Interview like an executive to land that role, part 1

When it comes to interviewing, the interviewee cannot prepare enough. Here are some tips from the countless interviews I’ve participated in from both sides of the table. I am going to cover the entire process from soup to nuts, starting with preparation work.

Hiring Process:

Check out my other articles on the hiring process, but there is some background information that you will need to know

The game is rigged against you.

If you are applying to an automated system, the odds are not in your favor. Don’t worry there are some tactics you can utilize to put better odds in your favor.

Resume Tips:

First, your resume is crucial for the interview and application process, I’ve seen a lot of different formats, a lot of information and sometimes no information on a resume. One thing most people do not know is there is a need for you to have multiple resumes.

The online resume:

If you are posting your details online, do your self a favor, use an email alias instead of your real email. If you have a gmail account this is super easy to do.

Next, you should use a professional email address. It’s always amazing to me the number of applicants that I receive from people that have unprofessional email names. Email accounts are free, just get a new one, setup forwarding if you need to.

Keeping your security and privacy in mind, setup an alias phone number that forwards to your real phone number. – Unless you love being spammed or a target of identity attacks. Google Voice is great for this, your first number is free, and it comes with text messaging abilities.

By making your resume more generic, at least for the online version you give yourself a greater audience that you can appeal to. Do be careful, you cannot appease all audiences in a single document, so don’t try too hard, it will look bad.

Even if you have not been in the workforce for long, or maybe at all, list your projects or repo’s on the resume. Showing one’s work is crucial to be able to backup the work you claim you can do. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a portfolio can land you the job! Do yourself a huge favor and setup analytics on who and how often people are looking at your projects.

The second resume, the Specific Resume:

Just as important as having a resume, this one is geared towards specific types of roles you are pursuing. If you are a systems administrator, sometimes you need to flex your networking skills more than your server administration experience. So having multiple resumes geared towards specific skillsets is critical. Making sure to have the proper theme throughout the resume is important, so take the time to do it right.

Besides having resumes geared towards the skills you have, having different resume that describes more details about your experience or projects away from the public eye are also helpful. If you work in sensitive fields, (security, publicly traded companies or government) you don’t want to be blasting to the internet project code names, or sensitive information for the whole world to see. So the specific resume is one you send potential employers vs the LinkedIn profile page listing. This shows due care to potential employers.

Portfolio:

In your portfolio, Github repo, have a clear ReadMe that articulates what it is you are trying to accomplish in the solution. List some requirements, write a technical solution and plan. This demonstrates that you not only can write code, but how you think, how you interpreted requirements in the first place.

Networking:

The most under-rated activity everyone misses out on, especially in a pandemic. If you are applying for a position where a company utilizes screening software. Remember the game is rigged against the applicant, so you need to be creative and skillful in getting the hiring teams attention. If you find a role that you want, you’ve got your resume ready, you wrote your cover letter. Next you are ready to start applying online right? In my opinion this a mistake. You know the game is rigged, why play by the rigged rules?

Before you even apply do your recon work. Find out who works at the company, leverage LinkedIn to see who in your network works there, or who in a second degree connection in common. Make connections, ask for recommendations from your colleagues. Find out who the hiring manager is, and connect with them online first. You can let them know you are interested in the role and are applying, but would like to connect directly.

If you don’t like how the table is set, flip the table over and set it your way.

In the next part I will show some techniques to build a dossier on the company and those who you may be interviewing with.