Are you preparing for an upcoming interview for an executive role?
While interviews can be exciting, they may also be anxiety-inducing, particularly if it’s been a long time since you last interviewed.
To help you prepare for these executive interviews, Kingston Human Capital has compiled a few tips to make the interview feel less daunting.
Whether or not you’re currently in an executive-level role, or you're stepping up from senior management, Kingston Human Capital believes this information will be invaluable to you.
So let's take a look at actions that some of the top executives are doing to ensure that they perform well at the interview.
Research and Prepare
As with any interview, you want to know as much as you possibly can about the organisation and the people that you're about to meet. This knowledge serves as a foundation for your confidence and gives you an idea of who they are, allowing you to confidently enter the room at the executive level.
This research needs to go beyond just knowing broadly what the company does.
You should have a clear idea about the organisation's financial situation, what challenges it's facing, who its leaders are, and their backgrounds.
Now, if it's a publicly listed company, a lot of this information is relatively easy to gain access to through their financial statements or on their website. But if it's a private organisation, you may need to dig a little bit deeper; you'll need to read news articles and reviews in local journals.
Through your research, you'll gain a clear idea about who the organisation is, their competitors, what challenges their industry are facing now, and what challenges they'll face in the future.
State Government Roles
If it's a role with the state government, or one of the departments or agencies, we recommend reviewing the service delivery statements. These are easily found by googling the department's name in parentheses, followed by the word ‘budget’.
You can also use the service delivery statements to get an overview of the objectives and any highlights the department is searching for.
Talking about these points, your key findings, in your interview won't just convey your interest, curiosity and expert knowledge of the company, it will also show the panel that you're the kind of person who is two steps ahead.
After you've armed yourself with relevant knowledge, you should compile some sharp, probing questions to ask during the interview. Asking questions in this manner alters the power balance in interviews, allowing you to hold your own more assertively.
Leadership Qualities
The next part is, of course, around leadership. At an executive level, interviewers are looking for concrete proof that you can deliver measurable outcomes and that your leadership style is a good fit for their culture.
With this in mind, being able to articulate your leadership, philosophy, and back these notions up with real-life examples will strengthen your case.
You also need to keep the panel focused, they need to be paying attention. One of the key ways of doing this is to target your questions, make them a little bit more focused on some of the points they may have risen throughout the interview, and bring it back to areas of interest.
Body Language
Another key piece of advice is to refine your own executive presence.
Your stomach may be full of butterflies, but the last thing you want to do is project that during your interviews; leaders need to be calm and composed. Thankfully, your body language, speech pattern, and even clothing can help protect you and your confidence.
One of the largest challenges that many of us face in interviews is our speaking voice. Job interviews make every one of us really tense and nervous. When we're nervous, we literally tighten our vocal mechanisms, which results in a higher pitch. Now, in order to combat this, we need to just take some deep breaths, give ourselves some breathing room and slow down. When people are speaking too fast and without pauses, the interviewer may find it really difficult to keep up.
So in your next interview, remember to take a moment, breathe, and listen to what the interviewer is saying. There's nothing quite like seeing somebody pause in consideration before they answer them.
Kingston Human Capital has been delivering executive recruitment projects for decades in Brisbane and Queensland.
Our Head Executive Search & Recruitment Gerard Kerr shares his tips on how to excel in executive level interviews. Click on the video link below to watch.
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