Preparing for an Initial Interview at Thinkific
--
We know that interviews aren’t always the easiest experience, so we care about building relationships with every candidate and helping to make them feel comfortable and at ease during what otherwise can be a stressful experience.
At Thinkific, our initial interviews help you and our team get to know each other and see if there’s a good role fit. When searching for a new opportunity, we know how important the company culture, new challenges, and growth opportunities are when taking the next step in your career.
We use Topgrading as our methodology for hiring and promoting the right people. What does this mean for you? We practice tandem interviewing (or having 2 interviewers) to remove bias from our interview process and we always ensure a member of the hiring team is available to answer any role-specific questions you may have. We use Google Meet for our calls to provide a consistent experience for all candidates near and far.
For our initial interview, we treat it like a phone call and for this reason, we keep our videos off. We want to focus on the conversation we’re having, so feel free to keep your video off when joining! However, we want to ensure we’re creating an accessible interview experience for all of our candidates. We encourage you to let us know if there are any accommodations (big or small) we can help with throughout our hiring process. This could mean using video captions, leaving our videos on, using a video relay service for those who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, or allowing extra time after each question to formulate a response. Just let us know before the interview, and we’d be happy to accommodate you!
To help you best prepare for your initial interview, we’ve decided to share the types of questions we’ll be asking as well as best practices to make the most of our Google Meet call together.
We’ll be asking you about:
- Career goals
We want to know where your passions lie, what gets you out of bed every morning, and why you love the work you do. Think about where you see yourself in the next 2–3 years and what you plan to do to get there. - Strengths
Think back to all the times you’ve been praised for doing a great job — what do you feel are things you’re good at? What might be defined as your superpowers at work? This is your opportunity to brag (in fact, we encourage it!) about what you’re great at and share examples to highlight them. We’ll be focusing on your most recent role in this first interview, so be sure to keep this in mind as you think of examples! - Opportunities for growth
Nobody is perfect and we all have opportunities to learn and grow. In fact, it’s one of our core values, so we want to know where we can support your continued growth and development. Think about things you are working to get better at or areas where you’ve received feedback from others, with examples from your most recent role that shed light on these areas for improvement. - Recent role(s)
We want to better understand what you’ve been doing over the last 1–2 years — tell us about your accomplishments, share challenges you’ve faced, and let us know why you’re exploring new opportunities. - Future references
Part of our hiring process is to speak to people you have previously worked with — from peers to managers. This comes up at the very last stage of our hiring process and we will only speak to people you have given us permission to do so (and work with you to coordinate these conversations). Whether you’re still working or not, we’ll confirm who we may or may not speak to down the road and what you think they would say about you when we speak to them. We won’t be contacting anyone without your permission — don’t worry! - Salary
We always want to make sure you’re happy with the compensation you’ll be receiving. This is something we address early on in our process to ensure we are in alignment. It’s helpful for us to know what you’d be looking for and any other factors that you’d be thinking about when evaluating total compensation. - Availability
We look to move quickly throughout our hiring process and understand there are likely other companies you are speaking to and life events you need to plan for. We believe in being transparent throughout our hiring process and hope you’ll do the same for us. Let us know if we need to move quickly or adapt our hiring process if you’ll be traveling or have another role you’re considering. - Questions and next steps
During your job search, your questions are just as important as ours, so we wrap up by answering your questions and clarifying next steps in our hiring process. Our hiring leads are available to answer any role-specific questions you may have.
Best Practices
Find a quiet, uninterrupted space where you can take the call without background noise or distractions, if possible. Have a few key examples from your most recent role handy that relate to the position you’re applying for. We’ll be speaking about your accomplishments and challenges so before getting on a call, have an idea of which examples you want to discuss.
Be authentic, be concise and most importantly, answer questions honestly. As much as you might be tempted to drop keywords and speak at length about your accomplishments, listen to the questions being asked and answer them directly. Providing examples of problems you’ve solved, lessons you’ve learnt from making mistakes and your major accomplishments is an ideal way to showcase your skills and experience.
You have more time to respond than you think. Take a breath, think about the most relevant situation or example you can think of, and speak in a calm, collected manner. The conversation should flow easily and feel natural…like you’re talking with a good friend.
Remember — it’s incredibly humbling to talk about the things you’re not so good at or hope to improve. Forget everything you’ve heard about making a negative a positive when asked about your challenges. Avoid generic answers like ”I’m a workaholic” or “I’m too passionate about my work”. We look for candidates that will be the right values fit or culture add to our team, and a big part of that is understanding how we can support your growth.
