes our location and time zone differences, and is far more engaging than just a telephone call.   Our hiring leaders often also utilise Teams when remote interviews are required so this is a great opportunity for you to get familiar with this tool, if you’re not already adept!

You will have already received a calendar booking for your interview with a link that gives you direct access to our confidential Teams “meeting” room. Please be sure to test both the audio and visual quality of your Teams connection BEFORE our interview to avoid technical hitches.

The interview will have a relatively formal structure, using our own variation on the Behavioural Based Competency interview format, and the Situational interview format. There is no shortage of information in the public domain on the structure to expect for these types of interviews.

Many of our questions will require evidence based answers, relevant to the challenges of this specific role, the workforce you would support at this company, and the broader challenges being faced by the company. For those, we’ll often be expecting your answers in logical sequence format eg: Situation (what was the business issue or context), Action (what course of planning and implementation did you do and why) and Outcome (ideally being measurable/quantifiable). Again, you’ll find a lot of public domain information for “S.T.A.R.” or “S.A.O.” interview answers.

 What are we assessing?

By this point you’ve received a high level overview of the role content and challenges, and had an open discussion about the role priorities, key stakeholders, and the employer company. From this you should have a sense of the technical skills, behavioural competencies, and thought leadership abilities that are likely to be explored during this interview. During this session we’ll be assessing your:

• Relevant experience, transferable skills and development areas for this role – determined by the situational and evidence-based questions we ask.

• Culture fit and potential to be successful within this company environment – determined by the situational and evidence-based questions we ask.

• Presentation skills – please dress appropriately, just as you would as if you were attending an in-person interview.  Wherever possible please be in a quiet space without distractions.

We will provide opportunities within this session to answer any additional questions you may have.

Be prepared for constructive feedback – we have a vested interest to help you to be successful, and we will offer coaching during, or at the end of the interview if required.  

How to prepare for this interview?

• Be ready to discuss all aspects of your professional experience.

• Have examples linked to the requirements of the role ready in your mind, including things that perhaps didn’t go to plan as these learning experiences can often showcase essential soft skills including humility, self-awareness, cultural sensitivity, and adaptability.

• Take your time to organise your thoughts before answering and ensure your answers are clear, to the point, and will make sense to someone who doesn’t know you, or your company.  Try to avoid the use of jargon that is unique to your current role/company (eg: ”….and then we worked on the FOB basis to achieve SCL ratings which gave us the GPHC award”….likely makes sense to you, but it won’t to us!)

• Prepare, but don’t overprepare - we’ll want you to be authentic and a real human being engaging in discussion with us, rather than having you offering forced answers or reading from script!

• Please let us know if you need any reasonable accommodation to be able to participate comfortably in this interview process - we are very happy to make appropriate changes and adjustments to support your success.

Essential paperwork

PRIOR to the interview, please ensure you have sent us an up to date CV/Resume that is tailored to your understanding of the role requirements and challenges.  There is no shortage of public domain information on effective CV/Resume formats but we recommend you include:

• Months and years noted for every role you’ve held and reference to any significant gaps of not working eg: June 2000 - December 2000 - Sabbatical whilst travelling and renovating a house

• A one line overview of the company you worked for - it helps for context when hiring leaders are not familiar with company brands, eg: $3 billion turnover, privately owned technology company with a workforce of circa 12,000 spanning 50 countries

•  The challenges you were tasked with working through upon commencement in the role (and/or key achievements that you’re credited for)

• A reference to the size of workforce you (and your team) were responsible for supporting, the type(s) of workforce, the number of countries spanned, and the revenue or costs generated for this group, eg: supporting xyz business division of $18 million EBITDA, 6,000 employees in the Finance and Supply Chain units spanning 9 key hubs in Europe, 2 in the USA and 8 in LatAm

• The size of direct and indirect reports you’ve led, and over what geographies

• Measurable achievements from interventions you’ve been responsible for and/or projects you’ve led - be it for contributions to revenue or engagement or productivity increases, cost savings, etc

• The levels of stakeholders you’ve interacted with daily & weekly, and any management teams you’ve been integral to

• Who you reported into both directly and indirectly

• Any awards or commendations you have received

• Any papers you’ve published, conferences you’ve spoken at, community groups or charities that you have a committee role on

• Specific references to skills and expertise that you have, pertaining to this role you’re applying for eg: “led the project team that was tasked with integrating a $98 million turnover, 12,000 employee company acquisition into our own organisation, within 12 months” / “was a key advisor to the Sales Leadership team in effecting wide reaching incentive plan changes over a 12 month period, that have been recognised as driving revenue increases of 5% and reducing staff attrition by 18%”

Finally, you can ignore the traditional 2 page “rule” for the length of your CV/Resume.  At this level of hiring, our employer clients tend to expect substance. Do include your history in bullet point format wherever possible AND proof read the document thoroughly to eliminate spelling, grammar and formatting errors.

Best of luck - we look forward to enjoying a successful partnership with you!