Question
I had an interview over the phone since the manager was out of state. Things went okay and then he asked me to put together a 30-60 day business plan for what I would do to increase business. The idea is for us to have a face-to-face interview next (assuming he likes what I wrote, I guess).
I was very skeptical but I went along. I probably didn’t spend enough time or do a thorough enough job because I really don’t think the job is a fit, but we’ll see. I wrote up some really high-level stuff and told him there wasn’t any reasonable way for me to generate a more detailed plan on the basis of a one-hour phone conversation. Of course I thanked him for his time and told him I looked forward to meeting him.
I haven’t heard back and frankly I’m pretty lukewarm on the opportunity, but I just wonder what you think of his request. It seems a bit odd if not inappropriate to me. It also seems like a no-win situation as I’m in no position to write a meaningful business plan.
Nick’s Reply
[What is 999? Read on.]Is this manager’s request an odd interview strategy? Not at all. In fact, it’s very smart. It’s the interview approach I recommend to both job hunters and employers. Focus on the work. And that’s what this manager was doing.
Some employers want to know what you’re going to deliver. And that’s smart. I don’t mean to offend you, but you blew an opportunity. Don’t worry: you can learn from this. Let’s look at what happened.
Sure enough to do a business plan?
“I probably didn’t spend enough time or do a thorough enough job because I really don’t think the job is a fit.”
That is your key problem. You can’t be effective with the manager’s request if you “really” aren’t sure the job is a fit. And that will sink you in any interview, whether on the phone, in person, or in the form of the business plan this manager requested. This is why I say most interviews are a total waste of time.
It’s because people aren’t really ready to tackle them properly because they’re not sure enough that they want the job.
A business plan you can defend
“I was very skeptical but figured I’d go along. I wrote up some really high-level stuff and told him there wasn’t any reasonable way for me to generate a more detailed plan on the basis of a one-hour phone conversation. Of course I thanked him for his time and told him I looked forward to meeting him.”
This is where you actually took the step that blew it. You tried to fake it with “high-level stuff.” That’s not what a manager is looking for. He’s looking for an honest plan of how you will do the job day one, week one, month one, year one. Now, such a manager doesn’t expect you to be right on the money. You don’t need to provide “the right answer.” You do need to provide a carefully thought out plan that you can explain and defend.
The point is to engage the manager; to show that you are thinking about the key issues. The manager is trying to get you to reveal your thinking process and to engage you in the work. It’s a good opportunity for a job candidate who really wants the job.
But, how can you perform at your best in an interview if you’re not sure you want the job? How can you be sure it’s worth investing the time and effort to do a good business plan? The answer is pretty straightforward: You must know more about the company, the manager and the work. Otherwise, there’s no way to build the self-motivation that would drive you to do the sort of preparation that reveals the savvy and enthusiasm the manager wants to see.
Choose carefully
Avoid the random interview. Choose your target companies carefully — and you can’t do that if you apply to hundreds of companies through those dopey online job boards.
Suppose you applied for 100 jobs and — whoopee! — they all invited you to submit business plans. How could you possibly prepare an intelligent presentation for each of them? You couldn’t. And that’s what you need to reconsider: how to choose your targets.
Engage the hiring manager
You’re asking a very valid question because you encountered a very smart manager. What could you have done after he issued his challenge? It’s only natural that you cannot produce a business plan by yourself, or with an hour’s worth of dialogue! You need more information, just as you might if you were already an employee.
You could have organized your thoughts and figured out what additional information you needed. Then you could have called him back to ask your questions. “I want to present you with a plan I can be proud of — and to do that I need some additional information.” But, that call would have required real motivation. Did you have it? Make sure you do for the next opportunity you develop.
Do a business plan, but don’t work for free!
One caution about all this. Some managers use “the business plan exercise” to get free work from job candidates. It’s rare, but it happens. A job hunter must always judge the integrity of the employer. If you provide the sample of work an employer asks for, make sure you withhold the details of the implementation part of your plan. That is, don’t give them so much that they can get the job done without you. Never work for free.
You can do this
Other than that, my view is that this manager did the right thing. He asked you to show how you would do the job profitably. My guess is that if you can target the right company, manager, and job, you’ll do a good job on this kind of task.
The problem you’ll encounter is that few managers will ask you to do something so meaningful. Your challenge is to offer it even if they don’t ask. Your mission is to educate them about what you can do. In my opinion, producing a brief business plan is a very smart way to demonstrate your worth to an employer.
You can do this. On to the next!
Seriously? You want job seekers to create written business plans for every job they apply to? Yep. Why not? This turns the entire “apply for a job” process on its head. Do you agree?
Next week: In the 1,000th edition of the newsletter a reader shares an example of how to win the job by doing the job in the interview. That’s why this edition is #999.
: :
I often get asked a variation of a business plan request — most often with the words “What would you do if you got the job?” (BTW, I’m a consultant so not job hunting, but this applies when trying to nail a client, too)
Whenever I am asked this, I say “the first thing I would do is ask questions, and I would start with you.” Basically, my message is that any good plan, or demonstration of worth, has to begin with a discovery process — finding out what the hell is going on.
Otherwise it’s guesswork.
It’s also a good way of understanding whether the candidate has the curiosity and humility to ask questions rather than assume on their own. When to ask and when to make an assumption is a serious test of maturity in problem solving!
@Larry: Well put. The worst fallacy that’s heavily promoted by the very nature of automated recruiting (job boards, ATSes, etc.) is that applying for a job is all about YOU, the applicant. Write (or buy!) a good resume about YOU. What keywords define YOU? What are YOUR greatest strengths and weaknesses? What is YOUR personality type? Where have YOU worked? What are YOUR skills? Why should we hire YOU? Be ready with an elevator pitch about YOU?
On and on it goes and it’s all so, so stupid!.
What matters is, what do YOU know about the employer, the manager, the work of the job in question? Consultants like Larry understand they cannot show up for a meeting with a prospective client, wave their resume, recite their credentials and take questions about themselves. They need to show up demonstrating their acumen — about the prospect!
But here’s the problem, and this is where I fault the Employment System. Resume writers, coaches, career counselors, the entire “how to play the game” industry cannot address each and every job/company you’re going to pursue. They can only “market YOU”. They help you create “YOUR brand” and “YOUR marketing plan.”
They fail to address the specific employer, manager and job you want to pursue. And that’s why this whole enterprise is one big FAIL.
Without knowing all there is to know about the company, the manager, the work, the job, the rest of the team, you cannot decide which specific stars in your constellation of skills are useful for this job — because anything else is spurious and not relevant to whether you should proceed to the next step in the process.
Like Larry says, “any good plan, or demonstration of worth, has to begin with a discovery process — finding out what the hell is going on”
Any attempt to get a job must start with the job, not with who YOU are. NEVER leave it up to the interviewer to figure out what to do with the mass of information you provide about yourself. Never leave it up to them to decide what to do with you because almost all interviewers suck at that. You have to explain how you fit to them — and you cannot explain how exactly you will fit until you learn all about them. Don’t miss Larry’s most important caution: “Otherwise it’s guesswork.”
Nobody’s going to hire you for your guesswork. That’s why 99% of job interviews are a FAIL.
I can hear the “but…” — “But they REQUIRE a resume, and that I fill out the application, and that I do the robo-interview, and consent to the personality test, and tell them all about myself. And besides, there’s no way to get more information than the job posting provides!”
BUNK to all of that. Once you get on that hamster wheel, you’re doomed to a job-search failure. And you know it already. So stop the spinning. Learn how to say NO to the entire system and teach the employer how to help you show you can do the work.
Without a discovery process initiated by the applicant, there is no job offer. It’s all about knowing what the employer really needs, even if the employer itself doesn’t know. The job the Employment System totally ignores is helping the employer understand the job it needs to fill. Your resume, LinkedIn profile, your keywords, the results of your personality test — none of that helps. You win the job by doing the job in the interview. Check in next week when we’ll see firsthand how it’s done.
Thank you, Larry, for getting us off on the right foot!
This article is amazing, it’s probably the best interview question for serious candidates who want to have real impact at their employers.
I ask a variant of this question: you and I just decided to start a new business XYZ, what should we do next?
XYZ can be a bank, a grocery store, an insurance firm, a pharmaceutical company, whatever.
The best candidates ace it even if they are unprepared, they start with strategy and can go deep into tactics.
The average candidate struggles with it, the bad candidates don’t even know where to start with this question!
This question naturally lens itself to a sequence of questions that can get increasingly specific to their role, and the best candidates go there naturally.
This works for any candidate whether CXO or an entry level computer programmer right out of college for a simple reason – if a candidate can’t describe the business model and how their work makes money for the company, why do they want to work here?
I’m glad Nick threw the disclaimer in there. I read the interviewers request completely differently. It sure looked like the interviewer was looking for free work.
Most of what I produce as a civil engineer are public documents, so I’d happily provide work samples. I’d be very hesitant to do a mock assignment that took more than an hour or two.
@Mike: Nice catch. I agree with you, but this question/scenario also paints a clear picture of a job applicant gone totally wrong. The person should never have even applied for the job.
“I really don’t think the job is a fit”
But this case provides a good opportunity to discuss what the real problems are. The poor job applicant was just doing what the Employment System requires — apply for any and all jobs so our databases and algorithms won’t go hungry.
I’ll repeat: NEVER do work for free as part of the interview process.
You don’t know if the job is a fit or not until you find out more information, so ignoring the job because you don’t know everything about it is … not a wise choice.
Depending on the company, I’ve seen too much of this in my day where the manager interviews a bunch of people, asks for a very specific, detailed work product, says thanks for the memories and then ghosts the interviewee, conveniently implementing their ideas. The Sales and Marketing managers were notorious in doing this in my company and had the full blessings from HR. Some were so brazen to use the identical slides if Powerpoints were created.
So I agree that showing you can do the work is key, but when is a “detailed 30, 60 and 90 day business plan to increase business” abuse and fraudulent?
I think a business plan with high level ideas and a “details available on request” statement (i.e. AFTER you hire me) is prudent.
Specific example as to myself: I was interviewing for a senior pharmaceutical development position for a drug they were planning to develop and sell, similar to ones that at the time were being advertised on TV. The interview was supposed to be just the morning, but when they found out I was key in the development of an almost identical drug, they asked me if I could stay the day because “they were so impressed with me the senior executives wanted to meet me.” I said yes and they all showed up with notebooks and began grilling me about specifics of my program with the other drug, I mean serious strategic and tactical points bordering on IP violations. I caught on quickly and lots of my answers became “You’ll need to hire me to find out that!”
They offered me a BS consulting gig that clearly was designed to suck any knowledge I had from me. I declined.
Moral is don’t assume the interviewer is just savvy about interviewing – they may be trying to further their own agendas at your expense.
@Hank: Thanks for this cautionary story. Eyes wide open, and listen for the con.
company, or employees who know company is doomed, are using you to get free consulting / brain storming = tell them you have a person emergency and need to leave the interview immediately.
The one thing that you should be sure to do ANYTIME you provide your own intellectual property to a potential employer is to make sure in the cover letter to state that this is YOUR property that you are providing on a consulting basis. State that the employer may not use it without your prior approval.
and make sure you have the resources to sue them if they use your stuff, and you can prove the value / harm, or walk away the minute you sense a rat – (ie. if they are being too nice, too thursty,..) walk away
In my field, interview candidates are often asked to produce work product they would be paid for if they were hired as an employee. The company doesn’t hire them and steals their intellectual property, applying it themselves. I will no longer do this. I can offer multiple case studies and measurable outcomes to demonstrate my expertise.
If an interviewer wants to ask the PROCESS of how I might go about putting such a plan together, I can answer this in a ten minute discussion.
Lynn is correct about companies potentially stealing a candidate’s intellectual property during an interview.
I experienced this myself when I was in the early stages of a job and still on probation. A co-worker who was desperate for ideas asked our supervisor to assign a project to me, where I designed a visually appealing prototype for a website. The boss loved it, but he turned around and gave the project to this co-worker, who then incorporated my idea. As a result, he received a raise, and I received no credit.
This experience has made me skeptical of everything because, in those situations, you are on their turf and have little control over what happens. Also, I’ve never heard of this form 999 referred to in this way; it sounds like an IRS tax form.
I’m not surprised at the number of stories and comments about employers that try to use job interviews to get free work. We’ve covered this before:
https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/13670/work-for-free
Includes “How to Say It” when you tell them to take a hike!