Key tip for Senior Managers in interview:

You have more than 15 years of experience and you are back available on the market looking for the next challenge? This article might then be of interest for you! Socratim meets Senior Managers who haven't practiced interviews for years, as they were employed for companies and then left or lost their job. The interview meeting with recruiting companies or with your future employer/client is not an easy exercise and must not be underestimated. As you know and may have experienced this, it makes the difference between you and your competitors.

 

The CV preparation will indeed be the 1st step and basis for this preparation (see art. "How to increase your success rate in Interim Management: the 2 key tips!") but then, you need to bring it "life" in an interview. This is quite tricky...Even for "extravert" people, who feel usually more comfortable in discussion or presentations. When starting speaking about yourself, you do not always have the distance and the needed objectivity. Your own resources, expertise sound like common, normal for you and you do not consider them as unique selling points and, as a consequence, you do not mention them as such in interview... However this will make the difference between you and another candidate.

 

Rest assured that you don't need to be a "sales type of profile" to make this happen. Nevertheless, as this is not a natural exercice, it needs first, a good awareness of your own resources (like a SWOT analyses of your profile) and second, an oral preparation. Lots of talented senior managers used to speak in the past tense in interviews, when presenting themselves, not putting forward who they are today. So, a simple but important tip which use to make the difference for your audience, is to speak about you at the present ad not the past tense. You will of course give exemples to illustrate your experience with nice achievements, using the past tense. This concept sounds maybe easy to you and it is so. Its implementation is a bit more complex and requires lots of practice to become natural.

 

Why using the present tense, when presenting yourself, is so efficient in interview? It forces you to make a resume of what you can offer today on a structured way. Next to that, you will be much more "to-the-point" and make clear for your potential business partners what you are good in about 20 minutes. This way, you leave no doubts about all you can do today and you give them the time to focus on some parts of your presentation which they might find more relevant for the job/mission concerned.

 

So, let's try it: make the exercice and try to observe yourself with kindness and check if you speak in the present or in the past. Have fun!