Research the market. What is the ten-year trend? New markets, products, or services? The major companies? The key people in the industry?
Research the company. Founder, history, trend the last five years in products, services, revenues, size of market, their plans for the future.
Do the same for three to five competitors.
Research the manager: LinkedIn profile, social media, webpage, company page, education, work history, awards, personal interests.
Know the job’s required skills and methods.
To research: Use finance.yahoo.com, find a company, select Company Insights, select Research Reports.
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, analyst reports, industry associations, and research librarians at a university business school library. Journals for an industry have annual market summary. Use ChatGPT to find questions. See The Business Journal for your city.
Make it clear to the manager that you researched the market, competitors, the company, products, and the manager. Bring your research to the meeting and share your research with them.
Take Over the Interview
Managers will ask a list of interview questions. Ignore those questions. Turn the interview into a problem-solving exercise.
Ask, “What’s the goal of this job? What counts as success.”
Identify the issues. Ask, what’s the problem they want to solve? Write down a list of the problems. Show how you will solve it. What will you need to solve it? Show you can do the job profitably. Talk about costs and schedules. Use estimates. The details don’t matter. Show you have thought about costs and schedules. You can adjust during the discussion. Show how you can save money. Give examples.
Show you will do the job the way they want. You may have a better idea but save that for later.
Talk about additional ideas that make money.
Add your relevant skills, experience, languages.
Take notes.
The manager will treat you like a member of the team. You become an insider. Managers prefer to hire insiders.
