Demystifying Reverse Interviews!

The #1 reason anyone buys from you isn’t service, selection, quality, or priceits your confidence! Zig Zigler.

To show your leadership you do not need to have all the answers, but to understand how to ask the right questions.Peter Drucker.

Recently, one of my clients received a request to come in for a series of interviews after she cleared their extensive battery of preliminary screening rounds, including personality and leadership tests. This was a senior executive role at a manufacturing and distribution multinational (MNC) based in Europe with significant presence in the US. The role was in their sales and marketing areas and one of the key aspects of how they positioned this interview was for her to come prepared for a reverse interview. To allow her to prepare for this process they had sent her extensive material on their business and its various BUs spread across the world.

Curious, my client called me after we had prepared for the initial rounds and she had cleared them for this invitation for the next, in-person rounds. After review of the material and the selection process I came to realize that this is nothing different from how any good interview must take place.

Why do I think this?

Any good interview that culminates in the final selection of a candidate must be based not only on personality tests, leadership stories, failure-recovery anecdotes, and cultural compatibility assessments, but also on how well the candidate understands the companys needs, ethos, and how they can contribute to quickly deliver the value for which they are hired.

It is easy to prepare for all the answers that are thrown at you during a battery of interviews. Clever candidates script responses to these questions and there is a plethora of material on how to respond to routine questions that are typically thrown at you during such interviews at all levels: What was your greatest failure?, How do you deal with unhappy customers?, etc. To further ratchet the interviews power many get into behavioral interviews, where you have to go through the stories that narrate your actual experience dealing with specific situations. Typical among these is when an interviewer wants to know how you dealt with a poor performer in your team, etc.

A reverse interview is when you do the questioning and the person interviewing you responds to the questions you pose. Of course, if you were the candidate you would not begin such an interview by asking your interviewer the most banausic and typical of icebreaker questions thrown at you during an interview, Tell me about yourself, but to get into a conversation with the interviewer first to establish a good rapport.

Once the interview flow begins you must take charge of the process and segue into asking the questions that you have formulated as a result of your research of the company materials and how the initial conversation has gone; making it look natural and insightful at the same time is not an easy task.

To prepare for any interviewnot just a reverse interviewyou must research any and all company materials relevant to not only your area of interest, but also beyond that. Companies routinely update their websites and publish materials about their recent activities, successes, and PR announcements. Trade publications and media also report a companys news routinely, often providing objective and competitive information in such publications.

So, regardless of how an interview is stagedreverse or notyou must research all these materials and formulate a strategy on how to ask the right questions that show your keen insight in the areas in which you are being interviewed. You may even need to go further to show your curiosity and leadership by asking questions that go beyond your area of interest. For example if you are going in for a marketing role you may want to ask questions about the cost of manufacturing the goods, outsourcing, and quality of goods/services if they are worth asking and if they show insights into how you view your role as it relates to these areas. It is the insightful questions you ask in your own area of interest that show the depth of your leadership thinking and it is the questions you ask about the adjacent areas of interest that highlight the breadth of your leadership!

So, what are some of the ways that you can prepare for interviewseven reverse interviewsto show that you bring insights into the process that will set you apart from other candidates. Here is a list:

1. Do not just read the materials they send you to get ready for the interview; dig deeper and find as much about the company as you can. Most candidates often ignore what is available on a company website and rely on what was sent to them by the recruiter of the interview coordinator; some of that material may be dated. For public companies (in the US) review the 10-K and 10-Q SEC filings to understand how a company is positioning itself for dealing with the changing market conditions and competition, etc. Go through their Annual Reports.
2. You can get deep insights about a companys market position by talking to its customers, suppliers, and partners. Customers, who have recently defected are the best ones from whom to get juicy information. Then figure out how you can leverage that information to ask questions to the interviewer about winning back such customers. Also, call the companys Support Center to talk to someone about a problem you have with one of their products and see how they respond.

   You can also buy one of their products and experience the whole transaction to bring into the interview on how you could improve that experience. Recently, one of my clients went in for an interview for an e-Commerce role at a grocery chain that prides itself in quick delivery and guaranteed quality. So, I asked my client to order ice cream on a particularly hot day, among other items, from this chain for a delivery to his home. When it was delivered in a melted state on that day my client called the store and got a runaround. Bringing this experience in the interview that week gave him an edge, especially when he suggested to them how he would change that experience.

3. Research industry analysts reports (Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and others) to get deeper insights into the companys market position and then formulate some questions about how to upend the competition.
4. If your research on the company gives you some insights that allow you to conduct some quick experiments that would help your candidacy, by all means tell them what that was and show how that will help you bring some new thinking to the job as an incumbent. Also, if a particular executive has shown a rapid rise through the ranks ask them about how they achieved that feat; most love to talk about these things.
5. If you uncover some negative information about the companysuch as an SEC investigationdo not bring it up in an interview. If they bring it up act casual about it. You can always decide to decline their offer if you later find out that this is a serious matter.
6. Read Glassdoor and employee reviews about the company and its management. If you glean something negative, do not bring it up in the interview, but keep your mind open about how they respond in certain discussions to further your insights based on that research.
7. In selecting a candidate, especially for executive roles one of the key elements that needs to come across is your executive presence. Although many think that this is some mysterious and elusive quality, at its most basic need it is your ability to show your presence of mind, confidence, and persuasive powers. This element also requires understanding how your body language (physical vocabulary) can amplify your message, how to frame a question so that its response can be delivered in a cogent, compelling way, and not being thrown off by trick questions. If you are faced with a trick question, it is OK to rephrase the question in a direction that allows you to deliver a strong answer without coming across as a politician.
8. Even when an interview is billed as a Reverse Interview, do not assume that you have a license to ask questions that demean the interviewer. For example, if a company is tanking in a given market and you are being brought in as a turnaround marketing executive, it would be detrimental to your clearing that interview if you asked the CMO, who is interviewing you, How did you not react to your competition taking over your most prized customers when you saw market erosion for a year?
9. Dont come across as your having all the answers to their problems by asking questions that insinuate that you are more competent than they are and that youll whip out your magic wand to turn things around on day-one! It is tempting to overestimate your abilities and underestimate their leadership when you take a simplistic approach to the problems they face. Reserve your judgment until you get a hang of what the real issues arethey are often political and do not evince during an interviewand get a handle on them after you take charge.
10. Often during interviews, especially for senior executive roles you are asked to meet with your direct reports. Their ability to accept your leadership and to work with you are important factors in the selection criteria. So, treat your direct reports with special care and make sure that they feel comfortable with you as their new (potential) leader. Do not ask prying questions about other executives in such conversations.

Any job interview must be treated as a license to conduct a Reverse Interview. To ace such interviews following these tips may set you apart from other candidates enough to get you the offer you have been waiting for!

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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