Focus on these 4 questions (or categories of questions, as in the last case):
- Why This Group?
- Tell Me About the Industry
- Tell Me About a Recent Deal in This Industry
- Industry-Specific Technical Questions
Why This Group?
Answer this one by linking it to something in your background: a school project, an internship, someone you met while networking, family, friends, and so on.
Let’s say that all your experience has been as an engineer in the technology industry and there’s no obvious reason why you’d want to work in an oil & gas group.
But maybe you have a distant relative who is in the business, or maybe one of your friends started working at a big energy company recently – you can take something small like that, spin it, and turn it into a “I had always been interested in tech, and still am, but recently I started talking to [Person Name], who made me really interested in energy…” story.
If you don’t have something specific in your background, you could always talk about industry news or recent deal activity making you more interested.
Once you’ve established this spark, give 1-2 solid reasons why you want to work in the group after someone or something made you interested.
Going back to the energy example, you could talk about how it affects not only everyone and every economy in the world, but also geopolitics. You could also talk about being interested in promising but controversial technologies like hydraulic fracturing and how quickly the industry is changing due to rising energy demand in emerging markets.
They don’t expect you to be the next T. Boone Pickens – they just want to hear something intelligent from you.
Do not attempt to BS something on the spot here – and don’t say something silly like, “I’m interested… because… it’s so interesting!” (yes, I’ve heard that one before)
No comments:
Post a Comment