Transitioning into Tech — Interview Season

Last post I ended off on why I decided to leave my industry role, so we will pick it up from there.

When I first decided that I want to make a pivot into a new industry, there were a few criteria that I used to evaluate my next jump:

1. Nature of work: I knew that I enjoyed working in excel, working with numbers, communicating with different department heads and coming up with stories to explain the financials. So it was crucial that in my next job, I would be doing something along the same lines but with added responsibilities and exposure to different areas. As with my industry job coming out of B4, I knew I wanted to move further away from audit/accounting and more into strategic/corporate finance.
2. Flexibility: I needed this next job to be flexible in terms of how I worked, when I worked and most important where I worked. Having been spoiled by the WFH model in my last 2 jobs, I knew that it was important that the next job also provide the same type of work environment that I was use to. Being able to go into the office when I choose to do so was a very important factor for me.
3. Mentorship: The more horror stories that I hear from others in B4 or recently moved to industry the more I realized that a strong and supportive team is imperative to a positive work environment. I am looking for leaders that have been in my shoes before and successful navigated this part of their career in hopes that they can also steer me in the right direction.
4. International Exposure: Another consideration that I had was whether this job would help me in my aspirations of moving and working internationally in the future. Whether this meant the company had international operations, global brand name, or possibilities of expansion in the future, I wanted to be able to leverage this experience to potentially work internationally in the future.
5. Compensation: Pay was not as important of a factor to me, but it was still a consideration that I had to take with any new job. I wasn’t looking a huge raise from what I was making now, but I felt like it should consummate with the difficulty of work and experience required.

Keeping those criteria in mind, I slowly began scoping out a list of companies that fit the bill. I started with the traditional FAANG companies. Checking in ever so often to see whether they had postings that matched my experiences and seemed interesting. After weeks of applications and realizing that without a referral that it was nearly impossible to get an interview at these places, I moved onto looking at Fortune 500 companies in the states, as well as the largest corporations in Canada.

After a few weeks of applying to some of these companies, I had gotten a few bites back and landed a few interviews. During these interviews I recall listening to the hiring managers, senior managers and directors all talk about the same thing. “I started at this company 10 years ago and I’ve really enjoyed it ever since. I worked 4 years within the revenue department before realizing that I wanted a more rounded experience. I decided to switch and help support the HR function in projecting headcount and salaries. Three years ago, I switched to supporting the engineering department, helping them track their costs, revenues and review of the budget to actuals.” It sounded like the typical corporate ladder and path towards senior management, all of which I was hoping to avoid. If I wanted to follow this path I would have just stayed at my current company. Why the heck am I leaving for the same work environment and experience?!? I wanted a variety of experience, the ability to oversee much more of the company, and the cliche statement of “being able to wear many hats.”

It was at this point where I realized that I need to think bigger, and by thinking bigger, I needed to go smaller. I needed to look at companies that weren’t as well established in their departments, roles and responsibilities. They only remaining choice that I had were startups. So I started researching startups , the difference between funding stages and people’s experiences within those companies. With the vast vast information available on the web, I could only find people’s experiences with different staged companies that worked in engineering. There were almost no information out there for those that worked in accounting and finance. So I took the information from these engineers and applied the same experiences to those that worked in accounting and finance. Why should this be different if these companies are in a similar stage of growth?

I grouped startups into three different buckets; seed stage — series A, series B-C, series D and beyond.

I quickly ruled out those in the seed stage and series A. First, these companies had little to no funding so job security would always be an issue. Second, these companies had little to no structure at all and most have 1 person running all of finance. They just weren’t big enough to hire additional people.

Companies in that series D/E/F stage were interesting as they were big enough to have started generating revenues and would not have issues with future funding rounds. They almost always had international operations so that would satisfy my criteria of potentially going international. But where these companies fell short was their lack of flexibility (most requiring a partial or full return to office) and the scope of work. These were well defined roles that clearly outlined the day to day responsibilities. This would not allow me to “wear many hats” and really get that broad experience at work.

So this left me with companies in that series B/C stage. I narrowed my focus and almost exclusive started applying to companies. With some hard work, stubbornness and determination I was able to secure a few interviews and ultimately a job offer from a SaaS startup company that was headquartered in California but with office locations in a few countries around the world. I would be working in a very small finance team at this startup helping them with projections, financial modelling, analytics and anything else that they would need me to do. I was ready to roll up my sleeves and jump into any work that came my way :).

The whole process of realizing that my current job was not ultimately for me to securing new startup job took about 4.5 months. During this time I took a few interviews and have summarized the most common questions below for those that are interested.

During the HR screening call:

1. Where are you working now and why are you looking to leave?
2. Are you willing to relocate and work in the office 2/3 days out of the week?
3. I see that you’ve been at your current company for less than 2 years, is there a reason you are leaving? Are you looking for a promotion?
4. What are your salary expectations?

During the calls with upper management:

1. Why are you looking to leave your current company?
2. What about our company/the job description/company goal interests you?
3. What experience do you have with accounting or financial planning software?
4. You don’t have any experience working in a startup, only in large mature companies. What makes you think that you’re cut out to work at a startup?
5. We don’t have many rules, processes or procedures established. How do you deal with ambiguity?

Hopefully I was able to provide some insight into my thought process on choosing the type of company that I wanted to work for and some of the most frequent interview questions I got. Stay tuned for the next post where I talk about my first week at work and my transition into a startup!