Right Actor, Wrong “Stage”: Don’t Get Setup for Failure

"Death of a Salesman"
“Tim starts next Monday!” said the CEO at our startup. He had called my mobile over the weekend to share the good news. I was thrilled. Tim was a new Sales executive we had hired to scale up our Sales team and our revenues with it. I had interviewed him and found him to be a very competent professional with deep Sales experience, and on top of all that, he was a genuinely nice and likable guy. But most importantly, he had “been there and done that.” He had come from a major, publicly-traded software company to our small startup having played a key role in getting them from $50M in revenues to well over $500M in only a couple of years. Tim knew how to scale Sales, and that’s exactly what we wanted him to do for us.

18 months later, Tim was gone. I was professionally disappointed and personally sad to see him go. Our sales volumes had grown and Tim had personally closed some very large deals that proved our solution delivered high value to very big companies. But our revenues had not grown as fast as the Board plan called for, and the conclusion was that Tim just wasn’t scaling things fast enough.

Stage-relevant Skill Sets

Looking back on it now, I’ve come to realize that the problem wasn’t Tim, and it wasn’t the company, or the product. The best explanation I’ve ever heard for the real problem was what Tom Kippola from The Chasm Group defines as “Stage-Relevant Skill Sets.” Tom illustrates this concept very eloquently in this video from Catalyze 2011.

It’s pretty typical in Silicon Valley for investors and executives (including me in the prior example) to want to “hire ahead of the curve” in terms of skill sets in key roles. When we hired Tim, we significantly modified our go-to-market model while attempting to execute the rapid-sales-growth plan that the Board had signed off on. We changed pricing and packaging, repositioned our services, redefined our market/ competition, and completely revised the way we engaged partners. Some of these mini-experiments were successful. A few were not. The two key issues are so clear to me now: 1) Tim had a proven track record in scaling Sales once a repeatable model was defined and proven and 2) Tim did NOT have experience  with iterating and experimenting with go-to-market models in search of repeatability. The company initially took it on faith that the model could scale, and added Tim so that it would scale. In summary: We hired Tim too early, because his skill set was relevant to the company’s next stage, not its current stage.

Successful Transitions

Consider the opposite challenge, which is also common in Silicon Valley, where you have people in key roles – Marketing, Product Management, Services, Sales, Engineering who have great skills for the early stages of company growth, but have to transition as the company succeeds and moves on to the next stage. Can the product manager who was great at building 1:1 relationships with a handful of lighthouse customers and an Engineering team of 5 continue success when she has requirements coming from hundreds of customers that need to be integrated, prioritized, and managed into a 60-person Engineering team organized into 5 discrete groups? Maybe. Maybe not.

Water-skiing is a very good metaphor to describe the challenge of this transition. If you’ve ever water-skied, you know that the basics are pretty simple. Floating in the water with your skis vertical while you’re waiting for the boat to take off is easy. And once you’re up and out of the water and moving fast, staying on your skis in smooth water is easy (and a lot of fun, by the way). But transitioning from floating in the water to getting up on your skis is extremely challenging. The boat takes off at high speed, the handle starts pulling you forward fast and hard, and you have to maintain your grip on the handle and balance while your skis slowly emerge as you come out of the water, and during this time, water is pushing your skis apart and flooding your chest and face making it athletically challenging let alone physically hazardous.

Startup-to-Enterprise transitions (and vice versa) can be the same way for high-potential individuals and leaders, and it’s not just an issue for executives. It’s an issue at every level of the organization. Even large organizations go through changes that challenge the stage-relevance of every employee's skills. Part of what we do at ExecCatalyst is to help people and teams make those transitions successfully. So in the waterskiing example, it’s helping professionals understand 1) how things will be different - measurement, processes, skill-sets, etc. when you’re up and out of the water and 2) how to manage the challenges of each transition - so that you’re not left floating and choking, stuck in the water as the boat pulls away.

In addition to “Company Stage,” other critical transitions include:

• Business Stage (Startup, Turnaround, Sustaining Success, and Realignment)
• Job function (from technical role to business role)
• Level in the organization (when you get promoted)
• Mergers and acquisitions
• New manager and reorgs
• Geography and culture

If you think you or your team could use some help managing through these kinds of change, please contact us. We welcome your comments below and any examples of stage-relevant matches and mis-matches. And as always, if you like this content, please share it with your colleagues using the social media toolbar below.

Don't Be an "Accidental" Leader

Leadership Matters

I was a new manager at Oracle when I found out I had been selected as part of a group to get to meet face-to-face with Ray Lane, Oracle’s COO and #2 to Larry Ellison at the time. He gave a short presentation and took questions from the audience and I was amazed at his ability to thoroughly address any question ranging from detailed issues in specific geographies to strategic matters like Microsoft’s intentions in the enterprise database market. A few years later, Oracle announced that he was leaving the company. Oracle lost $8B in market-cap the next day. As a young manager, the headline for me was that “Leadership Matters.” Leaders like that are hard to find, and they aren’t developed overnight.

Hot Topic in Silicon Valley

Last Wednesday evening, ExecCatalyst hosted a high-tech Executive Leadership forum at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto. It was “standing room only” full of Directors, VPs and C-level execs from market leaders like Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, National Semiconductor, SAP, Informatica, VMware  as well as hot startups like Gluster, Host Analytics, Kapow, KXEN, Intacct, Milyoni, Turnitin, and others. The event topic “Succeeding in the Era of the High-Tech Leadership Paradox” even drew leaders across many industries - from the pharmaceutical industry, health care, manufacturing, renewable energy and also from major leadership organizations including Monte Jade and Ascend. As new software delivery models including SaaS, cloud computing, and open source fuel the frenetic pace of business, these leaders came to explore new approaches to “make room for strategy” while managing time spent on operational and tactical delivery.

“Leadership Development is Deliberate”

Heidi Melin, EVP and CMO at Taleo was one of 4 high-profile executive panelists. Check out this video as she responds to the question “How do you manage strategy vs. execution in a fast moving SaaS company?”

Her point that leadership development is deliberate really struck me. High-tech certainly does moves fast and the pace even seems to be accelerating. I’ve seen many managers and even organizations ignore the need for deliberate development of high potential leaders. But leadership development won’t happen by accident while you and your team are busy executing against your task list. It takes prioritization, commitment, and investment – deliberate activity.

I was very fortunate early in my career when Oracle invested in my leadership development. It only happened because my EVP, Randy Baker, had the vision and commitment to invest in developing every manager in his 5,000+ organization. He made it his priority, committing time and dollars to leadership development programs. Over the course of 1 year, I spent 2 weeks out of the office and away from the business while attending leadership training. Huddled up with 40 other managers, I thought, “Wow, Oracle is investing quite a lot of money and time into us!” Years later, I reconnected with Randy, and he shared with me “The realization that in order to be successful as an organization we needed to develop a 'culture' of teamwork and that once operational, it would be obvious to other organizations in Oracle and more importantly our customers.”

Leaders are patient and intentional to set up and measure the hard, fast ROI. Randy continued, “Were the results measurable? Absolutely! We had all the measurements in place that demonstrated positive results on all fronts, most importantly customer and employee satisfaction- the drivers of everything. I could pull up, in my office, the customer and employee satisfaction for any manager in support worldwide! All this data was updated quarterly.”

Intuitively, every good manager has an internal compass that justifies investment in developing talent and building leaders. However, great managers act on the obvious and make investments today that will pay big dividends in the future.

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Avoid Career-Damaging Job Transitions - Part 2: Hit the Ground Running

In last week’s blog post, we focused on assessing with clarity whether an opportunity is the right fit for you. In this post, we will explore how best to approach your on-boarding into a new company so you get traction quickly.

A Very Rough Landing

She came in with the reputation of a corporate “rock star.” We’ll call her Paula. She was considered a key player at a highly successful applications company and widely credited with helping to build up an Alliances program that had exceeded its target metrics for six years in a row and in some ways was the envy of the industry. People talked in the hallways during her first week. “That’s her. That’s Paula. She’s the one who’s here to ramp up our Alliances.”

I was in the leadership meeting when she was “given the floor” to talk about her plans. She leaned back in her chair, talked about how she would bring in her playbook, and immediately outlined how she would revamp the partner program to drive more partnership fees. There was an awkward silence that she didn’t appear to notice, and I could tell by the looks on people’s faces that they were having the same reaction I was. At our company, we were trying to drive more revenue with partners, not from partners. The “myth” shattered fairly quickly as people realized that she thrived under a different game-plan and set of objectives that were nothing like ours. She lost the confidence of the team and never recovered from her early misstep.

“Non-Portable Assets”

Your on-boarding process is a compressed 90 day period for you to secure “quick wins” and cement your leadership position in the company. And when you’ve had a great track record of success, it’s natural to assume that it was entirely due to your own talents and hard work. While talent and hard work count for a lot, the fast-pace and pressure of the high-tech workplace and the wildly-different corporate styles and individual personalities are also significant factors in determining your success or failure. What steps can you take to make sure that you avoid stepping into potholes or tripping up on stumbling blocks that will derail your success in your new company?

It starts with the concept of “non-portable assets.” While you can take your talent and work ethic anywhere, you may not realize how many non-portable assets you have that made you successful in your previous role. And just like your desk phone and your file cabinet, these things stay behind at your old job, and are replaced with new ones at your new job. You simply can’t take them with you. Recreating them in a new role essentially amounts to “learning the system” – adapting your skills and approach to the new environment. Here’s how to recreate these assets in your new role, so that your upward trajectory accelerates instead of stalling out in your new job:

• Your Reputation Is Yesterday’s News – Although your professional experience and accomplishments had everything to do with you getting your new job, they mean nothing to the people who you’ll be leading because they weren't there to see you in action. On your first day, your new manager will probably send a nice note to the department or company stating how excited he is to have you on board. He may even mention your great track record, citing some accomplishments that you probably scripted for him. But unless you’re a family member of the CEO, you’ll need to get big wins under your belt at the new company before you get that “rock star” designation that was previously so familiar. As new leader, your great success in prior roles doesn’t automatically get you on-the-ground and in-the-trenches respect. In fact, raised expectations will make success even harder for you to achieve. Leave your reputation in the past and focus on creating your new list of big wins.
• Be a “Student” First, a “Master” Second – When changing jobs, you know what it’s like to go from “having all of the answers” to “having all of the questions.” In your previous company, you knew how to get things done in that environment i.e. people, process and tools. You also knew a lot about the product and market e.g. customers, competitors, etc. However, any new company is going to be a step back for you on all of these fronts. On top of that, if you are changing industries, say from an on-premise database company to a SaaS applications company, you’ll be in a very steep ramp-up for a while. As eager as you are to make a big impact and as much as you may put pressure on yourself to quickly implement visible change, the worst thing you can do to is to make impulsive decisions without being fully informed. When I was at Hyperion Solutions, Jon Temple joined as the new head of field operations. He spent 3 months meeting with key managers and individual contributors before he laid out his master plan. He was in active learning mode and gathering facts about what worked well and what was broken. Jon’s investment to get the perspective of the team didn’t just help him make better decisions; it rallied people to get behind his plan because they knew it was a fully informed decision.
• Make Deposits in Your (Empty) Goodwill Bank Account - Driving big initiatives in any company requires strong collaboration and influence. But the ability to influence others is something that accrues over time e.g. when you help a colleague hit a critical deadline, when you adjust your priorities to support another organization, or when you give someone advice that makes them look like a corporate hero. Unless you’re working for a company where the executives are “getting the band back together”, you don’t have any of that on Day 1, except that the people who hired you have a vested interest in you being successful. Think of it this way: you have zero “credits in the bank” (also known as “political capital”) and you have to rebuild your “account balance” (relationships, favors, etc.) to get back to the level of influence you had previously. Without support, you will have a hard, lonely, and treacherous path ahead. Make a list, or use the org chart to identify what individuals are most important to your success. Put a plan in place to use your ramp-up period to build those relationships and get some quick wins. And don’t over-commit. If you’re a new sales ops leader working with various sales executives, don’t ask for the laundry-list of things that could be improved and then commit to solve it all in only 30 days. Look for common pain points and pick one or two that you can address within a reasonable time frame. Then your “account balance” will begin to rise quickly.

Changing jobs presents great challenges and learning opportunities. And with some luck you make be in a perfect position to capitalize on that opportunity with the next Silicon Valley breakout company. However, there are no guarantees. Trying to replicate success by just repeating what worked for you before will jeopardize a positive, favorable outcome career-wise (a meaningful “stint”) and financially (stock option vesting). Approach your next career transition with objective clarity and a practical assessment of how your skills and experience will flourish in the “new system.” Sustainable leaders don’t let their egos get in the way of their own success. Instead, they adapt and even grow new leadership skills in all situations. Paula was able to make these adjustments in her next transition and the word on the street was that she acclimated well and was very successful.

What other perspectives do you have in preparing for a successful on-boarding? We appreciate your comments.

Avoid Career-Damaging Job Transitions - Part 1: Seeing with 20-20 Vision

A High-Risk Career Move

Colin was 2^nd in command on the high-powered marketing team of a hot, market-disrupting high-tech software company that was about to eclipse the $1B revenue mark. He had started as a Director and over the course of 4 years, established a solid track record and gained the trust of the CEO. His personal “stock” was at a career high, but he wanted more. He wanted to be the CMO, but knew that would not happen in the near term so he decided to pack up his talents and take them elsewhere. 

He joined an up-and-coming startup and got the CMO title and “executive staff” prestige he was looking for. However, within 5 months, he unceremoniously left the company after never really getting traction or having an impact at the new company.

How can a smart, experienced, successful executive put his career at risk by making such a bad decision? Interestingly enough, this is an all-too-common occurrence in Silicon Valley.

In Search of “Fame and Glory”

Let’s take a close look at some of the factors that cloud the vision of high-tech rock stars. Being heavily recruited can certainly boost your ego and fuel emotional-based decision making. Here are the “blind spots” to look out for so you are sure you make the best and most informed decision for your career based on a thorough assessment.

• The “Big Pay Day”– It’s easy to get caught up in all the hype about your own success and role you played in your current company’s success – anxious to “monetize” your growing skill-set and contribution quickly. More money, more options, more responsibility and a bigger title at a new employer are hard to turn away from.
• Just give me the ball! – The thrill of making game-changing decisions that dramatically impact the business gets your endorphins surging. However, the intense desire to finally be the “big cheese” and to “do it your way” can be a seed of impatience and even impulsiveness.
•  The grass is greener on the other side – Working at your current company for any period of time provides you with first-hand knowledge of all the warts and wrinkles. There are likely varying degrees of frustration on things you feel should be done faster or in a different way.  As frustrations reach intolerable levels, you’re ready to make a move - perhaps prematurely.
• Follow the Leader – Having a great manager is one of the most important factors in your success and job satisfaction. So it’s natural to want to follow that manager to her next role. The danger here is that you are easily swayed to join the company based on your manager’s reasons, not yours.

Look Before You Leap

In the fast paced high-tech industry, you are usually reacting to new opportunities that come onto your radar. This reactive, reflexive approach makes you a slave to the process that is being dictated by recruiters or the companies that are courting you.  Here are some keys to help you take a proactive approach to your career management.

• Money Doesn’t Buy Success – Financial success is a big motivator in high-tech. But don’t just compare your last paystub with what’s in your new offer letter. Think about your finances over a 3-4 year horizon. Guaranteed cash comp, incentive comp, and options create complex earning potential scenarios. What’s your compensation growth potential in each role? What about things like employee stock purchase plan? Matching 401(k) programs? What are the growth prospects for each company and how will that affect each company's valuation? However, while figuring out which role and company puts you in the best position to make more money is an important task,  it doesn’t really matter if you don’t survive through your vesting schedule i.e. like Colin.
• Don’t believe your own press  – It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and ego gratification of being pursued by a new potential employer, but their enthusiasm to recruit you doesn’t mean that it’s the right move. Get objective counsel. Use a trusted resource who doesn’t have any strong connections to your current or prospective employer. Everyone could benefit from getting a unique perspective to evaluate high-tech companies in the Valley and relate that to your goals and skill-set. Let them ask you tough questions to help clarify your thinking and get you away from the emotion and excitement frenzy.
• Patience is a virtue – Recruiters and potential employers will push you hard to make a decision quickly, maybe even with an “exploding” (expiring) offer letter. Those timelines are usually artificial so you should negotiate the decision timeframe that works for you and set expectations up front when you know the offer is coming. Switching companies is a huge decision and you should take the appropriate time you need to consider your options. You will have a different perspective when you have enough time to think it through “away from work.” You should assess whether a few changes in your current workplace would make you want to stay. In other words, if you could outlive the situation that is frustrating you (e.g. a bad manager, difficult co-workers, less than exciting work, etc.), being patient would pay off.
• Know what you “don’t know” – You know all of the unattractive things about your current workplace. Challenging personalities, bad decisions that have been made, frustrating processes and norms. You don’t know any of those things about the prospective employer, but you should know that they exist. Their special warts and wrinkles will inevitably surface as soon as your “honeymoon period” in the new role is over. Even if you’re the one calling the shots, “wiping the slate clean” in a new company doesn’t guarantee that everything will go your way, so be careful that you remain objective about the new opportunity in front of you. Moreover, investigate. Reach out to your LinkedIn network to see who’s worked there, can give you direct feedback, political insights, and if you are replacing someone, why did that person fail?

Throughout the interview process, both sides are “showing their best.” In fact, you’re likely “playing the part” so well that you’ve convinced yourself that it’s the perfect match. Force yourself to challenge everything at face value and to probe deeper to see if it still holds true. Unbalanced optimism tilts the scale toward unrealistic expectations that could lead to an abrupt, premature exit similar to Colin’s.  There is no perfect job so having more of a “critical eye” will give you the 20-20 vision to clearly assess the pros and cons of each scenario.

In next week’s blog post we will explore the potholes and stumbling blocks associated with on-boarding into a new company and role and how to avoid them so that you get traction quickly. Download our High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program brochure to see more client service benefits.

What other insights can you share on career-damaging job transitions? All comments are welcomed.

Interviewing: Fill in Your “Gaps” with Indirect Experience - Part 2

In last week’s blog post, I featured a successful enterprise Account Manager, William, trying to move into Marketing by leveraging his indirect experience. 

I focused on becoming fluent in the “head knowledge” of the role you’re targeting. This post picks up from there to review specific techniques to use to secure the opportunity.

Making it Happen

One of the great things about high-tech is that the door is wide open with plenty of opportunities to successfully make these kinds of moves - if you understand how to sell yourself throughout the interview process. Here are some strategies to complement the “head knowledge” so you can make your move:

• Be a good storyteller – Story-telling is one of the most powerful communication tools that you can use. One of our partners, The Henderson Group, helps people master story-telling as part of their Complete Communicator class, which I attended recently and strongly recommend to anyone who wants to go from being a good communicator to being a great communicator. People relate to stories and remember them, and if you’ve been paying attention to people in the kind of role that you’re targeting, you should have some powerful stories to tell your interviewer. Focus on the positive, show empathy for the challenges of the position, and “name names,” especially if there are rock stars or role models in your company performing in your target role. In the example of William, he could mention his conversation with Nancy (a rock-star product marketer) about the highlights from the analyst tour as part of the last product launch. This would show that he’s already learning from people in the department i.e.that he’s “paying attention,” and getting exposure to aspects of Marketing that typical Sales people don’t often care to understand.
• Market Your Uniqueness – If you focus on positioning your uniqueness, you can turn a perceived weakness (no experience in Marketing) into a strength (with great experience in Marketing’s biggest “internal customer,” which is Sales). William did a great job in his process talking about how as a salesperson, he used Marketing’s materials, training, product roadmaps and more.  He showed how his “internal customer” perspective would make him a better marketer because he had a unique understanding of the needs and challenges of a front-line salesperson. Now instead of his interviewer telling her colleagues “William has no Marketing experience,” she told people “William will bring much-needed front line Sales perspective to our content and processes.” Huge home-run for William!
• Use the Team, and Use Your Manager – In the absence of direct experience, there will still be some doubts about your ability to perform in the target role, so be proactive and talk about what you’ll need from the team and from your boss to get off to a fast start and be successful. Be careful here. Do not send the wrong message that “I’ll need a lot of help to pull this off,” but instead, show that you can own the game plan for your own success. In William’s example, he said “I know Mark has a lot of experience creating sales tools, so when I have to create one, I’ll draft an outline and get Mark’s feedback before I start writing.” This also tells your potential boss that he won’t have to “spoon feed” you in order to quickly ramp up. You can do this even if you’re moving into a new company and don’t know the new team members well. Talk about the different experiences and expertise that you’ll want to draw on from the team, and give examples of when and how you would efficiently leverage them for your ramp up.
• Find a friend on the “inside” – Do you know people in the team or department that you’re targeting? Get their feedback before starting any formal processes. Find out what concerns they or the hiring manager might have in considering you for the position. Let them know that you want to make a change, and why you’re excited about the role (and don’t complain about your current role). Find out what the big upcoming projects are, and what adjustments the organization has been making so that you’ll be well-prepared for your interview. If you can build a good relationship and get a supporter “on the inside,” they will advocate for you whenever anyone on the team asks whether you’d be a good fit for the job.

William executed all of these strategies with great effectiveness. He made the transition into Product Marketing, and only 18 months later he was promoted and was running the largest product launch in the company’s history. He’s had a very successful and rewarding career in Marketing since then, and it all started with his ability to make a major career move based on leveraging his indirect experience.

This is all part of what we teach in our High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program for our clients.

We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with your comments.

Interviewing: Fill in Your “Gaps” with Indirect Experience – Part 1

A Gutsy Lateral Move

William had been a successful Enterprise Account Manager for 4 years. He was one of the young rising stars on the Sales team at the enterprise software company where we worked at the time. He had consistently made his quota in the challenging Central region, heavily concentrated with manufacturers whose businesses were in turmoil due to the growth of overseas manufacturing. I wasn’t the only person who thought that William was crazy to move from Sales into Product Marketing. He was making great money, had very strong account relationships, and had all of the skills for a very successful long-term run in Sales.

However, William was thinking about his career. He liked selling and was good at it, but had a strong desire to be in a very strategic executive role. He believed that Marketing was a better path to that goal than Sales management. Nevertheless, he couldn’t afford to come in at an entry-level Marketing position because he would lose too much income at a time when his family was growing (note that Salary.com estimates an approximate $30K reduction in salary moving from a Sr. Technology Sales role at $100K to a Product Marketing Analyst role at $69K in the Bay Area). William had to figure out how to make a lateral move, preserving as much of his compensation and seniority as possible. Given that he didn’t have any hands-on, direct experience in Marketing, what would he say in the interview when asked “What qualifications do you have to be a Senior Product Marketing Manager?”

Many high-tech professionals who are a few years along in their career path face this same challenge: How do you get the job that you’ve never done before? They get enough exposure to another job function or role know that they want it, but they have to try to make a lateral move with little or no direct experience to lean on. If you prepare properly and understand how your interviewer will make the decision, you can take yourself from dreading the “experience” question to anticipating and even embracing it.

Positioning Indirect Experience

The answer for William was that he had to effectively position his indirect experience. Yes, he had never held a Marketing role, but he had worked closely with Marketing for years as part of the Sales team – through product launches, development of customer references in his accounts, sharing sales tools with his prospects, and even using competitive intelligence from Marketing to win deals. One key to success in any role is having the “head knowledge” to successfully execute that role. To convince your interviewer that you intellectually understand the role, do your homework on the target role in these key areas: 

• Understand the Key  Metrics – How is the position measured, and how do those metrics fit into the way that the overall organization is measured? For example, if you are interviewing for a field marketing role, talk about “Cost per lead,” “Campaign response rates” or “Percentage of leads accepted by Sales.” This will leave a much stronger impression than talking about how you think field marketing looks fun and challenging. You don’t need to know every single possible metric but knowing the top 3-5 will go a long way in building your credibility and giving your interviewer a strong impression that you could “hit the ground running.” Essentially, you are painting a picture of what success looks like.
• Be "Process-Literate" – What are the most important processes that your target role manages or participates in? For example, if you want to become a product manager, be prepared to talk about how a Product Requirements Document gets created. Where does the input come from, who reviews the document, who signs off, and what role does it play in the development of the product? Showing process knowledge will demonstrate to your interviewer that you understand how things get done and can positively impact the business.
• Show Political Savvy – This is closely related to process. Who are your “internal customers,” and what will they expect from you? What other functions or roles will you depend on, and for what? Sticking with the Product Marketing example, your primary “customer” in most organizations will be Sales who may look to you for tools, pricing and packaging, or support for specific sales cycles. Corporate Communications will depend on you for messaging and support as a spokesperson with press and analysts. Engineering and Product Management will likely want market analysis and product requirements input from you. Knowing how the role interconnects to other roles and teams will give your interviewer confidence that you understand more of “the big picture."

We used the Marketing example for continuity, but this approach can be adapted to any lateral move. This is all part of what we review in our High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program for our clients (click here to learn more about it).

Next week, we’ll build on this “head knowledge” and review some specific activities and techniques to position your indirect experience and make your desired role-change a reality.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and perspectives so please share your experience and feedback.

Get "Offensive" In Your Interview

I Thought I Had the Job “In the Bag”

Justin was heading into final round of interviews for a VP of Services role at a hot Silicon Valley startup. He was very confident since his future boss-to-be, the General Manager, had indicated to Justin that he was her first choice. You see, Justin had worked with both the GM and CEO of this new company at Hyperion Solutions before it was acquired by Oracle. He approached the interview thinking that it was his to lose. It sure was.

The CEO greeted him. “Hey Justin, it’s great to see you again!” After they finished getting reacquainted, the CEO proceeded with “I knew you at Hyperion as a Marketing guy, and never thought of you as a ‘VP of Services,’ so what do you do you really want to do?” Without a hitch, Justin responded “Yes, my early career was well grounded in technical services and the latter part of my career in marketing.” Delivering what he thought was his power position, Justin completed his response with “so as you can see I have a wealth of experience across different business functions and therefore can do anything you or the business needs me to do!” Justin didn’t get the job.

Offense vs. Defense

Most people are familiar with the phrase “bring your A-game.” However, in the competitive job search game and interviewing, that A-game needs to be offense-minded. You’ve got to compete for the job with the perspective of the interviewer - what are her top pain points and what needs to get done? Instead, Justin made the common mistake of playing defense. He told them what he thought they wanted to hear and delivered a generic response to a pointed question and by doing so, closed the door of opportunity. The company was hiring for a very specific role, VP of Services. However, Justin presented himself as a “Jack of all trades.” He assumed that his broad “wealth of business experience” would be viewed as a valuable asset but instead he was viewed by the CEO as someone who was “confused” and uncertain about his career path, and not committed to the VP of Services role. Offense employs deliberate action of attack with the intent of scoring (i.e. competing for a job on your own terms). Defense, on the other hand, involves tactics that prevent scoring (i.e. reacting to the questions and going along with the interview process “not to lose the job”). The difference, while subtle, will make all the difference in whether you will impress the prospective employer and get the offer or not.

3 Keys to Execute Your Offensive Attack

The longer you go without having a job, the more emotional and financial stress can undermine your confidence. The pressure of landing a job together with one rejection after another can erode your poise and positive attitude. And before you know it, you’ve slipped into “desperation mode” without even realizing it. This is the root of becoming “defensive” in your job search and interviews. It’s crucial for you to turn this around because these signs are more obvious to the interviewer than they are to you! Remember, they’re not evaluating whether you can competently perform the job, they’re evaluating whether you’re the best among the many candidates they’re interviewing. So “not blowing it” in the interview is a losing strategy. Here are some points to consider that can make you much more effective in your interviews:

1. “Need a job” vs. “Want that job” – When you act like you “need a job,” any job, it’s impossible not to project negative attributes like anxiety, fear, and self-doubt. Justin had been out of work for over 6 months. His previous job was VP of Marketing at a well-established SaaS leader. At this point, he was willing to take any job so he opened up his job search to Services roles, falling back on his experience and professional track record from 10 years earlier. Justin needed a job and he unintentionally projected that very clearly to the CEO. However, Justin didn’t really want to go back to Services, he wanted to pursue his career in Marketing. Once he changed his mind set to “want that job” (i.e. Marketing), he was able to focus on what made him an excellent marketer, what kinds of companies and environments he’d thrive in, and he pursued those marketing roles with new-found confidence (which he leveraged to effectively negotiate his next role). Put another way, interviewing for a job you don’t really want makes you far less likely to get it.
2. Reactive vs. Proactive – Another symptom of being defensive is not wanting to “rock the boat.” When an interviewer takes you through an endless list of questions, it’s hard for you to do anything else but to fire back with your answers.  The best interviews are when 2 people are having a dialog, not a one-way “interrogation.” Interview dynamics are very tricky and the worst thing you can do is to be reactive and just respond to questions that are thrown at you. This is even more true when interviewing for senior roles. How can someone hire you to manage a team, a project, or a product line if you can’t “manage” an interview? So when you find yourself in this situation, take control. Be proactive by asking questions to disrupt the Q&A pattern. Find a way to up-level the discussion with an insightful question that will get the interviewer to share more about his pain or needs. Then you’ll have an opportunity to promote your experience and skills in context, directly mapped to the interviewer’s needs. Otherwise, you’re just guessing and hoping that something in one of your answers resonates and “sticks” with your interviewer. Speaking as an experienced hiring manager, I appreciate when candidates ask smart questions and turn the interaction into a dialog. I dislike interviews where I’m pulling reactive answers out of a candidate one-at-a-time.
3. Eliminate the Guessing Game – All too often, people tell me that they think the interview went fine and are later surprised to find out that they were not selected to go further in the interview process. Before you end any interview, you should ask the interviewer “How do I fit with your expectations for the role?” or “Do you have any concerns about my ability to perform well in this role?” Not only will you find out exactly where you stand, but most importantly, in the event that there are any reservations about your qualifications then you’ll still have a chance to address those concerns and to convince them that you can do the job better than any other candidate.

Having the discipline to stop looking for the “wrong job” and start focusing all of your efforts on getting your “ideal job” will pay off by giving you self-assurance and poise that are contagious. You may surprise yourself in how direct and bold you can actually be, and better yet, those traits will be viewed as valuable leadership attributes. In fact, once Justin made the shift from defense to offense he got his swagger back landed his VP of Marketing role within one month.

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