Many of the clients who come to me are senior-level executives. During their transitions I coach them for developing their message, organizing their campaign, and helping them with mock interviews. When executive clients are in the final interview rounds of the selection process they inevitably face C-level executives in their target companies and often even the CEO as the arbiter of the selection process. Although a large percentage of my senior-level clients come from within the technology space, I also work with those from the bio/pharma, manufacturing, finance, and service sectors, where they are required to go through this C-level gauntlet before their final selection. Having coached enough of such executives I thought it may be a good idea to write a blog on what it takes to ace these interviews. The suggestions offered here are for C-level interviews with large, established companies. For start-ups, scale-ups, and smaller companies I need to write another blog to cover this same topic in that realm.
Those not quite ready yet to face this challenge may also benefit from reading this blog and preparing themselves for such interviews for their future needs.
A Different Perspective: If you have already gone through the initial qualifying rounds with the company’s middle-management and technical experts and are now lined up for C-level rounds, including their CEO, you are not being vetted again for your technical chops. The main reason for these rounds is to evaluate your cultural fit, value orientation, and executive-team ethos. This does not mean that you must look like them and act like them during these interviews, but you must come across as being aware of their company’s culture, values, and pain points and despite your differences of opinion and approach that you can be a strong team player, who adds new value and perspective to that team.
This is why for these C-rounds you must do enough research on the company’s ethos. This means the underlying culture that drives how the company is run. Although the CEO primarily drives this factor more than anyone else, all the CEO’s direct reports must align with it, otherwise becoming a part of that elite circle after you join will become increasingly difficult after the “honeymoon period.” At this level of exploration your leadership competency is not the issue, but your leadership style may become one if you do not prepare yourself to respond to such questions with forthright and authentic conversations.
If you want to make your tenure at the prospect company long, it is best to be authentic and to be yourself in these explorations—rather that an expedient ersatz self. This way both sides know exactly what they are getting into. If you bluff your way through these rounds you may get that job you are after, but soon you’ll be a pariah after that “honeymoon period.” This is why the first-year attrition rates at C-level hires is so high (30-50% range).
Don’t Argue with the Big Stuff: Coming in at C-levels many think that they are being brought into the company to save its future. Remember, saving a company’s future is the CEO’s job. You are there to help them by providing your side of the perspective to make the company stronger. So, at this stage you must have a good understanding of what the thrust of the main agenda is that the CEO is pursuing and how what you bring supports that agenda and makes it stronger. If you have a fundamental difference with that agenda you should not be wasting your time—or theirs—with the intent of helping them change it. Unless you are able to show some energy around how your joining the executive team is going to help the company propel that agenda with success you should not be at this stage arguing for a different approach.
Show Leadership with the “Small” Stuff: Despite a company’s success in the market place and despite its many accolades every company faces certain challenges that it needs to address to further its agenda. Common among them are customer experience, employee morale and engagement, responsiveness, technical debt, management debt, and the company’s public perception, to name a few. So, if you have done research on the current challenges the company is facing it is good idea to bring it up during these rounds.
The mistake many make during these conversations is that they assume that what they have heard or read is true and is accepted by company’s management. Nothing could be further from the truth. So, before you launch into your tirade about how to fix customer experience with your own prescriptive approach check to see if they share that assessment of what that experience is first. Then probe and see if the interviewer is interested in what you may want to suggest improving it. Be careful in how you present your view and the prescription.
It is usually safer to say, “At General Electronics, where I was their Chief Product Officer we did something unorthodox (briefly describe it). I led the charge and within a year there was a major turnaround in customer experience metrics. I’m not sure that the same approach can work here, but I can think of using that success and trying something that works here and to make it work.”
No Bookish Knowledge: Many assume that C-level executives and the CEO would be charmed to hear about your latest forays into recent management articles (a’ al HBR, or McKinsey Q) or some hot-selling books by management gurus. Remember, such articles are typically authored by university professors or practicing consultants (erstwhile professors). So, before you start showing off how enamored you are of some new-fangled theory on improving employee engagement make, sure you pepper that with your own experience on what worked, what did not, and why. Remember why you are there: you are there to show your leadership and what works for you; you are not there to share what you have read recently.
Language Matters: During these C-level interviews how you present your ideas and how you marshal your language and arguments matter a great deal. Some mistakenly think that being aggressive and using strong language will help them come across as strong-willed and decisive. Being assertive, on the other hand, requires being persuasive in how you use your language and how you marshal your arguments, especially when the other person has a different point of view. So, instead of saying, I completely disagree with that approach, it is better to say, I may need to think some more about using that approach, as a somewhat different approach worked for me in the past.
Learn to Disagree: Disagreeing and debating are a critical part of showing your own leadership and thought independence. It is more about HOW it is that you show your disagreement and how you can win them over with your own argument in an assertive way. This, too, is not about winning or losing, but it is about making known your own point of view without becoming disagreeable. Remember, what matters is how to disagree without becoming disagreeable at these levels of discourse.
The Vision thing: Executives at this level like to discuss their vision for their own area of work and for the company, overall. The only way you can get there is to bring up the topic and ask them where they are on that path (on a scale of 1-100). Once you assess where they are by asking them (“ I think that we are now at 65% and stuck at that point”) ask further questions to get insights into what it will take to get them unstuck and how you can help them go to the next level of their vision.
Always Remember: If the interviewer is taking the lion’s share of the airtime, do not interrupt to get your own airtime. Remember, the person doing the talking is doing the selling and the person asking the question is in charge of the interview. If they do most of the talking and you are asking the questions you are halfway there!
Winning C-level interviews is not about your competence or about your intellect. Those parameters have already been vetted before you get in front of the “C-crowd.” To win them over you must learn how to show your value and how, by becoming a part of the ExecComm, you’ll help them up their game.
Good luck!