How did I get an interview for a Sales Development Representative at Plug and Play in San Francisco

Elvira Amanova
Nov 5 · 10 min read

Hello, my name is Elvira. I just moved to San Francisco from Moscow and looking for an inspiring job. In this series of articles, I will describe the process of obtaining each interview and the conclusions that will adjust my future searches.

The description probably will be too detailed. I wanted to show everything that could be interesting to me while discovering someone’s experience. Correspondence, reactions, intermediate pushings — any trifles that moved the process towards the result.

Let’s take it apart:

  • Which channel works
  • Resume
  • Preparing for the interview
  • Interview
  • Conclusions

Channel

The first channel I got the interview with was Couchsurfing. A week before I arrived in San Francisco, I published an open request.

Request for Couchsurfing. I update the dates every two days to pop up in the first pages of the travelers search and receive more invitations

The day before the flight, September 18, 2019, I received an invitation.

I studied the host’s LinkedIn profile and photos to see how useful it is for me to get to know and trust a person. Five and a half years as a robostartup’s CTO, now works at Yelp, many friendly photos. Good!

We agreed to have breakfast on September 28th. After the first hour of lively and cheerful conversation about my previous life’s adventures, he invited me to his friend’s home party in Palo Alto.

Thavidu’s friend Ankesh, the founder of an interesting startup he created at the age of 20, attracted more than $13 million in investment and left the project at the age of 23. He is now 26 years old and has moved into a new home and is celebrating his housewarming.

We talked for 15 minutes, Ankesh told that after the last projects he had spent six months selecting the companies he wanted to work in, and he chose investor relations position at Plug and Play.

I spoke a little about my work and did not expect any result from this conversation. Ankesh ran away and said that I could contact him with any questions and if I needed a recommendation for Plug and Play, I could count on him.

I studied open positions at Plug and Play on LinkedIn and chose positions that I am interested in.

Letter to Ankesh after viewing Plug and Play’s job openings at LinkedIn
Continuation of the letter

Ankesh didn’t answer for five days, after which I tried to move the process forward.

The next day, he asked for my resume.

Resume

I tried to remove all irrelevant experiences from my resume and left only what might be interesting under these positions. I was helped by Alexey Alexanov the general partner at Cabra VC about what resume would have worked if he had been my hiring manager. I applied to him for a vision of a person who makes decisions in the last instance. I wasn’t looking for feedback from HR, it was important for me to understand how my potential manager thinks. As a result, I put my resume on one page and tried to add more formulations in the results format.

It was a great surprise to receive such a letter in two hours.

Preparing for the interview

I was considered for the position of Sales Development Representative. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do at this role. It is clear that I need to sell. But what exactly?

My main fear was to misunderstand the hiring manager and give nonrelevant answers. Despite my good passive vocabulary, I only started active practice English in August, when I decided to go on a move. But the experience of previous practices shows that the sooner I act, the sooner I get the desired results.

Stretching the preparing can be harmful. Because no matter how long have you been preparing the result can be the same. That’s why if I don’t understand anything I just act more to find the answer faster. So I said I was ready for the call at any time before the end of the week.

I was supposed to negotiate with corporations about introducing startup technology selected by Plug and Play into their processes. Alexey partially helped me to deal with this.

On the day I received the letter, I asked him to play an interview with me, after a few hours he called, we discuss it and the picture became clearer and easier.

It should be a phone call with the head of Supply Chain Vertical with previous management experience at Theranos, Boeing.

I realized that my English wasn’t good enough for a phone interview. So I did:

  • Made a list of possible questions
  • Answered the first in Russian
  • Reread the texts and shortened
  • Translated to English via Deepl (good contextual translation, in my tests, proved to be better than Google Translate)
  • Through Grammarly, I corrected the wording: correct pretexts, times, endings and emotional context
  • Asked Thavidu to correct my final translation
  • Learned the wording

Finally, I got nine pages of text, but these were not all the answers.

So the night before the interview, I thought it might not be enough. I wrote to Ankesh on Facebook at 1:27 a.m. and asked will I fail if I come to the office tomorrow (today) and in a call I tell to hiring manager that I was nearby and if it was convenient, I could go up to the office for a short conversation.

To my surprise, the answer came at 3:17. Ankesh had already woken up and was going to the office. Until then, I thought I was the one who was doing great, I got up at 5:00. But Ankesh is a new level in everything! He said it was a good idea, he did the same with his first interview and offered to warn them in a letter.

At 5:54 a.m. I sent a letter:

I live in downtown San Francisco, Sunnyvale, I have an hour and a half for driving by car, two hours by Caltrain. I was worried if they would reply to the letter, but I wouldn’t have time to get to the office so I decided to go to them anyway. Ankesh has supported the idea, invited me for lunch and an excursion around the office.

The letter was not answered, so at 12:30 we found a quiet, closed place in the office. I started getting ready for the call, and Ankesh ran away to his meeting. But two minutes later, I received a message from Ankesh, he found my hiring manager and asked me if I was ready to talk to him now, 30 minutes ahead of schedule. You can’t breathe before you die… Yes. I’m ready.

I did not see any discontent on the approaching director’s face. Yes, he was surprised, but not negative.

Interview

We talked for 12 minutes. Questions:

  • Tell about myself
  • How I closed the deal with “Auchan”
  • The amount of the deal
  • Which clients am I more interested to work with
  • My questions

About myself

In three minutes I told that I have seven years of experience in outbound sales, a year in inbound one. Organized events for 400 people for the purpose of lead generation. Coordinated conditions for participation in the largest events as a speaker for a budget close to zero.

How I came to IT sales in Kyrgyzstan, the discount service (Groupon model), how I got four promotions in nine months and led the sales in Azerbaijan.

That closed deals with Auchan, Citilink and Dodo Pizza in Moscow. The hiring manager recognized Auchan as he had been working in France for some time and it is the worldwide food retail chain with HQ in France. But there I did not shine with a cool closing story.

There was pure luck in closing, but a lot of work in accountancy. I can’t reveal the details. And the interviewer is not interested in accounting work at all, because I have an interview for the closing position.

About the average check, I add that usually, it was around $1,500 per month.

Which clients am I more interested to work with

The hiring manager has identified the options he came up with after my answers: retail, e-commerce, and fintech. What do I want to grow in?

I just answered that I have more experience with retail and e-commerce. I wanted to add that I didn’t cross paths with others because the products that I had previously sold didn’t need it. And I am also interested in other types of clients.

But the hiring manager stopped me and said that he would introduce me to the head of Retail and Brands if they needed people on the team right now. He was the head of Supply Chain Vertical. It is about manufacturing and logistics and I totally had no experience with such kind of clients.

He shook my hand, was about to leave, and I asked him one last question: what kind of people he needs to be on the team, what he thinks of me.

He replied that he needed people to work with corporations in manufacturing and logistics. That I would be good at retail and e-commerce. Apparently, I didn’t ask the right question, because I was expecting an answer about expertise and personal qualities. But I didn’t hold the person who started to get up.

Conclusions

  1. Don’t mention in the interview cases without a history of struggle and victory. Otherwise, they may be asked in more detail and I will look boring.
  2. Understand for myself what kind of clients I want to work with, and even if I had less experience with them — show to the hiring manager a passion to work with this type of clients.
  3. Don’t delay with referrals. Typical sales funnel, where the “hot” need to intelligently fluff every day. I asked Ankesh three days after I met him and reminded him of the letter in five days. And he just needed to turn right and talk to a person. Keep priority in touch with a recommendation person, until getting an answer about the interview possibility.
  4. Ask questions. Everyone. Always. And listen. Do not disturb. Just let go of the inner fuss and listen. When I was writing to Alexei and ask for a help — I was ready for him to ignore me or refuse. He’s a general partner of VC fund with a busy schedule. And what motivation is there to help me prepare for the interview? But it all worked out. During the conversation when I asked questions it’s seemed to me that I’m telling such amateur nonsense, many answers to the questions seem so obvious in my head. But no. Before the conversation, in my mind, I had already grown a tree with a bunch of branches, on which I rode like a squirrel, without bringing any thought to the end. It happens when you seem to know a lot, but the situation for you is completely new and you panic a little bit. And after the conversation, everything became so easy and clear. Like chalk cells on the asphalt with clear steps: one, two three and go back.
  5. Realize sudden ideas. I understood that an uninvited visit to the office could cause unpleasant emotions. But as Sales, I know that I may not have other options to be noticed. There are no lower chances than I have now. That’s why every step here is on the verge. It’s better to be refused than to be not noticed.

On this day, more useful for me became an hour-long conversation with Ankesh. He told me more about his search. How carefully he chose. It took him 6 months. He didn’t want to rush to work. It was important for him to find something he would devote himself to.

There were only a few companies that did what he was interested in. He easily got interviews with them and the desired position, because he was really passionate about it.

And I took the courage to make the next decision. I will not resort to the help of employment agencies. I’m not afraid of being unemployed. I’m afraid to start doing things that I won’t really rock. I will study carefully and work on myself to understand what product I want to devote my next few years of life to. And no agency can do this analysis better than me.

This game is cool, and i want to go through all levels on my own.

P. S. I don’t pretend that the screenshots show samples of the way to do it. There are a lot of mistakes in the formulations. These are just samples that will be polished again 100 times. I would appreciate your recommendations about how to improve them and the whole of this text.

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