[00:00:00] Mike Ogle: Welcome to the Supply Chain Careers podcast, the only podcast for job seekers, professionals, and students who are focused on career enhancing conversations and insights across all aspects of the supply chain discipline. This podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.
Visit SCM Talent [email protected].
[00:00:36] Rodney Apple: Welcome back to the Supply Chain Career podcast. This is our new catalyst series where we equip supply chain professionals at every level with the tools and mindset needed to advance their careers in supply chain. I am your host Rodney Apple, and joined by my co-host Chris Gaffney and Mike Ogle. This is episode four of the Supply Chain Career Catalyst series.
We’re very excited to cover mastering the supply chain interview, how you communicate your value, and ultimately get that offer. And if you’re just now tuning into this new series, we do recommend going back and starting it as a linear type series. So in step one, we talk about the importance of. Setting aside time and space to do self-assessment and reflection, as you think about your career and where you’ve been, you know what you wanna do next.
Episode two, we cover the myriad of supply chain career paths, covering the pros and cons as you move from industry to industry, function to function, company size, ownership, et cetera. That the episode three, we tap into, how do you structure a winning? Job search strategy. And if you think about the linear step, if the job search is panning out, you’re gonna start getting some interviews.
So today we’re gonna cover how do you prepare, how do you execute, and how do you follow up on these interviews? So with that said, we will go ahead and get started. Chris, I’m gonna turn it over to you with prepping for interviews.
[00:02:05] Chris Gaffney: Good deal. So in this process, getting the interview is huge, but there’s so much.
Work to be done to make the most of the opportunity. And I would tell you in a lot of the work that we did at Koch when we were interviewing internal candidates, we saw people who were likely the best candidate for the role, but they didn’t come into the process prepared. And they miss that opportunity, and you can’t, you can’t undo that.
My, my mental model is it’s always about studying for the A, which is no different than back to when you took tests in high school and college. There’s a process to do all that diligence, so in this case, the successful interview begins long before you walk into the room. It really is from the minute you find out you are going to get the interview.
And in most cases, you’ve done some of this before, but it’s time to double down. There’s a lot of work to do in terms of really researching the company. And if you’ve done cursory work such that you were prepared in pre-interview to kinda advocate for your candidacy, that’s great, but now you’ve gotta click in.
To detail, and because we’re talking about supply chain roles, you’ve gotta do the legwork to understand their supply chain strategy. That may be web search, maybe some AI work to say what’s been publicly stated, where have some of their leaders spoken, and maybe there’s stuff on YouTube. You can hear people talking about them so that you understand how they’re going to market.
How they try to differentiate from a supply chain standpoint, who their leadership team is, key customer’s, key products, right? So that that’s foundational because you can then speak contextually as you’re in the interview. I think the second thing is to really go granular into the job description and make sure that you can almost link everything that the job description highlights to your experience and accomplishments.
So you’re prepared. Either subtly or directly to be able to speak that. And I think it’s, you’ve gotta be able to do it in a way that not, it’s not just about, I’ve done this, it’s opposed it. It’s back to, hey, not only have I done this, but this is how I delivered results in this area. So that you can convey your capability.
And really they’re, when they’re interviewing you, they’ve got a list they’re checking off. You wanna make it easier for them to check those boxes. I am a huge fan. Of the idea of creating an inventory of your specific accomplishments. And I am biased that in a lot of cases you’re gonna walk into a behavioral interview and that requires you to be able to speak to how you’ve demonstrated something in past experiences.
I like the star framework for that. The situation, task, action result or business benefit, but literally a tabular format. And I do find that a lot of people don’t really. Have a great inventory of those things, and if you take it out of your own brain, you’re gonna miss things. I also watch people in an interview not bring out an example that I recalled in working with them, and I like, this would’ve been a much better example for them to use in an interview.
So that’s part of studying is that reflection, whether it’s going in detail over your own resume, looking at past performance reviews. Talking to people you’ve worked with in the past and say, here’s my star inventory and draft. Do you remember working with me? And things that I’ve not reflected on here.
So I think that’s huge. And then you’ve gotta practice and you know that practice is studying. But I also think whether you mock interview you self, you have your wife or friend to do a mock interview or two with you, you’ve gotta record yourself and look back and say, am I comfortable with how I am?
Coming across. So I think there’s a lot there. I think the good news here now is AI tools can help you with that prep plan. So I know that’s a lot, but I think it just makes all the difference in the world. And I think the bottom line is people are hiring somebody that could be successful in the role they’re looking for, that has runway for the organization.
And it’s typically the team leader is one of the people you’re hiring for is they wanna feel like they’re bringing an A player on a number one draft choice. Who can. Come onto the field and impact things right away, make the business better, and that’s what they want to come away with from your interview and say, Hey, this is the person.
[00:06:36] Rodney Apple: Great, and that’s great perspective there and advice. Chris, appreciate you sharing that
[00:06:43] Mike Ogle: during this short break. We recognize that this podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm. Visit s SCM Talent [email protected].
[00:07:00] Rodney Apple: And speaking of perspectives, knowing the audience is very important. You’re gonna have different types of interview formats as well. So Mike, maybe you could, uh, share with the audience your perspectives on, on this piece.
[00:07:13] Mike Ogle: Sure. In this segment. I think the thing to remember that, of course it is about you when you’re in an interview, but it’s also about who are you talking with?
So that number one rule here, like so many different things in life is to know your audience. Your preparation for that interview has to consider the perspective of all the different kinds of stakeholders that you’re going to meet with. The first person is going to be very important because they may be acting as a gatekeeper, but once you get in the door, you can’t just keep singing the same old, prepared tune.
Your messaging has to be consistent in general because they will probably talk with each other, but it must fit the person or the team that you speak with at every point that you go along the way. So the title and the perspective of the person that’s interviewing you at a particular time or even a team of interviewers is going to greatly influence your messages and the success that you’re going to have coming out of the interview.
So there are a variety of interviewer types that you’re going to likely face, and some of these may be early, some of them later a mix, but often you end up having a recruiter or an HR partner that that will have some kind of interaction with you. They wanna find out, are you really a fit for this kind of position?
Are they going to be delivering somebody that matches what was asked for? They’re also going to be looking at can you communicate? Do you have the basic qualifications that were set up? So once that ends up happening, then you’ll probably be connected with a hiring manager, and a hiring manager is going to be looking at things that are going to a little bit deeper, like performance history or being able to talk about your problem solving history and style of how you go about that.
Are you a match? For their group. For instance, can you take ownership of responsibilities? How do you talk about those kinds of things? You may talk with a cross-functional leader and they’re looking for things like collaboration, how you influence others, how you work well with others, like those little gold stars you got in K through third grade or so.
Then if you’re talking with somebody that is going to be an ex executive or vp, the higher up you go and especially the higher up beyond your position, if that person is interviewing you, they wanna look that, that you’ve got a leadership maturity, that you’ve got a presence, that you think strategically, that you think in more of a systems term rather than your transactional side of things.
And they also wanna make sure that you have a commercial understanding and focus. You’re not just trying to do transactions, you’re trying to help the business get to where it needs to go. So you need to make sure that you’re ready with that kind of story. So the different kinds of actual interview formats that you might encounter is behavioral interviews, technical and case style types of challenges that they may bring to you.
It may be a video remote or you may be on site. Very different kinds of styles and being able to read certain kinds of body language and behavior even from the initial greeting and moving forward on different aspects. And you may have panel or sequential kinds, kinds of interviews. So be sure that your preparation adjusts depending on the audience in format.
That’s the main takeaway here, Rodney.
[00:10:42] Rodney Apple: Very good, Mike. That’s great advice. It is important to understand who you’re speaking with, looking at their LinkedIn profiles, and then I would even say you can run some searches on the internet. See if you can find anything out now, anything you can use and leverage to, as they say, break the ice can go a long way.
You, you want. To establish comfort. It’s easy to go in, being nervous and having a lot of anxiety. The sooner you can break the ice and make it conversational and make it that two-way conversation is what we’re aiming for the better. So that’s very good advice.
[00:11:15] Chris Gaffney: Can I add a, can I add something here? Yeah, Mike, that I think is a hot topic for me listening to employers over the last even month.
We all understand AI is more prevalent. We advocate for using AI in your preparation. But many employers are telling me that when they have virtual inventories, they have a strong sense that employees have an AI app up during the interview. And in some cases they’re relying on it for, for responses and a what they say is.
It’s pretty visible, right? It’s not something that people don’t see. And so I think we, we strongly advise against that and we’re also seeing a number of employers say we are moving back to live interviews. To kinda counteract that, and I think that gets to some of the things we’ve talked about is AI can prepare you, but it’s ultimately your.
Intellectual knowledge, your preparation. And when I say AI can prepare you, it’s give you a process, but you did the work. You have to steward the work because if you have to show up, you’re gonna be expected to deliver based on how you showed up in the interview. I think that’s a cautionary tale for folks right now.
If it’s important enough to you, it’s gotta be your work, okay? In in, in preparation and in delivery.
[00:12:41] Rodney Apple: That’s a great call out. It reminds me we were working on a retained search for a VP of operations interfacing primarily with a private equity company. The talent person at the P firm was doing the initial round, and just as you described, Chris, they’re doing a video interview and this person was asked.
To share the screen. They were going through some materials and shared the wrong screen and it had chat pt, so the interviewers like could see like everything she was saying was going right at a chat. PT. And it was producing an answer and this person was trying to awkwardly keep up with the answers that Chachi PT was suggesting in real time.
And at that moment, they politely ended and concluded the interview and this person was ruled out for using Chachi PT during a live interview. So as Chris said, do not do that. That can lead to a lot of problems as I just gave you a real world example. And, and I think equally important too is, is being able to articulate.
The value, as we’ve talked about, supply chain is about enabling growth. It’s about creating value, and one of the biggest mistakes that I see and hear about is folks that just come in and talk about their job duties. Instead of integrating in a real world example, ideally it’s an accomplishment, some value that you’ve created, and if you wanna really go a step further, you want to quantify that example.
There’s a ton of data, a lot of numbers, all in supply chain jobs. Analytics is super important. Data is very important. It’s expected that you can come in and not just speak high level, but drill down into, uh, into the value and quantifying it. An example could be you’re transportation. Of course you’re working on.
Bids freight. Uh, I managed a freight bid with trying to solicit new carriers and landed on a new carrier. For the company. That’s, that doesn’t tell you a whole lot, but if you could say this, through this process, I reduced our cost per mile by X percentage and improved our on time delivery by Y percentage, then that’s gonna go, that’s gonna go a long way.
So quantifying the results, how you made the impact to the company is something that’s critical, and it doesn’t have to be dollar signs or percentages. There’s also that. Qualitative side of the house too that you can speak to, whether it be improving employee engagement, results, driving change, leading transformations, things like that.
So think about the qualitative, think about the quantitative this Chris said, which is great advice. Go through the job description. Job description doesn’t always tell the full story, so ideally, you’ve had some kind of preliminary conversation, you’ve done research. You can weave all of this in and that’ll help you with your preparation as well.
In any interview situation. We talked about breaking the ice, so there’s gonna be common questions that come out. You may get this on an introductory interview or initial screening call. Could be with the hiring manager, sometimes it could be with the recruiter. Or someone in hr. So again, back to what Mike said, know your audience, but often you’re gonna get some, some what we call like most common interview questions just to get a sense of who you are and what you stand for.
Mike, you want to cover this piece with what you might can expect to hear and how you may want to answer these types of common interview questions.
[00:16:01] Mike Ogle: Absolutely Rodney, and the one I’ll start with is the one that I think early on in my career was a very difficult one for whatever reason, was the Tell me about yourself.
That is so common in a start and realizing over time that it really wasn’t about. I need to hear everything about your life and your progression that you went through, because it’s not just going over what’s already on your resume or LinkedIn profile and just trying to give a name, rank, and serial number kind of information.
You’re trying to do a lot more than that. So it isn’t just about what you factually say, but more about why you chose those things to end up saying, and also how you say it, it is your opening performance in a way. You should focus on strengths and passions and challenges you’ve overcome, how they shaped your direction, things that you want to be able to achieve.
There’s a lot. That should be in there. So it’s a very open-ended question to to get things started. And it should be an easy one because you should know yourself, but know what you would want to know about yourself in trying to go after a role like this. So there’s a recommended structure for this. To be able to provide, present and then past and future value and be able to keep it to around 60 to 90 seconds.
Second one to think about is a fairly open question as well, but you had to have looked at their, at their job posting and be able to understand what they’re looking for. So when you get the question, why do you wanna work for us? Show that you did your homework. Be able to link your strengths to the ambitions, to the company’s work and strategy and their culture.
How do you think that you can help them grow and also how they can help you grow? ’cause it’s a little bit of each that needs to be there. A third question to think about is what’s your greatest career achievement? Or it could be multiple ones, so be ready with more than one. But when you get asked what your greatest career achievement or achievements are, choose a story where you overcame a meaningful challenge because you’re going to be presented with all kinds of situations during your.
During your career and certainly during each individual job, and you need to understand how you can lay out that challenge that you faced, how you led a team to success, and even better for sure, if you include that you’re going to be leading a team, that you include the team and how you help facilitate things that happen within that team and make sure that you had some type of clearly measurable impact.
Use the star that Chris mentioned earlier. And then a fourth question going on the opposite side, what’s your biggest weakness? So in this particular situation, don’t come up with one of those types of things that just is a very generic, kind of high level. I try too hard, I work too hard. Things like that.
Be honest, but be strategic. Pick a real weakness. Show the steps you’re taking to improve and how it’s not going to hold you back. And a fifth one without going through too many in this particular segment of the podcast, but a fifth one that I wanted to talk about was, why are you leaving your current role?
You need to focus on moving toward opportunity. Don’t ever be running away from something. You need the next big step, and this opportunity has those elements. That’s the kind of thing that you want to concentrate on and what they’re likely wanting to hear, but make sure. What it is that you can make it clear.
So for each response, tie it back to those business outcomes. You’re improving cost. You wanna work on service quality, leadership impact, working with great people to make things happen. Those are the kinds of things that you value back to you, Rodney.
[00:20:04] Rodney Apple: Thanks, Mike. Yeah, those are definitely some of the.
Common questions that we run into, and I think those are good guardrails for answering them. And it’s not about, while it’s about us as the candidate, you want to think about what’s most important for the company and the interviewer. What do they care about? And if you can line up something that’s relevant and say fairly significant that within your background that goes across those questions, that’s what they’re gonna be looking for.
Just keep that in mind. Like you said, it’s not an open door question. They want to. See how you think on your feet. And equally important is having your own list of questions to ask. If you come in there and say that you get towards the end of the interview process, okay, what questions do you have? And you’re like.
I’m good. That’s not gonna go very far. They want to ensure that you’ve put, just like they put a lot of time in investing into you and learning more about you, it, it should be reciprocal. And you don’t want to just have basic questions either. You wanna show that you put some pretty good thought into this whole process.
It could make the world of the difference it could make or break whether you get selected or whether you don’t, just based on the questions you ask. And some good ones are obviously on the supply chain side as you want to understand. What are some of, what are the things that keep them up at night? What are they trying to solve for?
And Chris, chime in. I know you, you deal with these things. Having worked as a supply chain executive for a number of years, what does success look like? How do you define success at the end of the year? What would that look like if I accomplish A, B, C, D, E? What is that? And if you can get that information too, ideally early on in the process, you know what they’re trying to solve for, that’s what you’re gonna focus on when you conduct your interview as well.
So if you can kind of. This doesn’t have to be a question. I get answers. It could very well be a question you ask that gives you some ammunition for you to probe further and highlight something significant or relevant that ties right into the things that keep them up at night.
[00:22:02] Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I, I would throw just a couple in, right?
If you’ve done that research, you might ask a contextual question based on what you’ve read. Hey, clearly the company’s had challenges with tariffs based on their supply base. What are the key. Focus areas to, in order to be able to address that, something like that. You can also ask the question, are there any really critical or challenging cross-functional or partner relationships that someone coming into this role would need to be aware of?
The things like that really demonstrate, I think, again, you’re thinking about the context and environment that the a successful candidate would be walking into.
[00:22:37] Mike Ogle: That’s right during this short break, we recognize that this podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.
Visit SCM talent [email protected].
[00:22:57] Rodney Apple: Yeah, and it’s probably wanna talk about some questions to avoid too is just, is focusing in on me. And what I mean by that, early on in the process, you don’t want to dive too heavily into what, how long is it gonna take for me to get promoted? What can you break down your benefits package? How much am I gonna have to pay?
Try to wait. To the end, if you’re selected, you’ll be able to get more information there, but it shouldn’t be about what’s, how’s this gonna benefit me? That’s just gonna send the wrong message. It’s all you’re trying to demonstrate. I’m the right candidate. I can solve the problems. That you have, I can seize on the opportunities that you have, those conversation topics about promotions and what am I gonna get in my benefit package and things like that can come at a later time.
So just be careful that you don’t send that message that I’m just in it for me and that’s all I care about.
[00:23:49] Chris Gaffney: Yeah. I think coming out of that, you are likely on a given day, one of multiple candidates being interviewed, or you are in a string of days where they’re interviewing many candidates. But there’s still a process, right?
They’re likely not leaving your interview and going and making a hiring decision. So there’s still an opportunity to get a little bit more influence in. So I really want you to think about what you do from a follow-up standpoint. I think it’s not only appropriate, but I think it’s just good form that within 24 hours you’re sending a thank you note to the folks who interviewed you, and it’s nice if it’s more than just perfunctory.
Thank you so much for your consideration. I feel strongly that I’m the right Kennedy. I think if you can reference something specific from the discussion to put a fine point on your value and fit for the role, I think you can potentially score a point with those interviewers who are in various stages of advocating for you relative to other candidates.
But help tilt that one more time in your direction, and I think it’s appropriate one business week out to be able to send a follow up and check in on feedback and next steps. And I think I, I would leave that and I think for your key point of contact, you want to just say when this is the final step in the interview process.
A short wrap up message, reaffirm your interest, hit a few key bullets on what you think differentiates you. If there is a thought or two that you missed that you wanna make sure you pointed as a point of emphasis, I think that’s fine, but just one. And then I think do your own kind of continuous improvement.
While this is fresh, if you said, if I don’t get this role, the most important thing about this process is what I learned in terms of my interview, make sure you do your own reflection. Were there questions that were a bit of a curve ball for you that you wanna put on the list for your preparation? Where did you not feel good about your answer?
And go ahead and get granular about that question and answer it. So if you get a version of that in the future, you’re ready. So at least you’ve taken kind of the continuous improvement opportunity outta the process.
[00:25:53] Rodney Apple: Great stuff, Chris. And one thing I forgot to add, I just thought of is one way to, a good way to conclude your interview, part A and part B it.
And this can also help to turn something around if you felt like, oh, I didn’t do my best. I don’t feel like this is going as well as I hoped, is to just ask. You know what? I just would love it transparent. Before we wrap up, how would you, how would you, you know, is there anything that I’m missing? Is there anything that may cause you to pause, you get enough information or detail?
I’d like to address that now, use your judgment on that one. You don’t wanna make that a standard question, but if you feel like. This isn’t going as well as I would hoped, or there might even be some kind of concern. Go ahead and ask it. And of course you want to ask what is that next step in the process too, when they’re gonna get back.
They may say, Hey, it’s gonna be another month. We’re just getting started. They may say, Hey, we’re down to the wire. We’ll be wrapping this up. We’ll be in touch next week. So that gives you the, the ammunition you need and the know the knowledge to when to follow up, how to follow up. And as Chris said, that piece is important.
I’ll add to that companies are busy. It’s no excuse for getting ghosted. But people do get busy sometimes. As I just found out from a client who’s been stringing us along for nine months, they said, let’s go. Let’s go. Literally let’s go. And then just found out not even 24 hours later, hey, an internal person raised their hand.
So things like that happen. It’s in the, it’s, that’s how the real world works and business. And following up, want to err on the side of assuming people are busy, doesn’t mean you stalk them, but you do wanna follow up. More than once. I think a lot of people make the mistake of, oh, I left a message I never heard back.
It doesn’t hurt to to make another effort. People in supply chain are incredibly busy or running lean these days, so sometimes that that extra follow up can really go a long way. Just err on the side of not doing it too much and blowing up their phone to where you’re gonna be perceived as a pest and someone that’s stalking and so forth.
Mike, we talked about, I was leading in with some mistakes and common pitfalls. You want to cover that piece. Things you want to avoid. During the interview
[00:27:57] Mike Ogle: process. Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re in that process where you’re trying to figure out, I wonder what possibly went wrong, or even right after you, you’ve gone through the interview with any of the individuals, you may even have an opportunity to be able to correct if you even take that very first phone call.
And if you’re able to make it through the process to the next person is try to correct something that you may have noticed. So I love the aspect of making sure that you take some immediate inventory afterwards to understand how you, where you thought you stood, but wanted to be able to point out a few of the mistakes and pitfalls that might possibly lose an offer.
Even well qualified candidates can lose offers. But there may be some avoidable reasons that you should keep in mind, and hopefully these don’t happen with you. So first of all, you may have provided rambling answers, really long, rambling answers about something that meant a whole lot to you, but it wasn’t really presented in getting to the point in a concise and clear way to the individual, because they’re going to be imagining you in future meetings and talking with clients, and they’re not just thinking about your individual answer right now.
Second one. That you focus too much on job duties rather than the business and team outcomes. You weren’t looking at a bigger picture. Third, you may have made some kind of negative comments about past employers or leaders. Don’t burn bridges. Don’t start to set yourself up as the person who sounds like they are a future complainer or it’s not about you.
It’s always the other people that you work with. And if it’s a remote interview, invest in a good interview set up. Avoid having bad audio or poor lighting. Distracting background or noises don’t allow interruptions. These are the kinds of things that they’ll think about with the kinds of meetings that we’re holding these days.
Quite often being on Zoom or some other kind of service. You’ve gotta make sure that you’ve done that kind of preparation, that you’ve thought about it, because then it makes it look as if you’re more of a. A detail oriented type of person, and then I’ll give one more as well. If you didn’t tailor your answers to the role or the company or the industry, and instead provided what seemed like a generic answer, or God forbid, the AI generated type of answer, or some kind of answer from the past that you’ve used in other interviews, those kinds of things will not sit well.
With others, and it may be one of the reasons for losing an offer. Even if you’re well qualified, all things being equal, some of these things may end up knocking you off the list. So avoid those and hopefully you separate yourself from the competition.
[00:30:44] Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I would like to add one more. It’s specific, but it’s also really general.
I know in a lot of cases when I was interviewing, we had a specific list of competencies we were looking for, but in many cases there was an overall dimension or two. It might be fit for the role, it might be overall communication. But what I really liked to watch with candidates was their awareness, okay, both their situational awareness and their self-awareness.
You go into an interview, you know it’s got a time box, you know you’re in there for an hour or whatever. I never assume if I’m the interviewee that these folks have slack time at the end. In most cases, they’re back to back and I’ve been on the other side of it as an interviewer and I’m like, oh my God, we got four more of these and all we’re gonna do is get further and further behind.
And if you, as the candidate can be self-aware. Over the course of time in the interview and say, I’ve only got 42 minutes left, and there needs to be two minutes for them to close, there needs to be four minutes for me to ask any final questions. You’ve gotta be the one, ironically, to manage the flow of the interview, which gets back to Mike’s point, is you’ve gotta be super concise in your, in your responses.
In some cases, I would encourage people to say a little bit less and ask them. For, let them ask for a follow-up. Can you tell me a little bit more? But I think managing the overall tone and time of the interview and reading the room, right? Are they getting you or are they not getting you checking for understanding.
So you’ve really gotta have two of you in the room, one at the seat answering the question and your second, you stepping back in the corner and watching and saying, is this going the way I want it to go? Which is a tall order. But I do think it gets back to our point of being really well prepared. Then you have the mental bandwidth to be self-aware.
And I would say as an interviewer, if I see a candidate doing that, I know I, I’m, I’m meeting somebody who is a higher order person and that just adds points in their favor.
[00:32:56] Rodney Apple: That’s a great call out, Chris. Yeah, I think that is oftentimes the big challenge is what’s enough detail, what’s too much detail.
I’ve certainly seen candidates come in and they. They just go at a very high level. They don’t, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones. And then I’ve seen it the other way where they just get into every little nook and cranny and they’ll take five, 10 minutes to, or longer to answer a single question. And then you get to the end there and there’s another five or 10 questions you don’t even get through with the interview process.
And like you said, the person’s gonna be. Hey, I’ve got another call or interview coming up after this one. And, and it’s also showing that you’re not self-aware and look for those cues. Does the person stare off and out the window or are they looking at their phone? That means that they’re un you’ve, you’ve, they’ve, you’ve disengaged.
Then it’s gonna be your job to reel them back in and say, Hey, it looks, I just wanna make sure I’m giving you the right level of information. Ask for a little temperature check. Hey, is that, is, did that. Give you what you’re looking for. If not, I’m happy to go into further detail. I, I’d rather you err on that side than err on.
I’m gonna go into a lot of detail, so strike that balance and don’t be afraid to ask follow up, clarifying questions. Did that get you what you needed? I happy to go into more detail. We’re not gonna go too deep into compensation. We’ve covered how to prepare, how you should conduct yourself during an interview and the all important follow ups.
Following up is also a good chance for you if you felt like you didn’t address a certain point. Or you didn’t get that, that confirmation that the interviewer understood you, you could certainly go back. Or if there’s a gap too, there’s maybe a gap that you feel like you may have, you can address it in a follow up.
But you’re also gonna get asked about compensation and, and I deal with this pretty much daily. I literally just wrapped a call a minute ago with, with someone that completely evaded the question and never did answer it. And so there’s that side, and then again, you get too. The other side is where you’re gonna get too granular, where you stick to a number.
In the initial phases you’re gonna be typ. Typically, they just wanna find out, are you in the range or not? Yes or no? Are we close enough to continue this conversation? I ideally, if you could be the first person that asks the question too. You just have to be very careful. You don’t want to come out of the gate.
First question, what’s a pay? It’s all about when and how you ask the question, but if you could say, Hey, based on this role, we’d love to hear just a broad range of what this position may pay, just to determine if it’s in my wheelhouse. So if you can get there first, that’s always best. And on the flip side of that, as a recruiter, we don’t want to go into a conversation and ask right off the right out of the bat with your cough range too.
So you’re gonna go through this little song and dance, getting to know one another, seeing if there’s at least a fifth from, uh, cultural. And obviously the skills and experience need to be there too, but at some point that question’s gonna pop up. And, and my recommendation on the front end is, is, I’m not saying avoid it, but it’s almost like you’re going to buy a house or a car.
It’s like you don’t want to give up that information without seeing the house or the car. So I think it’s fair to say, Hey, until I learn more about this opportunity and what the bonuses is and what some of the other incentives and benefits look like, it’s hard for me to give an answer so you can go.
It’s fair to go into it in the beginning with a bit more of an open mind, but obviously as you get that, I like them. They like me. You get to that stage, you’re gonna need to come out. And answer this question. I’m a big fan of speaking in broad terms. I do it myself. It’s not, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to sugarcoat.
It just means if I’m working on a VP of supply chain, hey, this role has a range of two 50 to three 50. I may say something like, yeah, it’s in the, it’s in the mid upper twos can get into the threes, right? I think you can do that on your end too. Um, try to get the bookends established. I know what my minimum is for me to make a move, but ideally I’d like to be in this range.
I know that I’m speaking a little bit vaguely on this, but this is what you’re gonna get into in these early stages. The recruiter, that initial screen is just gonna make, make sure they’re not talking to somebody that’s way over the range. The worst thing we could do as recruiters put a candidate in front of our client, they fall in love with, get to the 11th hour, boom person’s way out of the range.
And then we’re getting screamed at for doing that. Check the box, are we in the range? And then as you get further along, there’s strong interest on both sides, then you can start getting a little bit more granular. And that leads us into that next episode is what we’re gonna get to is now that you’ve interviewed you’re, you did great, you’ve been told you’re the finalist and that they’re gonna move forward to an offer.
How do you evaluate that offer? It’s not just salary. It’s not just cash compensation. And as you go up the ranks, you’re gonna get into a lot more exciting things on the upside with potential equity, long-term incentives. So that becomes sometimes just as important, if not more important as you move further along in your career.
So we’ll talk about evaluating and negotiating. Offers and episode five, Chris, Mike, anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
[00:37:54] Mike Ogle: Yeah, I just wanted to toss in one thing that’s gonna be a connector, I think between the, the two episodes. Uh, it was something that I talked with my students last week about, and it was all focused on people in operations.
And one of the things I was encouraging them to do the earlier they are in their career, is to not really push for the pay and the advancement. Side of things early on, but to look at the knowledge kinds of rewards. How are you going to develop me? What are the opportunities that I’m going to be given?
To be able to be exposed to more things, to be able to go places and learn about the industry, whether it’s conferences or certifications or different classes and things that the company would hopefully be able to pay for to be able to get that person to that next level. How are they going to go through that development type of plan?
That’s going to be a really important thing to know, even at this stage that we’re talking about in the interview. But certainly when it comes to the negotiation, when the offer ends up coming.
[00:38:58] Rodney Apple: That’s great advice. I think early in your career it’s almost as important to get in with a good company, a good culture.
You’ve got a good boss that person can unlock, has the key to the next step in your career. You can’t, yeah, money’s important, but. But in the beginning stages of your career, it’s really important to get in with a company that’s gonna, like you said, Mike gonna give you those opportunities to learn and develop and grow.
And we’ll talk about this on the next one. But when you’re evaluating companies and you’re evaluating offers, let’s, you’re in a great position where you’ve got two, three, maybe four opportunities to look at YY. You don’t just go with the highest paying job, you’re gonna be looking at things like, what’s the growth trajectory of this company?
Are they in a resilient industry? There’s so many things to factor in, and I’m looking forward to diving further into that on the next episode. So with that said, we appreciate you joining episode four of the Supply Chain Career Catalyst podcast series where we talk about mastering the supply chain interview.
Just remember these interviews are your opportunities to communicate value, accomplishments, and how you can make their business and their lives better. We’ve got some, some resources that we’re gonna include in the show notes. We’ve got a tremendous amount of content on the SCM talent.com website as well.
Lots of articles on interviewing do’s and don’ts, so be sure to check that out. And thanks for tuning in. If you like this episode or, or if you know someone that can benefit, please, please feel free to share it and, and whatever your favorite platform is, we always appreciate likes and ratings. We appreciate anything you can do there.
Thanks so much and we’ll see you next time around.
[00:40:39] Mike Ogle: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Supply Chain Careers podcast. Be sure to listen to other episodes and sign up to be notified when future episodes are released as we continue to interview industry leading supply chain experts. This podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.
Visit SCM talent [email protected].
