Approaching My First Interview at a Startup
Startups prefer those that stand out.
Coming into my senior year at Michigan State, I had the opportunity to accept a full-time position at the financial services firm I interned at this past summer. I’d have a healthy salary, awesome co-workers, and a decent work-life balance. Eventually from that role, I’d try to join the firm’s investment bank, and have that help set up my career in Venture Capital. I was ready to accept.
Then I went to visit my brother, Rohun Jauhar, in San Francisco. During that stay, I had the chance to hangout with some cousins as well. Long story short, one cousin, Shaan Puri, went on one of his epic rants and convinced me if I wanted to be a VC one day, banking isn’t the route, startups are.
So if you’re interested in breaking into startups, or just need general interview advice, read on!
All I had known the past two years was pursuing a career in banking. During that time, I gained invaluable insights in acting professional (at least compared to my college peers) and understanding the right concepts to outperform in interviews and internships. While I’m no longer pursuing that route, the lessons I learned during that time allowed me to stand out when approaching this interview at a startup.
Below are the ideas I took away when recruiting for banking and applied to the startup world.
Reach out
The number one way you ease dialogue during the interview and demonstrate your credibility is proactively reaching out to multiple people at the company before your interview. Whether it is connecting with them on LinkedIn, sliding into their Twitter DMs, or guessing their email, find a way to get on their radar. Pro-tip: on LinkedIn, connect with them as a “friend” and you don’t need to present “verification” that you know each other.
If you get them on the phone and the conversation goes well, ask them at the end, “Is there anyone else you think I should reach out to?” If they like you, they’ll give you the warm intro to more people at the firm. This increases your chance of multiple people vouching for you. Later in this post, you’ll see how speaking to many employees beforehand, helps set up your interview answers.
When you’re cold calling/email, you want to get right to the point. The individual doesn’t know you, if they can’t easily decipher what you want, they probably won’t respond. Regardless, don’t expect to get too many replies, people are busy and not everyone has time to help out. That doesn’t matter. This is a numbers game. Be persistent, send them follow-ups, reach out to others at the firm. Someone will reply, you just have to show the effort.
Personalization is a great filter to get someone to respond to your email versus the many others they receive. It shows the individual you’re actually putting in an effort to learn more about their experiences, and not just blindly sending emails. After some creeping via Google, I saw in a tweet this person in the above email won a Growth Sales Development award from TOPO (they got a good laugh out of it when I mentioned it). Essentially do what you have to so you can stand out, even if that means talking about the Warriors’ most passionate player, Draymond Green. Yes, we both went to Michigan State. Yes, he is one of the all time greats out of MSU. Yes, he’s an underdog like many startups. No, I can’t justify his WWE style moves.
Preparation
I really had no idea what an interview at a startup was like, I was often told I had to nail the whiteboard portion of the interview, but never really knew what that meant. So I did what any normal human being would do. Instead of studying for finals, I spent days learning about the company by using their resources tab on their website, which is actually meant for customers. My thinking here was simple, if I’m applying for a sales role, I better understand how the product is a value add and how the message is delivered to customers.
This led me to watching hour long YouTube videos of their engineering team, going through their product integration guides, reading their movie night blog, and eventually documenting my thoughts many times on whiteboards. Was all of this necessary? Who knows. But I did know I wanted this job more than most. I didn’t want the reason I wasn’t hired because I didn’t try hard enough.
If you’re walking in unfamiliar territory, over prepare.
Practice
It’s impossible to replicate experience. Someone who is in their first interview ever acts very differently from someone who’s done 20+. Sure this was my first startup interview, but over the past two years I had interviewed with companies for finance internships, leadership positions for school clubs, and on-campus jobs.
Along that time you pick up subtle cues.
How do you pick up these cues? Interview, anyway, and everywhere. If you keep on sitting on the sidelines because that company isn’t just right or you’re too busy with other things, you’ll never take the steps forward to be comfortable and focused in an interview setting. We all have bad interviews and we all get nervous before them. That’s fine. If you don’t learn from those mistakes early on, you’ll make those mistakes when it matters most.
Circling back to above, speaking with multiple employees before the interview helps you pick out specifics about the company that most employees think is important. Focus on those key ideas you keep hearing about and make sure you plot where you can mention them in the interview. By saying something like, “Part of the reason I want to join the company is you are the clear leader in the space. When I spoke to John and Jessica they both stressed the ease of integration for the product and the network effects it benefits from, and how that is a key differentiator when looking at the competitive landscape,” you provide validation to the interviewer that you did your homework.
In the end, it worked out! The hustle paid off, and I’ll be moving out to the Bay Area in June to start my career in tech. I’m incredibly grateful I landed my first startup job after my first startup interview. Without going through the growing pains of the past two years, I wouldn’t have even made it to the initial phone screen.
This stuff takes time, if you aren’t seeing much progress, keep at it. Usually the breakthrough happens when you least expect it.
If you need more interviewing tips or help breaking into tech, specifically tech sales, feel free to reach me at sameer@jauhar.co or @sameer_jauhar on Twitter.
