Please Share With Us Why You Believe You Should Be Selected For This Position

[JeffAltmanCoach]

 

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I’m the head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ. com. That’s a site that has curated information that you could watch, listen to or read, that will help you find work more quickly.

I’m back today with one of those tough interview questions, this one’s geared towards C level professionals. The full question reads, “Please share with us why you believe you should be selected for this position and site reasons why these attributes are important to the current and future success of the organization.”

I picked up this question from a site called mileslehane.com and this is listed as question that will be asked of C level candidates by the board. I’m going to break down the question, it really comes down to “why should we hire you,” right? That’s really what it comes down comes down to, and what they’re looking for is style and confidence without bragging. Now, that’s the opinion that Miles Lehane has. Let me offer your mine, which isn’t radically different.

I’m going to make a suggestion here. If you’re competing at this level, you obviously have the skills to do the role. If you’re being interviewed by the board, you’re a finalist, right? So, let’s go to this level, and recognize that you’ve already accomplished a lot getting to this level, and now we’re looking to close the deal. In trying to close the deal in their mind, the goal is, kind of like a lawyer doing a summation with one big difference. I’ll get to the difference in a second.

You might want to address some of the challenges that the board and others, as part of the interview process, have identified to you.

“As I’ve been talking to different people in the organization, it’s been very clear to me that there are a number of key challenges ahead for whomever you choose; I’d like that person to be me but, whoever you choose, there are key challenges ahead over the next five years. In my roles previously, I’ve dealt with similar challenges. I can’t say identical, but similar challenges in these organizations and have been successful coming through to the other side.”

At this point, you want to start thinking of the lawyer statement, not from the standpoint of a planned recitation of fact. But, you want to get to the point where you’re being inspirational because people hire inspirational people to lead organizations. You have to be able to do the job and to demonstrate that you can do the job. You have to think of how you inspire individuals to be great.

So, for example, you might continue on by saying, “Look, in the role that I’m in, I hold this center seat, I have the ultimate responsibility but there are many people within this organization with whom I’ll have to make connection like I have in the past. So, if they get to know me, trust me, feel inspired by me to give me their best, because it’s only when an organization feels that it’s senior leadership wants the best from them, and they’re not covering their derriere (Obviously, you wouldn’t say ‘derriere’ there) But when an organization, when the senior leadership in an organization believes that the best is what’s called for, will be recognized and supported, that we can do great things and, Lord knows, I want to help this organization (This is the optional language here), continue to (be/become/however-it-is) world class.”

So, the idea is to think of the vision to inspire the people who listen there, just as you will, the senior staff, because your goal is to be the exciting person that everyone can rally around, while at the same time demonstrating that, in your past, you’ve done similar things, faced similar challenges, been effective and employed this strategy and gotten great results– Some percentage increase in sales, reduced staff turnover. While getting that increase, you were able to do succession planning for a time where it would make sense for me to move on to the next challenge.  Think inspirational. Don’t think in terms of a bland recitation facts.

By the way, you’ll always recognize a question for more senior individual because they have that many more words. So the more words in the question, the more likely is this geared toward a senior, and in this particular case, remember, as a senior leader, your job isn’t just simply to drive the bus (although that may be called for in your job), it is also to inspire your people to do great things, change the world, change a piece of the world and return an investment to the shareholders.

 

 

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