Jules question I'm being flown out to corporate headquarters for a final interview with the VP
for a national pmo role love it any tips for an in-person meeting with an executive
so Jules number one I know you have access to the uh interview intervention 10th anniversary
session or the sorry program the whole product that we built back in November
and uh in number one in general you know that all of my best interviewing tips tricks tactics and
so on are in there for you if I'm if I'm going and I'm going to be going to an in-person interview I
would be making sure that I Revisited if you have not already seen it the mastering the storytelling
session as well as is acing any job interview sessions because one is about storytelling
structure which you definitely need and make sure that those are in order and the other one is how
to actually Ace the different types of interviews of which in person and meeting with a senior
person would be in there now that's the general guidance if I'm gonna be in person meeting with
an executive you want to make sure that you are maintaining conversation levels at the executive
level if you are talking bits and bytes about your role and how you're going to do this and
that that's not going to go over as well as how your role is going to support the corporate goals
what it's going to do what it's going to enable that executive or the executive management team to
see let me give you an example of the differences in what I mean because I think the illustration
will really help you if you are talking with an executive and you are getting into the bits and
bytes of how you do what you do if they ask you to do that that's fine then you're going to give them
right how you ran this project give them context around the project you give them your playbook
the outline and this and so on and so forth okay I know you know what I mean as a boot camper right
so you're you're going to get into okay and then I did this and then I did this and then I did this
and so on okay that's not the level you want to be at unless they ask you to walk walk me through
how you did this at the pmo level you want to be talking about things like well when I run pmos the
the primary focus is to ensure that you not only know what projects are going to yield the highest
Roi for us the and the sequence in which we should do that but you're also going to know right which
ones are going to be Top Line to you know focused which ones are going to be bottom line for focused
and and you'll have the sequence in which to to to run your projects based on and make and making
sure that they're congruent with the corporate goals the corporate culture the corporate Mission
the customer support whatever and you you want to make sure that you're talking about how what
you do matters to the person who's listening to you so you know I design the pmos and our
ability to manage and prioritize the Project based on business cases that I work with in
conjunction with the customer meaning the internal customer stakeholders we review it and then I lay
out for you which ones are going to give you the greatest return the fastest payback period and the
so on and so forth you're taking what you do and talking about how it's going to matter to them and
how you're going to work with that executive and what that executive is going to get from you and
how that executive is going to benefit if you go Downstream and you talk about how you run projects
and pmos as it relates to efficiently delivering them that's not where you want the conversation
a lot of you do this because you think that's where the gold is because you want to show how
well you are at running the pmos you are not in a uh session or an interview where you were
actually needing to sell your tactics get that you're not selling your tactics to the executive
you're selling the benefits to the executive and how what why the executive would know that
you think of things differently look at things differently or able to process things differently
deliver things differently because when you're talking to me I don't care how you do all that
I want to know I'm going to make more money save more money have happier customers and so on so
you need to talk in this language here okay are you y'all tracking with me I I have an endless
number of coaching individual coaching sessions just like this where we completely blow up the
stories that somebody wants to tell in favor of the stories that they actually need to tell which
leads me to believe that a lot of you probably go this way instead of going this way now I'm just
talking about how this benefits an executive if Jules was going to be talking to the staff
it would be well when we do this I'm going to look at you and we're going to align the projects that
that I prioritize and the ones you get to work on based on your goals this and that the other
thing and then you go the other way so so so this is and when you're talking with your immediate
boss you need to talk tactics but you need to talk executive level stuff first I'm sorry or as well
both meaning meaning you need to you need to cover both in your in the scope of your of your dialogue
so this is this is really really important because a lot of you you're like well Andy I didn't get
that job well you know what you were perfectly equipped to get the job you did a poor job selling
yourself in the interview the interview is not about how well you do your job I need you that
to register the interview is not about how awesome you are at doing what you do I'm
sure you can if you're interviewing what do I say you're qualified right it the person who's
most qualified isn't always the person who gets the job in fact it's rarely the person who gets
the job the person who sells themselves the best is the person who gets the jam so the person that
goes Upstream with the executive and talks at this level here's how you're going to benefit here's
what you're going to do here's why I know this is going to be important to you here's the dashboard
I'm going to build you here's how you're going to be able to use it here's what it's going to tell
you you're going to be able to make the decisions faster you're going to make sure you know what
the priorities should be you're going to be able to sync it I'm going to tailor all that for you
and spoon feed it to you kind of thing that's why I'm a better candidate than anybody else cool all
right Jules awesome stuff just what I expected but higher level okay go get him make me proud please