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Unique Question - Interviewing for Enterprise Account Executive - the Leadership Principle questions are toughhh! I researched online, prepared stories - but the questions are so thought pre-voking. Do they mind if you pause for 30 seconds to come up with a good one before STARing your story?

Current Employee · Accepted Answer

Each interviewer will be assigned two LPs to evaluate you on. Typically the LPs will be Customer Obsession, Deliver Results, Earns Trust, Learn & Be Curious, Bias for Action, and Ownership. Have 5-6 stories prepared and adjust your storytelling based on the prompt. Use the STAR format to describe your process and rationale for each scenario. The interviewer will ask several follow-up questions, so pick an honest experience you feel comfortable talking about at length. Pausing is fine, as is admitting you don't know or didn't consider something.

Former Employee · Answer

30 seconds might be a bit long...but they really don't care if you have notes on your screen/say "man lemme see..."

The assumption, and expectation, is that you prepared 25 or so answers of things you've done in your career ahead of time, and you're just picking which one is the best fit for the question they happen to pick.

Former Employee · Answer

That's a good thing. The more nuanced your answer can be, the better. You want them to go a level deeper with you

Current Employee · Answer

The very best thing you can do is find 4 to 6 use cases you have experienced in you career. Write them down, be able to answer deep questioning on them and practice reciting them. Then take the LPs (leadership principles) and apply the relevant ones to each use case.  If you have good use cases you should be able to assign 4 or 5 LPs to each. Be willing to admit when you don't know something and make sure you cover what you have learned from failures or hurdles in the use cases. In one of mine I told them how I botched a $10M deal, was super authentic about where I failed and what I do, in deep detail on my processes now to make sure I don't fail like that again. We are looking for smart people who can admit they fail but rise from the fire.

Current Employee · Answer

You're gonna hate this advice, but don't overthink these stories.  Main thing is ensure they follow STAR method, but include a ton of data.  Some even advise two "R's" for Result for the Customer and Internal Result.  Once you have these stories air-tight, you'll find one story might apply to 3-4 types of LP questions.

Good luck!

Current Employee · Answer

We don't put you in a loop unless we want to hire you so try not to stress. It's perfectly fine to gather your thoughts or to even skip a question and come back to it.

Current Employee · Answer

They don’t mind if you do. Just remember to keep it customer obsessed. A story about how you closed a huge deal that doesn’t include any details about how your customer benefited is not gonna work in your favor but a story about how you transformed your customers business will even without revenue

Former Employee · Answer

No there is zero small talk they aren’t allowed to do so. It’s right to business and very tough interview.

Current Employee · Answer

Here's what I did when I joined 5 years ago. I created a word doc with table for each leadership principle. Then used the STAR method with columns to come up with example responses. STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Often you'll find 3-4 projects/deals can answer the majority of the questions. I would then study those so they are ready in your mind to answer.

I interview regularly and I agree our questions are tough. Real world experience makes it easier but when you are entry level it's very hard to respond to many of these so have to get creative. But whatever you do, don't say I can't think of an example. Say something.

Current Employee · Answer

Hi. Current employee here who participates in interviewing. It is completely acceptable to ask for a moment to put your thoughts together. You will run into trouble if it becomes clear you’re reading from a script or use the same story multiple times across interviews. Mostly just be yourself.

Current Employee · Answer

I now work at AWS, so successfully got through these questions. I literally wrote out examples for each LP, using the STARE method, prior to the call. Probably spent 10-15 hours prepping. In talking with my peers, most did something similar. I may have gone overboard, but I got through the process. I was EXTREMELY formulaic in my responses. Literally said, I was in "Situation "A" (explain challenge/problem) where I had to execute on  "TaskB", here is how I thought through the problem/what needed to be done (I always tried to talk about how I would use data, if available, to support my actions), my "ActionC&D"  were this,  my "Result E" was blah blah. The next part that will help is if you can talk about how you learned or evolved the situation. It's OK to ask for a few seconds to think through the question, ask clarification questions or restate the question to make sure you're understanding the question properly. These all give you time to think through your example. It's OK to say that something failed or did not have the desired outcomes. They are really looking for how you solved the problem or made the decision. One tip that I was given was to try to not repeat your examples, so come up with multiple examples for each LP. Yes, this is a LOT of prep, but it will pay off in the long run. The loop is a tough process, and being prepped for 6ish hours of interviewing will make the process more manageable.

Former Employee · Answer

I created 8-10 STAR stories that could be applied to several Leadership Principles. Practice them out loud and record your replies so they become second nature. Be prepared to answer failure questions. "Share a time when you failed on a project or describe a time when a former manager delivered tough feedback to you and how did you react?"

Current Employee · Answer

Not at all - definitely suggest you take a minute to digest the question, look through your 'stories' and determine which one you want to use, and then respond. Have them repeat the question to buy more time, as well.

I also recommend that you identify only 5-7 stories from your career, and that you deeply reflect on them, write down the data and quantify the impact to the best of your ability

Current Employee · Answer

Absolutely, you can pause for few seconds and take time to think about the right example / story . This is considered better than just randomly start talking about an irrelevant example.  You can tell the interviewer that you would like to put your thoughts together and find a suitable response . All the best!

From a current Executive Account Manager from AWS

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Anonymous Q&A

Unique Question - Interviewing for Enterprise Account Executive - the Leadership Principle questions are toughhh! I researched online, prepared stories - but the questions are so thought pre-voking. Do they mind if you pause for 30 seconds to come up with a good one before STARing your story?