Great to see you again. If you are new here, my name is Bill Benoist. I'm a certified professional
career coach in Silicon Valley. And in today's video, I want to talk about interviewing at
the C level. So, one of my clients recently reached out to me, asked if I could help him
prepare for a CEO position. He was going into, it was a small company, like 50 employees
or so, and he was going to go in and talk to the founder of this employee. It wasn't
a publicly held company. He was really excited about this. He was also probably experiencing
a little bit of what I would say, imposter syndrome. He was questioning whether he could
do it, but he was really excited and he wanted some help with the interview process. Now
a little bit about a history of myself. I have worked with a number of CEOs I've worked
with even more of the C level executives.
I have a masters in leadership. I know a little bit about what I'm talking about there. And
in my last company that I worked for 18 years, we went through four different CEOs and you
may be thinking to yourself, you know, kept bill. What was going on with your company
for CEO's in 18 years? Well, let me tell you something. The average tenure of a CEO is
about five years, so the good ones a lot longer, but the average is about five years. So keep
that in mind, if you're looking at, you know, at least a C E O level position, probably
the C level positions a little bit longer, I think, but the bottom line is this. When
it comes to interviewing at the C level position, and that is it's going to be more about your
strategy and your vision, your growth, um, demonstrating your capabilities and handing,
handling, excuse me, financials, operations management, team, building, and culture.
There's, there's really, there's seven different areas there. And what you want to do is you
need to really kind of prepare for these different areas. And again, you know, I've talked about
this before. Sore stories are going to be necessary because you're going to need to
demonstrate your capabilities in these areas, which means that you're going to have to share
a situation that you face an obstacle that you may have faced during this time, the action
you took and the result that came out of it. Now that's your typical source story, but
I'm going to add one more element to that, and that would be safe follow up. And the
reason why I bring this one up is because I also recently worked with a client who is
interviewing at Amazon. And if you ever experienced the, uh, interview process at Amazon or familiar
with it, there's 14 leadership principles, but Amazon is all about the customer and also
the followup.
So not only showing what the result was that you achieved, but also the followup. And so
I would add, actually add that as well. You know, the thing about working as a C level
executive wants you to understand this as well. You know, as you go up the ladder, the
positions become a little bit far and fewer between. So of course there's a lot fewer
CEO positions out there than let's say, product managers or marketing executives. As you go
down the level a little bit, the COO, the CIO, the CTO, the CFO, the C whatever, you
know, I think we actually call them. CXX nowadays, they're a little bit more common, but still
not a great deal of them. And one of the things that I want you to really be aware of is that
for senior level executive positions, most companies to hire from within not all, not
all, but most of them hire from within.
So I think the odds of are the statistics, not the odds, but these statistics are showing
about 38% of companies will go to the outside to bring in some new blood, but the rest of
the time they are looking for with it. So again, it's going to take you a little bit
longer looking at these C level positions, but they are out there. And the interview
process is going to be a little bit different because what you really want to do is you
want to examine these seven areas, because this is what you're going to be asked about.
This seven areas. I want you to keep this key number one, strategy and vision. Number
two, growth, number three, financials, number four, operations management, number five,
leadership, number 16, building, and number seven, which is culture. You need to create
a source story around maybe even a couple of source stories around each one of these
areas.
You know, so for example, let's say with a financials, you may be asked a question like,
uh, describe your experiencing, managing a significant budget and PNLs. You may be asked,
how did you prioritize your investments out there? So do you have a source story around
something like that, maybe two source stories, leadership, you know, you may be asked what
you believe makes a good leader, but you are also going to be asked, you know, a little
bit deeper questions, you know, describe the environments in which your leadership style
leadership style is most effective. Where have you been frustrated and maybe less successful
in your leadership over time culture. You're going to be asked about your core values and
how they shaped you as they are today. Again, these are a lot more what I would say expansive
than if you were interviewing in one of those lower levels, because vision strategy is going
to be what you need to show is your expertise.
You know, where do you see the in, not your company? Where do you see the industry going
in the next five years? And how are you going to stay along with the industry? All of these
questions are going to be what is really geared. And I'll put a list of these in the notes
section below, but there's something else that I learned about in leadership studies.
And that is the best leaders. I want you to keep this in mind. The best leaders are the
ones who will step forward. If something doesn't go right, and their company, if there's a
failure, if there's a massive mix up and products or something, they take accountability. They
take responsibility, not like some people that, you know, we know out there. And the
other thing is, is that when things are going really good and there's some major accomplishments,
they don't necessarily step forward.
They step, take a step back and let their team take the recognition. Now, unfortunately,
and please excuse my French, but there are some really shitty leaders out there. I'm
talking about the good ones, the best ones that are out there, and you need to study
this and books like good to great. And some of the other leadership books out there and
talk about some of these leaders at companies that have been around for a long time names
that you have not really heard of before. So I hope you found this video informative
and useful, and if you haven't already done, so make sure that you subscribe to this channel,
hit the bell notification, as I do upload new crew tips and strategies every Tuesday.
And if you are by chance looking for a new job, I have a free download in the notes section
below that top five interview questions that any hiring manager is going to want to ask
you as well as the best practice answers to these questions. So check it out, check out
the questions that I've listed below for interviewing at a C level position. And I look forward
to seeing you next week. Thanks for stopping by.