Episode 23: How to nail your next interview

Last week, I judged a mock interview competition for Gritty - a company that helps minorities pivot into tech or pharma sales. We did a tournament-style rapid interview with tailored feedback for each participant. The competition's winner did not score the highest because of any framework or research. Instead, she nailed her storytelling for herself - short, clear, emotional/exciting, and delivered confidently. 

The biggest misconception of interviewees was trying to focus on the right framework, like S.T.A.R. or anything else. In fact, the most common feedback was to practice rephrasing stories so they sounded more natural instead of spelling out a formula. In pursuit of a structure like situation, task, action, and result to be clear, many interviewees ended up sounding exactly like one another. They immediately stood out when someone broke the monotony (assuming they were still clear, concise, confident, etc.). 

When I was originally prepping for consulting interviews in college, I became obsessed with improving my interview skills. The most helpful resource for me was ‘Look over my shoulder’ by Victor Cheng. It was a powerful recording of real interviews in which Victor (the interviewer) ‘paused’ during/after the candidate's answers and offered feedback to the audience about what s/he did well and where they could improve. You can find many of his videos for free online on YouTube. 

Here’s my formula for nailing interviews today: 

Set a strong foundation (research):

Irrespective of the role I apply for I recommend understanding the context of the organization, team, and overall market prior to interacting with anyone from the company. You will use this context to tailor all of your ‘why’ questions — e.g. why this role, why this space, why this company and most importantly why you

Questions you should be able to answer:

1. How competitive is their market? Are they leading, a new entrant, or somewhere in the middle?

2. What’s their unique advantage or POV?

3. Is this team new or well-established? How has it changed over time?

4. How is the company doing financially? Where are they investing resources?

5. Why is the company hiring this role at this time?

Some of these can be hypotheses based on your research, which you will validate when you start chatting with folks at the company. I use ChatGPT to jumpstart my research on this and LinkedIn to fill in the remaining gaps. My prompt is below

Balanced depth with brevity:

The #1 mistake people make in an interview is spending too much time on context—e.g., who was involved, how the teams were structured, and what type of meetings there were. The purpose of the interview is to understand your experience and, more specifically, how you actually apply that experience to solve problems the company is currently facing.

Example: you are interviewing for a customer success (post-sales) role at Copilot Money. Copilot is an emerging competitor in the personal finance (specifically budgeting) space. They recently closed a $6M series A, and a massive competitor in the space (Mint.com) announced they are shutting down, so they are rapidly trying to increase market share and, therefore, need to invest in a post-sales function.

Scenario: you’re in an interview for a customer success role at Copilot. Based on context, you can bet the interviewer is going to be looking for 3 things:

1. Is this person a self-starter, or can they work autonomously? This is critical for a new function, especially in rapid growth, and the last thing you want is someone whose first idea is to hire a team.

2. Is their skillset around people, processes, or progress? At different stages of a company, you need different skills. Sometimes, you bet people can develop over time, but if you can find someone with this experience, you have reduced your risk even further.

3. Can they work/think at different altitudes? It’s one thing to figure out your answer and a different challenge to convince a different department to follow you. Especially when you have zero authority over that department. Also, can they connect back their work to the organization / do they understand the fundamentals of how businesses make money and what they need to do to avoid losing money?

If you’re asked a question about using data to solve a customer problem, focus less on how you found the data, the complexity of the systems or query you used, the technical constraints, or how you presented the data. Instead, focus more on:

1. Why did the customer have that problem?

2. How did you use the data to help you arrive to a decision? (mention a few technical things)

3. How did you use your findings to convince others?

4. How did solving that problem contribute back to the team/company?

5. What did you do to ensure you can do it better/faster/easier next time or avoid the problem entirely? 

Example of unbalanced answer —> I run monthly reports for the team on how many of our products the customer is using. This data is difficult for people to find on their own because the product usage and the $ burndown are in two different systems that don’t talk to each other. Becuase this data wasn’t available I took it upon myself to learn SQL and build this report for my team.

 Example of balanced answer —> Prior to me joining our team was measured primarily on the number of customers that cancelled (i.e. churn). This was a lagging indicator and we could rarely explain WHY the churn happened, so I decided to help us get that data.

I ran an experiment for a month with 3 of my team members using product usage data as a leading indicator and we found that our churn rates were roughly half of the rest of the group. We rolled this out into a global dashboard and our churn has never been higher than single digits since.

Outcome focused (not input)

This mistake is often found in resumes but also bleeds into interviews. When we spend a lot of time on something, we often feel compelled to share just how much time it takes to explain what we did—e.g., it took me hours/days to get to this version. In reality, how long it takes you is irrelevant and reflects your mastery of the thing rather than the thing itself. What the thing does for you is actually important.

Example of input focused—> Managed a book of 100 customers globally responding to tier 1, 2, and 3 issues, managing complex migrations and escalations, and supporting upcoming product changes.

I know what you did/put into your role, but it doesn’t tell me what you actually achieved.

Example of output focused —> Successfully renewed 100% of the quarterly book for last 8 quarters, including 4 of the toughest renewals in company history. Promoted to team lead in 2024. 

The first reads more like a job description (I.e., what you’re expected to do). The second contextualizes your work relative to everyone else on your team. It tells me you can be counted on to do your job and for the company’s hardest challenges related to your job. Who would you want to start your post-sales function?

My hack for figuring out if I am too input-focused is to ask myself, 'How is this unique from what anyone else on my team would write?’

Finding your voice / making it natural is still critical to the delivery of your information, but until you have the right context to inform how to tailor that information the delivery prep is wasted.

If anyone would like 1-1 prep for your next interview happy to run a mock with you. As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode - good or bad. See ya next week 👋.

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✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏