By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
When you meet the CEO, they already know that you can do the job. What are they looking for in this meeting?
I stumbled into an article that I want to give credit to TheMuse for. TheMuse.com. The article is entitled, “Here’s the Secret to Acing an Interview with a Company CEO.” A great article, so full credit to TheMuse. The article was written by Julia Hearts who’s the co-founder and president of Eventbrite. If you’re not familiar with firm, it’s an online marketplace for live events.
Her article really speaks to how she interviews but, from my experience in doing search, it’s uniformly consistent. Basically, she starts off with the assumption that if she’s meeting someone, her team has already they’re qualified and that she’s meeting people in what she calls, “The Founders Round.”
They’ve been interviewed by the team, they’ve done an assignment related to the skills that are needed for the job. So, they know that this person can do the job. So, after the initial introduction, she’ll start by asking the candidate to tell her, his or her story, which isn’t really to hear this lengthy auto biography. What she’s looking for is a great summary of their life and career, not just because she wants to be amused, but specifically covering these points– motivation, intention and conviction.Catch that one- motivation, intention and conviction.
From there, she progresses on to other questions where she’s looking for insights into the person. It’s not just the story, but it’s about unsolicited compliments, as she says. What she really wants to know is how well the interviewee understands the challenge that the firm is trying to solve, the skills that are needed to solve it, and how they can prove they have those skills.
She also wants to understand whether this person relates to the significance of the role and has a strong conviction for the organization. Understand, generally, if you’re meeting the CEO, meeting them at an investment bank or at major American Corporation and meeting with someone at a small to mid-sized firm who was there at the beginning, a founder in this particular case, who has an emotional connection. And, although she hasn’t said this, she’s looking for much the same sort of thing from you.
Are you inspired to help this organization achieve what it’s set out to achieve– its mission to be the best that can it be in this space?–or is this just a job and, understanding that as been the underpinnings behind questions that you’re being asked, it goes a long way towards being effective.
Now, she also talks about, at the end, giving the candidate the opportunity to ask her questions, which, as a founder, I know the temptation is to give softball questions. She shares her perspective that she doesn’t want to have questions that could be easily answered on the website.
To her, that gives her the impression that they’re not well prepared. What she likes to hear about is being asked questions about certain parts of the business and questions that would give a context and perspective.
So, again, canned softball questions don’t really require a lot of thought or intelligence. The ones that require a clarification or a deeper understanding do and since that goes into the question of “can you fit into this organization,” although I normally hate the term, fit, because I don’t believe organizations know how to interview for fit, and I won’t go into detail. Now, I’ve done videos about this before. I’ll just simply say from a personality standpoint, care, intelligence, warmth, honesty, great questions, and the points that she raises in this article will go a long way toward getting hired.
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