How to Answer the Big 4 Interview Questions (Complete Guide) - Session 5

Session 5: Executive Interviews: Answering the Big Four Questions. Executive interviews aren't about reciting your resume. They're about painting a picture of transformational leadership. The best responses to questions reveal both your leadership philosophy and your execution capability. In this session, you learn how to make sure every story you tell in interviews serves as evidence for why you're the right leader for tomorrow's challenges. Not just someone who succeeded yesterday.

So today we have a very meaty conversation because as you can imagine, interviewing, quite difficult, quite a lot of context at the executive level, lots of psychology to consider. And we want to start first with some softballs, which is the 4 core narratives that you need to master every single time you're interviewing, whether they're asked of you or not. We're going to need to be prepared for these. I also want to concentrate on the psychology behind driving decisions at the executive level and how you can set yourself up to close yourself as the solution to those deals. We want to talk about why it's okay to control the conversation instead of waiting to be led and how that will create confidence for you throughout the process and help you ultimately close a stronger deal. And then we want to talk about some storytelling tips to improve all of the stories that you share across the board. All right. So we'll start with the core 4. And first, I want to get real quick into the mindset necessary. Again, I've, you'll, you'll notice that I mentioned mindset quite a bit when it comes to these interviews. And it's because as I study the thousands and thousands of folks that I've, I've kind of supported through interviews, I've always looked for what's the common thread on those that are successful versus those that aren't. And I couldn't really determine whether it was their skillset or how many people they've left or the quality of the companies that they work for. It was really these 3 soft skills that I saw performing and outperforming even being awesome at your job. So some mentioned earlier, fake it till you make it. I still suggest you have the skills, but you also need to show up in these 3 ways every single time to maximize your success. That first one is confidence, and you have to be able to answer the question, do you believe in yourself? Because if you don't, how is another team going to believe in you and how are you going to rally the team that you're supporting? Curiosity is an important component to bring to the table, and that's ultimately to show that you're interested in the company ahead. You're asking questions, you're showing that you're interested in their future and not just selling your past and curiosity. In the quality of questions that we ask is one of the most authentic ways that we can showcase that trait through the process. And then enthusiasm. Do you actually want to be here? Right? Sometimes we're interviewing and it's kind of like pulling teeth because, you know, you need a job because you need to get paid, but the company is really boring or the people that you're interviewing with don't really click. So do you fake it? Do you say, oh my gosh, this is the best thing since sliced bread, or can we actually create some authentic enthusiasm about the opportunity? And part of the framework that I walk you through is how to create more natural enthusiasm as you start to create roles that are a stronger fit for you, which is sometimes contrarian to the roles that are listed and the type of executive or leader the company thinks they need to hire. So if you can feel confident creating a role that better suits your skills and selling that role, naturally you can become more enthusiastic about the opportunity. As well. So what are the core 4, right? So the core 4 things that you always need to answer, whether it's asked of you or not, is the tell me about yourself, which is probably the most vague question you can get asked. How many people here have heard that question before? Just simply, always, look at that, tell me about yourself. Well, where do I start, right? From a young age, I was a wee lad growing up in Grass Valley, California. Or you hear the dreaded, you know, at college I did this and you're like, oh, here we go. We're about to hear 20, you know, 20 years of monologue. We have to be mindful of that. Why did you leave your last job or why did it not work out? So we've all not been at work for some period of time, and sometimes that can be awkward to bring up. So we want to come up with some tips on how to best do that. What about the what's next for you piece? Does anyone have any difficulty sharing that? Like their ambitions? Do you feel like, I'm very ambitious, but I don't want your job, right? Like I want to do everything except for take your job, right? That one can be a little difficult. How do you showcase how ambitious you are without being overly ambitious and therefore coming after someone's job or threatening your boss, which is sometimes a case that we encounter. And then what I think is the most important question to know how to answer, because this is where I see the most leverage lost is, how much money do you want? Does anyone know how to answer that? We'll get through that, because most of the advice I see on that particular topic is wrong. So we'll get into that, and that's ultimately where we're going to recoup all the money you spent on this course in one single question. So I'm looking forward to that. All right, tell me about yourself. I'm actually— let's see if I can move this down here. All Perfect. Now I can actually see the slide a little better. So again, these slides are definitely a little meaty by comparison. So feel free to take screenshots. Obviously it's going to be in the workbooks after and you'll be able to review, but it's long intentionally. So if you recall in the first session we did, we started to set the, really set the stage for this conversation to happen by saying something like I am a role best known for major achievement. You're likely interested in me for X, Y, or Z reason. So we set the stage for how to answer this. What we definitely want to avoid is a 5-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute diatribe of your past where you explain every single thing you've done. If you catch yourself rambling or going into ancient history or getting nervous or feeling like you're on the back foot, you're losing that interview. Right. You're losing right from the get-go. You're either losing attention, you're losing confidence, you're losing and you're falling off. It's okay if it happens from time to time. It's okay if you start to monologue, it's okay if you ramble, it's okay if you're not perfect in your practicing the words to share. You're talking with your hands, you're figuring it out. Like you're being human and authentic. It's okay to show that level of practice. What we want to say in those cases is, oh, bear with me for a second. I tend to ramble because I get excited about this. And then instead shift the conversation back towards more comfortable territory. So there's a couple points that we want to make here. We want to keep it to about 30 seconds, really tight. We want to plant seeds for future conversations. So for example, if we're saying, Most people are interested in me for X, Y, and Z reasons. X, Y, and Z might be ambitious things you want to do. It might be things that you're interested in in the future. It might be things that you want to have conversations about later in the interview cycle. So we be, we are very strategic with what we share in our tell me about yourself story. In this case, I kind of like to think of it as a table of contents that that you're sharing, you're saying, hey, here are 3 to 5 things that I want to talk about. Are there anything that you want to talk about? And that helps us build the agenda for how to frame the entire conversation from there. That naturally leads into how we guide the conversation and lead the witness. For example, if you say most people want to talk to me because I'm really good at hypergrowth, or I'm really good at building high-performing teams with strong cultures, or I'm good at promoting early-stage sales folks and bringing them up to become leaders someday. What you plant in that conversation is guiding the conversation to a direction of either friendly water or an area that you don't want to touch. So we want to be very mindful with what we share here. And naturally, we talked about words mattering and using power language. We want to use confident and assertive language every step of the way. Which is why we frame things like, these are the, like, you're likely interested in me because of these. I'm confident in these things. This is what people like about me. Now I had a question pop in on LinkedIn about, this sounds really good when it's an inbound prospect, like somebody's come from you, like they're coming to you. So naturally this language makes sense, but what if you're doing outreach and they don't know you so well, or if you're doing it in a networking context? It's just a slight pivot where instead of saying you're likely interested in me, you say other people typically want to talk to me for X, Y, and Z reason. So these are the reason other people like me. And so from a psychological perspective, I call this bragging through the lens of a third party. Right? So I might say something like, you know, so-and-so typically wants, or, um, Let me reframe this. People typically reach out to me when they want to move their career forward. And I suspect that that's why you're reaching out to me today. Or I suspect that I can help you with that problem. So we just think about reframing it depending on the context, but you can still use the same messaging. And it still shows that you're confident and assertive with who you are. All right. So I want to move on to why did you leave? Why did you leave? This is such a difficult question for many people. I would say that most of my job is getting executives comfortable with telling the truth. Right? So there are different angles. So we want to practice, especially those that have tricky, why did you leave? How do we address it head on? And how do we showcase it primarily about the lessons that you learned, that you learned specifically, the own, like you take ownership of what your fault was in that situation. You might even say, I made some mistakes that I won't make again. For example, right? When things got difficult, I didn't address the problems head on right away. Right? I learned about that. I won't do that again. And so showing that level of authenticity can really help have a more engaging conversation. And ultimately, if they respond poorly, it might be the red flag you were looking for to jump out of the process. Right? So this can help you with due diligence later. Ultimately, it's not just trying to win someone over. It's to see how somebody responds to you being truthful. Because if they start to, you know, like, Anna, I'm disappointed in you taking a sabbatical, right? Or Jason, like, that sounds like total bullshit. I don't like it. And you're pouring your heart out to a degree. You're going to have a pretty quick understanding of who it is you're working with. So I agree that if you're just trying to win someone over, keep it short, say enough and move on. But if you're trying to do diligence and find a position that's more fulfilling for you, Go ahead and go deeper, spend some time trying to articulate and not trying to be as polished and say, yeah, like you strike me as someone who wants to go a little deeper here. Right. So I really want to share what I've, what I've learned through this process, right? If you want to move on, that's totally fine too. Right. You can frame the conversation like that. And I think that if your job is to get a, get a job at any cost, it's okay to be deceitful. If your job is to find Or if your ambition is to find a role that's very fulfilling and people understand you and you build stronger relationships, then I'm okay going deeper on that. The what's next for you piece is the right now. So I'll give you an example. So I have a handful of Chief Revenue Officer clients that are already being interviewed for CEO roles, but have this hesitation that they're not ready yet, or they specifically want to be a CEO at a larger company than where they're currently getting asked. And so they have hesitation because they don't want to interview with the CEO and tell them they want their job. So how do you frame it in the what's next for you piece? So in this case, with my clients, I'll ask them to say, yeah, I've actually been interviewing for some CEO roles already. I suspect I need another go around at the CRO level to accomplish this. And so what I'm looking for is, like, again, I'm choosing, I'm looking for a CEO that I can partner with who will help take me under their wing and show me, like, give me more visibility into the organization and kind of expand my remit from there. So you're not saying, I want your job, I just want you to show me and provide breadcrumbs for me. And so sometimes that planning, the what's next for you piece, sharing that ambitions shows that you're a hard worker and you want to get that direction. But how you frame it is really important. So you don't come across as overly ambitious. But in this case, when, when clients are already interviewing for up-level positions, it's also creating validation that other companies or other investors or other executives are already interested in you at that position. And you're choosing, let's say, a different C-suite title or a different position for now. Or you might say, I'm interviewing for a C-suite role for the first time, but the company is much smaller. I think I'll have a better impact at a company this size in this type of role. And one of my favorite things to do also is say, what do you think about that? Like involving your interviewer in the process. Do you think that's a natural progression? Especially because in a lot of cases you're interviewing with somebody where the hiring manager is somebody who is ahead of you in their career, whether that be the CEO or an investor. I might ask, have you seen people take paths like that? If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Now we're involving them in your career decision process and getting them to be advocates for you in the process. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. And we have a lot to get through. Now I want to show an example. I know a lot of us are interested in Mad Libs, like, how do I just do this? Just give me the template and make it happen. I wish it were that easy because there's a lot of nuances to consider, but here's an example of bringing it all together. I want you to answer. Tell me about yourself, why did you leave, and what's next for you in all of about 30 seconds. You can go 60, like, again, this is just a rule of thumb, but I want you to address all 3 of those things on your terms. And so it looks something like, I am a, a chief operating officer best known for my growth and experience at Zoom, or something like that. You're likely interested in me because you're doing XYZ thing, and there's a, uh, alignment there. And that's why I'm here today, because to be honest, I was missing that in my last role. I was— I'm looking for the opportunity to expand my remit and do XYZ thing, right? So that's answering the what's next for you and showing the ambitious thing in one sentence, right? To be honest, that's why I'm here today. That's why the other one wasn't working out so much for me, or that's why I'm looking. So you could answer that all in one fell swoop, and they might dig a little bit deeper on that. But essentially we're trying to take some of the wind out of their sails. And by saying something like, I'm sure we'll dig more into that later, but let me ask you now, what interests you in my background? And shift the frame back to them. Essentially what we're trying to do here is collect more information out of them so we know how to better answer, tell me about yourself, or better connect to the experiences that you've had to what they're going through and get more intel so that you know how to answer better across the entire process. But it's the how much money do you want? Yeah, I will never go first with the answer and I will never go first with a range either. Right? Because when you say I want $300,000 to $400,000, they think $280,000 and you think $450,000, right? Or whatever. Naturally, there's really no way that going first benefits you in any way. It can serve to anchor too low, right? If you don't— if you're not perfectly knowledgeable about the market, which let's be honest, nobody is, right? Companies negotiate sometimes 100 times a month when they're hiring, and you do it, what, 5 times in your career, maybe 10, right? You're at a— there's a significant information disadvantage. I call this information asymmetry. Other negotiators talk about how we need to create a win-win and be all up front right from the get-go. Make no doubt, like there's no doubt about this. It is not a win-win environment for job seekers. It is a win-lose and you lose every time. They give you something of an infinite resource, which is money. You give them something that is a finite resource, which is your time and your mental health. And that is not an equal exchange and it never will be. And the more you move up in your career, the more that becomes more true because money becomes less and less important to you. And so. It's always a win-lose environment and we need to understand kind of where they're coming from more so than you having an idea of what you think you want. So Chris Voss has a really good quote with this. It's, never be so sure of what you're worth that you wouldn't accept more. Right? So if you're like, I'm worth $500,000, they're like, shit, I was about to give you $800,000. Right? They're either going to think you're not as senior as they thought. Or they're going to get a steal, right? Or maybe they, they give you $550,000 and you're like, man, I really crushed it on an interview, but you never know what that delta is that you left out on because you went first and you anchored that number. So it typically only serves against you. So instead, usually you get this conversation right at the recruiter stage. How many people have had a recruiter and one of their first questions is how much money do you want to make? Right? Quite a bit. That's typically an indication that you're working with a more junior recruiter. Very senior recruiters, ones at Korn Ferry and maybe someone like Diversa Partners in the, in the, in the portfolio looking, or TruSearch or those types, they typically don't push that early because they've already done a better job targeting the right type of candidate for them. And they know that conversation happens later. So typically when you hear it early, they're trying to get your anchor right away and just determine whether or not they're going to waste any time. Right. So how do you keep that process moving forward? Without immediately wasting your time. And so instead, when somebody says, how much money do you want to make? We turn it around and say, look, at this stage in the conversation, it's too early to commit to that. I don't talk about compensation until there's a written offer in front of me. Is that going to be a problem? Or we might say, thank you for respecting me. I don't have that conversation until the offer stage. We might say, I know why you might be asking, is there a range you hope to keep this position within? Right. So that was one piece. I know I heard that in the audience, like, hey, what'd you have budgeted for this? Right. And the problem with that is that now you have to respond to the range that they articulate to you, which is, are you going to be happy? Are you going to be disappointed? Are you going to be stoic? How do you respond back to that? So typically I only advise pushing back on what the budget and range is if you're really worried about wasting your time. Or you have an indication that it's not going to get to where you think it's going to happen, to see if it's worth exploring further. But I would prefer you just defer the conversation until later and assess everything at a later stage where you have more complete information. So for those that are— I'm sure many of you have hired agencies before, or you've been consultants yourself or freelancers, or you've worked in some capacity like that. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with scope creep. So you say, I'm going to do this project for $250,000. And they say, great, like that's within budget. This is what the role is stated at. And then through conversations, they give you another team and they give you another mandate and they give you another project and they do all these things. And then when you come to negotiate on the other end of the table, they say, but you said it was only $250,000, right? But then the scope increased. So it puts you in an awkward position where you don't have leverage later. So one of my favorite, favorite pieces here is, look, as we find alignment through the interview process, I have no hesitation that you'll make a competitive offer, and that's really what I'm looking for. So we want to turn this back around on them.

Session 5 Workbook.

This week, you'll prepare to perform in executive-level interviews with confidence and clarity.

Start first by crafting and practicing responses to the Big Four interview questions. Then, use the CLEAR method to outline impactful stories that will showcase how you've navigated professional challenges in the past.