Job Interviewing Playbook for Non-Engineering Roles (Part 1 of 2)

In these uncertain times, many of us are in the unfortunate position of being in the job market. It is a challenging time to find a new role; there is increased supply against less demand (companies are on hiring freeze as well). In such a situation there is an increased level of competition and expectations from the employers as it is an employer’s market. Now, it's more important than ever to stand out and this means you need to identify your USP by doing a rock-solid prep for interviews and building your candidacy around it.

Having worked at and with Fortune 500 companies, and start-ups in both Tech and Non-Tech over the years, I have had experiences both as an interviewee and an interviewer. Over the course of my career, I developed a Question Bank; a series of frameworks to guide answers to typical questions, helping me identify my key strengths, areas to improve upon, and my goals/ motivations, which has been a game-changer in interviewing.

In the spirit of helping those in this difficult job market, I am sharing what’s worked well for me as an interviewee and what we look for as interviewers. It is important to have your answers ready for potential questions, for which it is important to understand the typical Interview Stages and expectations (broadly):

1. Screening Interview [Recruiter]: To determine if the applicant has the qualifications needed. It can reveal the presence of mind, responsiveness and communication skills of a candidate (could be followed by a take-home exercise)
2. Phone Interview [Hiring Manager]: Often used to narrow the pool of applicants who will be invited for in-person interviews. Typically, it will focus on questions about the applicant’s experience and skills, work history, availability, and the qualifications the company is seeking in the optimal candidate.
3. Face 2 Face (Zoom) Interview Panel [Team]: More in-depth one-on-one interviews with the hiring manager, team, cross-functional folks, etc. In this phase, you are in serious contention and it thoroughly evaluates a candidate on a set of parameters, usually done by multiple interviewers on the same day.
4. Final Interviews [Management]: Typically a few more rounds with the Management and Execs, generally to weed out any red flags. This is to review your communication and interpersonal skills, seriousness about the role, longer-term career goals, and make sure you are fit to the company culture.

This is a two-part article — In this part 1, we’ll focus on #1 and # 2, followed by Part 2, wherein we’ll review #3 & #4.

How to crush your Phone Screen Interview (Recruiter/ Hiring Manager)

These interviews can range anywhere from very simple questions around sharing about yourself and why you are interested in the role of going into specifics about your past experiences. Hence, it is good to have a 1 min, 3-mins, and a 5-min intro about yourself.

It is important to know what and why recruiters go through these steps and what are the unspoken things you are being assessed for in these steps

Actual Purpose is to:

Assess how well you represent yourself and your work (communication, brevity, structure, etc)

Gauge your true interest in the role (motivations, goals, seriousness, etc)

Typical Questions and Frameworks/ guides to answer them:

Q. Tell me about yourself:

• Start with a 1–2 lines summary intro (different from your resume).
• Continue by sharing your top 3 key skills and interests that summarizes your professional + personal motivations.
• Link the Intro to highlights from the job description + your resume.

Q. Walk me through your current role:

• 1–2 lines intro followed by 2–3 key areas of where your day/ week’s focus is divvied up.
• For eg: I focus on 3 key areas: 60% of my week is on customer-facing items to manage post-sales customer success. 40% is split between developing thought-leadership content — Best Practices/ Playbooks/ Talks, and strategic leadership — process improvements, etc.

Q. Why are you looking to leave your current position?

• Be genuine with your answer while making sure it leaves the recruiter in confidence about your candidacy.
• At all costs, avoid bad-mouthing previous managers/ companies even though they could be a reason you want to leave, and focus on your motivations/ drivers/ next focus area.

Q. Why do you want to join XX Company/ this role?

While exploring any new opportunity, I usually visit 3 dimensions:

• Product: Share why you are excited about the product. What problem is the product trying to solve and why it excites you.
• Leadership: Share what you know about the leadership team and why you think you will be inspired to work with them at the helm of the business.
• Company (Values/Culture): Core values are what support the vision of your company and help shape its culture. Share what about this company’s value and culture are exciting to you.

I developed this framework which served me really well, not only in impressing the interviewers with my thorough research about the company but also helped me gauge if the company was a good fit for me.

When you have a great product behind you, it’s easier to attract customers, hence determining a promising future. It’s important to understand the problem it is trying to solve, target audience, competitors, funding, etc. A great product requires great leadership and the right product mindset to further the success of the company.

Q. Do you have any questions? Each interview typically leaves time in the end to answer your questions and it is important to seize this opportunity.

• Good to focus on questions which typically won’t be answered your own research
• Understanding the next steps, timelines, and most importantly comp parity to your expectations to avoid disappointment/ wasting time/ efforts of both involved.

Do’s :

• Treat the Zoom Interview like a F2F, and make efforts to make it feel like it was in-person for both the interviewer and yourself.
• Be Prepared/ rehearsed: Write up your own Interview Playbook — think of it as a script. List down a broad spectrum of possible Qs and write your ‘own’ answers. This helps you understand your strengths better, and develops accurate perception and correct expression.
• Brevity, and structure, are your best friends: Use Frameworks and always state your answers in the top 3–5 key points. This shows that you are structured, have clarity, are precise, and are introspective about yourself.
• Map Questions back to your frameworks: Advanced Interview stages are typically divided up in a few key categories (like behavioral, leadership, communication, etc) — It is important to know that the questions for each category could be framed differently but the essence is the same. So, during the interview, if you can remember that and map the Qs asked your own Question Bank for that category, you will realize that you know the answers!
• Be yourself: Being genuine helps you understand if your prospective employer respects and values who you are, and what you bring to the table.

Don’t:

• Read from your notes, even though you may be interviewing on Zoom.
• Ever speak ill of your previous managers/ companies, instead focus on what could be done differently by you.
• Hesitate to acknowledge that you are not sure of the answer/ made a mistake when it is the case.
• Hang back to follow up with additional points/ answers after the interview on an email.
• Unnecessarily rush the company if you don’t have other interviews/ offers/ tight timeline.

Hope you found this helpful. More on #3 and #4, in Part 2. Would love to hear your feedback, and what resonated with you.