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

In the current situation where there is an increased level of competition and expectations from the employers, it is more important than ever to build your candidacy around your USP to stand out. In this two-part interview playbook, I am sharing a few tools and tips that have worked well for me in my previous searches both as an interview and as an interviewer.

In case you haven’t read Part 1, I am re-setting the stage here a little bit. It is important to understand the typical Interview Stages and expectations (broadly) to be well-prepared according to the specificity of each round:

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 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.

Part 1 of the blog focuses on #1 & 2, in this piece, we’ll be focusing on #2 & 3.

Acing Your F2F Interview: Tips, Tricks and Life Lessons

These interview rounds are focused on deep dives in specific aspects/ skills needed to perform the job in question and may include multiple rounds with 4–6 different interviewers, who may be individuals from the team, 1–2 from other teams, and your hiring manager. Usually, a tentative outline is shared with the candidate on the key focus areas but they always come with some element of surprise, so don’t get thrown off by that :)

Post-COVID, all F2F interviews have had to be moved to Video Calls which has both its pros and cons. While not having the opportunity to meet your future prospective team is an obvious con, a big pro is that this has resulted in easier scheduling and splitting up the rounds over 2 days so you can be relaxed and better prepared. Tips on how to ace interviews on Zoom can be a blog by itself, hence, in this blog, we will focus on overall aspects/ flow of an interview, not just tactics specific to a VC interview.

Depending on the specific role, there can be many different focus areas in the interview, but in broad terms, they focus on the following areas:

• Domain-Specific (Technical Skills) — Core to the role. Ex: Analytical skills for analytics roles.
• Critical Thinking — Analytical, Problem-Solving, detail-orientation, scenario-based, etc.
• Behavioral — How you work (self-initiate, prioritize,), how you work with others, how you lead whether or not you are a leader, communication, influencing, self-awareness around strengths and weaknesses, so on and so forth.

It is important to know why interviewers go through these steps and what are the unspoken things you are being assessed for in these steps. So what is the actual purpose? They are to:

• Gauge if you can actually back up what you have stated in your resume/ phone interviews with specific behavioral and experiential examples from past projects and how specifically you made an impact.
• Not necessarily to look for the right answers but instead, understand your approach to situations/ problems — structure, thought process, ability to think on the feet, lead, influence, etc.
• Assess if you have had first-hand experiences of situations/ challenges that are expected in this role.

Once, we identify the deeper and unspoken factors, it gets really easy to prepare and crush the interviews, this can be the ‘extra’ from the ordinary.

Four Tested secrets to ace your interviews:

Interviewing can be a challenge as its not sufficient to be well prepared. It is also important to showcase your best and your differentiation on the interview day. Here are a few things I learned (and wish someone told me) in my interview journey.

1. Create a personal Question Bank of possible questions (from Glassdoor, interview guides, employee referrals, etc) and write up your answers — this helps in being prepared with responses enabling you to highlight your thoughts, your experience, and your body of work in the best possible way.

2. Mapping questions to the focus area: There may be numerous questions that you can anticipate and prepare for but it is almost impossible to predict the exact questions esp as they are all framed differently. Well, the cool thing to know is that one doesn’t need to. And why is that? Well, despite the many ways questions might be framed, the interviewer is likely asking to respond from one of a few broad areas, which you already covered in your playbook prep. If you can map the question to the focus area, then all you need to do is pull out the right answer from your “magic answer hat” i.e. from your very own playbook for interviewing. Figuring out the true intention of the question and mapping it to the right area will help you ace the interview. Here are a few examples.

Examples of mapping questions to specific focus areas

3. Use frameworks: Frameworks ease the cognitive burden of structuring your answers and let you focus on the content of what you want to say. There are several frameworks you could use to answer questions, like STAR to answer situational questions or Objectives- Challenges- Achievements-Execution. However, this is only to structure your answer, in addition to this, quoting frameworks in your answers that you use day-to-day will act as a great primer. An added benefit is that frameworks will often give you the confidence that your answers are well thought out and bring out the best of your work.

Examples of a few frameworks that I use day-to-day/ are helpful to quote in your answers:

For Prioritization: Eisenhower’s Matrix for deliverables or simple Task Prioritization for daily task management

For communication: Radical Candor

For Problem-Solving: The 5 Whys

For Influencing: Influential Tactics

4. Finish Strong: Towards the end of the interview, you will typically be asked if you have any questions for the interviewer. Definitely ask questions. And come prepared! Show that you have done your homework by asking questions pertinent to the role of the interviewer and demonstrate the areas you care about.

Pro Tip: After the interviews, send a “thank you note” to the interviewer. In your note, thank them for the opportunity, share your key takeaways from each interview round, and finish up with why you more strongly believe after meeting the team that you are a great fit for this role (if you really do). This type of note demonstrates that you have a strong EQ which is valued at least as much, if not more than, IQ by hiring managers — shows you listened.

Do’s :

• Add metrics in results/ examples to quantify your success/ impact as you walk through them.
• Enlist the specific things you want to highlight for each role.
• Share personal anecdotes wherever possible.
• Negotiate for things that matter most — it could be right leveling or the right pay, or need to wfh when things get back to normal, or certain # of days off to do your most important things, etc. This is your best chance to ask for what you need.
• 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.

Don’t:

• Overprepare (quoting company catch-phrases, priorities) when it becomes obvious that you got help from a current employee.
• Relay other’s thoughts. Everything you say should be a projection of your thought process/ approach.
• Don’t hesitate to clarify the question, when in doubt or when doing scenario-based interviews.
• Don’t hesitate to take a moment to collect your thoughts as you start answering.

The above tips and insights have been personally tested during my interview journey. If you are preparing for interviews, then I hope you find the above useful.

If you have more tips to share or have a different perspective I would love to hear from you!