How I Handle An Interview Where I Don't Have the Requried Experience
Just had an interview with a very good company, and it's clear I don't have certain, very specific qualifications they are looking for (but obviously, I know deep down in my heart that i'll be INSANELY successfull- so it's just about expressing that). This is the general structure//outline of how I handled this:
1. I started off qualifying the interviewer pretty hard on the qualities I'm looking for in a company:
Primary Qualities: A high-tech company in adtech or saas with a top training program, selling a complex product using a strategic sales cycle.
Secondary qualities: Low-level of beurocratic bullshit- the ability for strong ideas to be expressed to top decision-makers at the company (said in a more "pc" way, of course), a VERy clear growth trajectory for top performers - I need to be able to see where I'll be going as i continually succeed within the company, smoking hot girlies (you can figure this out via linkedin profile pics), a strong culture built around learning//personal growth and development
I was under a time-crunch (she had a hard stop-time at noon... although I def. used a variety of "False Time Constraints" to extend our chat as much past that deadline as I could ; ) so had to qualify as quickly as possible, and kinda choose the more important stuff to qualify for first. They are really open to this, and actually expecting and WANT this because the fact is that the TOP candidates for any given role, are going to be the kind of people who undertand exactly what they are looking for, and won't really compromise (unless theres an obvious reason to do so).
I think that knowing exactly what you want from a company shows a level of maturity that a lot of potential applicants just don't have - it shows that you've had enough life//business experience and understand yourself well enough to the point where YOU have standards because you've sorta "Been there done that" and actually experienced situatinos that you really didn't like. It also shows you're not desparate.
So after this, the itnerviewer will obv start to explain all the benefits of working for their company, and answer your questions, and basically try to sell YOU on joinging their company. This is the time to be taking notes, and noting any further quetsions you have.
Now it's time to sell the shit out of yourself. They're going to ask abotu your experience. This is where you want to have an "Eleavtor pitch" of your experience. If you read my previous post - this is where having already written up all the stories about each of your bullet-points is helpful. Because you should have gotten to a point where all of that is condensed into basically one shorter over-arching story of your total experience. ideally you'll get all the important ideas conveyed in 1-2 minutes
Finally, after all that shit is done, I gave one final sell. This is what crushed it for her. Just sold the SHIT outta myself:
"Look, at the end of the day, if I'm you, I'm sitting there and saying to myself, 'wow this guy has a really solid resume, but my biggest concern is just that he doesn't have high-tech experience... well let me tell you why I'm qualified, and am going to be successful at your company"
I then just went off on like a 2 minutes awesomely motivated//inspired rant where basically the sole goal was to express my inner world to her. Beacuse if they can see my inner world, they wouldn't even need to interview me. They would just KNOW that I'm going to be their best preformer and higher me on the spot. Obviosuly this shit isn't pickup - you aren't going to get hired 100% because you are charasmatic//confident etc. but the key is that this was done at the end of the itnerview. We had already gone through all my actual qualifications//experience (hint: I have pretty much crushed every role I've had, and been promoted after 1 year in each role. Within 2.5 years I was promoted to director of sales of the company I worked for)... so this shit is like the icing on the cake - but it's a damn TASTY icing
So yeah, I basically just conveyed my intelligence//ability to learn quickly//extreme motivation and drive//extreme competitivenss to her and at the end was essentially like, "so yeah, I know you have certain concerns, but trust me, they don't matter - I'm goign to be successful at your company"
She loved it. On to the next round. Boom
Word. I wonder whether to take this approach for OCI this summer. They usually just want someone who meets grades requirements + normal. I def don't meet grade requirements but AA boost gives me a shot so I figure maybe cutting against the grain and showing my grit + charisma may be the way to put me over the edge. I just don't see a firm hiring me if I don't push for the close.
I've heard of crazy shit of interviews where an associate just crumpled up my friends resume and said " I don't give a fuck about your resume " lol so not sure how I'd react to some gnarley shit like that either lol.
What's OCI and what's "aa boost"?
But yeah, I mean I don't think it matters what you're applying for.. You should always go for the close at some point regardless of the role. Otherwise you clearly just don't believe in yourself and that's just pussy shit
I've only ever done sales tho so idk to what extent you'd want to push for a close in other industries, or if tactics should suffer... He'll even the shit I'm typing up is just my experience. And I won't know what really works until I get the job I wamt
Amazing post, completely agree. Basically game but for corporate life.
My buddy who use to hack the university system actually send fake CV all the time. The CV is amazing and then you just got to be able to grasp and back yourself up on the specificity/technical aspect of your niche.
Then it's pur self control, shaping the interaction, emotional projection and leading the rythme. That's how my aunt is now a top real estate in Paris and she start with no diploma, no skills but pur Street smart ability.
I actually told my buddy who make cold call to call random number he don't care and do weird shit on the phone to be loose before hitting his legit leads. And then I talk to a top salesmen and he told me they do that in the morning all the time. Basically unstifling.
[edit]
I finish posting my message that a headhunter call me to know more about my profil. Manwhore.org where amazing happen.
Submit fake resumes? Yeah that's fuckijg retarded. I'm done here.
^ LOL!
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
Great write-up on interview process. Yeah I always expressed ambition and asked about making MOAR money and getting promoted within the company. They want to know you're not in it just to be part of the sheep herd. Expressing a lot of interest in that particular industry and being able to cite certain trends and such is also pretty key. E.g. it's not just a job but a hobby
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
Last time I worked for somebody else was.. 2012 tho. Haha. And before that- 2009
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
Good stuff guys, this will be useful when i start looking for jobs to switch profession
My bad I'm in the middle of finals right now. OCI is on campus interviews where students bid on firms and firms take their pick of students. Bizarre process that involves screeners, the the call backs are kinda creepy because you just meet up with an associate/HR manager/recruitment chair aka gatekeeper in a hotel room and get interviewed. AA = affirmative action. I mean I dunno your guess is as good as mine. Some times person you get interviewed by is just some weird as fuck drone , sometimes they're normal, other times you get big law bros. I was kinda leaning towards this anyway because I think playing it safe is not going to work in my position. I'm pretty fucking money at networking because a lot of kids in law are weird AF. Sometimes places just wanna hire chill people who they aren't going to hate spending long hours with. Just gonna have to pray it works out since OCI is a real crab shoot.
edit: lol I thought I wrote to this ages ago - sense of time is so fucking off
Oh yeah for sure. I went through that my junior year for finance summer internships... Yeah you should def still sell yourself but pro be akil more "tactful" about it? Haha
I just reread this a bit slower, HA! I could see a couple flows I hadn't seen yet. Honestly I'm a bit flummoxed as to how you weren't considered to be on TOP of this. What's up with this particular industry? What's going on in it right now.
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
I would hire you in a heartbeat.
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
It's an interesting situation for me. Because I'm switching industries, from a non-tech area to a very complex tech product, the sell is a little bit different, so I've gotten a lot of interviewers bringing up that concern about my experience. They're concern is that I haven't doen a lot of "strategic selling", and that I haven't worked with a complex tech suite before. My sense is that it's similar to "token resistance" when dealing with LMR. They want to see if i can sell them on myself, and properly frame the situation.
Within 6 months, I'll both know the product, and understand the intricacies of their particular type of sale better than anyone they have coming into the same role, with a year or two of experience in the industry... I'm a force of motherfucking nature when I'm on a warpath. Just have to have patience with myself and these people and continue to practice. I'll get what I'm aiming for - and if I don't I'm gonna lose myself in the process. I refuse to let this opportunity slip away. This is the best shot I've ever had to set myself up on a very clear path to making a TON of money(after 4-5 years in this sort of environment, I'll easily be making 200-300k/year... that's pretty standard), and I'm so close I can literally taste it.
One of my sister's friends asked the other day what it was that i really wanted, and why I wanted it so badly. The truth is that it's not entirely about the money. For me, I want my shot to compete against and beat the best. That's it. I want so badly to compete against the very best sales people on the planet and come out a winner. The high-stakes nature of this job, in the right industry, where there's so much money on the line attracts the best competition, and it's that competition that attracts me. This is something I'm really really fucking good at, and I want my shot to take on the best and beat them. I already beat everyone at my old company, but that was like Division 2 type shit, and wasn't cloes. I hold the record for highest sales and highest outbound sales. The one individual who I personally trained hands-on went from being the single lowest performing sales rep in the entire company, to having a 3 month period where he had the single highest outbound sales in the entire company. He literally went from almost being fired to being one of the best. I need a bigger pond. It's that simple. I want my shot to take on the best and beat them. if I lose, then I lose. If I can't succeed then I can't succeed but for fucks sake I want my shot, and I'm gonna get it.
That being said, I was really rusty in my first couple interviews because I hadn't had practice telling my story in like a year, and didn't really bother to practice beforehand because I was arrogant and beleived it'd be easy. I also realized after I quit I actually was letting certain thoughts creep in that effected the way I was expressing myself and framing my experience to potential employers. Needless to say, they have been completely and 100% replaced by the truth.
In terms of the industry itself, it's just growing so quickly. Pretty much any B2B product, from this point forward is going to be sold in a SaaS format. It just allows for maximum scalability, and it's incredibly easy to setup and to add new features to. It's also way cheaper than any sort of internal or physical database you could be using. And it's the perfect time, because companies are finally ready for SaaS - we're talking like 10X more spending on SaaS in the past 5 years than in the past 5 years before that, and it's only going to increase. I think one of the biggest reasons for this is because if you're creating a SaaS product for a simple procedure, the only alternative right now that you're probably competing with is excel... like we've hit a tipping point where SaaS tech has gotten good enough and cheap enough that we can create even simple shit, and the only competition is excel and it's like.... derp - that's why you see companies like zenefits going from nothing to like 20 million in total sales within 6 months.... because it's in that phase where people like just realized how much better this shit is than everything else
Also, the industry itself is becoming increasingly mature, which is good because I want a place where I can undergo a really solid training program, and a lot of these companies are starting to implement that sort of thing because they're getting to a size where they need it.
I think a lot of the cloud-based tech stuff started with CRM and automated marketing platforms, but literally everything from customer service platofrms (basically like ticketing systems that help customer service reach out to clients//customers in an organized way) to application management software is going SaaS. One of the coolest companies i've seen (well it's actually incredibly nerdy) is doing that sorta shit. They are an online platform that monitors your application performance, and can give you isnight even down to like individual user transactions. Basically this shit allows you to easily troubleshoot without having to dig into the code at all.
Potted something you said a while ago about the GAME of business really resonated with me.. it's true, it's all a big GAME where you can make any move you can imagine. That's why I love this shit.
Oh for sure dude. "Wearable Tech" is def. the place to be in terms of b2c .. smart everything
Personally im just not that into b2c mainly cause the sale isn't that exciting - it's more business development than like "enterprise sales" where you're hunting down the white whale kinda thing
Right. Exactly. Just be real ninja about selling myself w/o being overbearing. Hella kids don't read social cues and just obvious shit at like networking events where they bombard recruiting associate with questions and it's painfully obvious the recruiting associate 1) doesn't give a fuck and is only here because he gets to get drunk for free, 2) ego boost, and 3) knows everyone is riding their nuts because they all want a job. Mainly my goal has just been to shoot the shit w/them and basically not talk about law since hella people struggle with that. And yea, it's similar to finance except finance is way more fratty than law.
Sounds like you're on track tho just keep grinding g. Money + Competition is where it's at. What are all those acronyms you just listed tho I have no idea about sales. b2b, b2c etc.