I/V Q: "10 min pres. on how you'd fulfill our strategy"

[PBDirector]

Hi corporate powerhouses,

I'm looking for employment after selling my business. Having grown a business from scratch to reasonably large and profitable sale, I can do a bunch of stuff. That normally makes us powerfully built types a bit smug. But now I'm a fish out of water and the boot's on the other [erm... fin].

Most of the interviews I'm looking at have a presentation at the start of their interview - something like "show how you'd help us fulfil our strategy in accordance with our corporate goals".

I'm super comfortable presenting, but usually I know my topic better than the audience. For some reason, I'm really struggling with presenting with imperfect information, knowing less that they do about the topic. I flipping backwards and forwards figuring out how to structure it - can you offer any advice on what you're looking for in a situation like this?

I can google/acquire shareholders reports, corporate plans etc. I can google best practice for other companies in the sector.
...but fundamentally I struggle with the fact that really my first 6 months would be spent figuring out what they know, what works, what doesn't, working out who's good in the team and who's not. And that doesn't take long to say.

What are you guys looking for?

[Ossiantoad]

Back in 2008 I went for a Sales Director position in the City. The product was captive insurance companies about which I knew very little. I got down to the last two and we were asked to make a presentation about how we would build the business.

I realized that I knew far less about the product than the people interviewing me so I gave an off the cuff speech about general sales principles and it went down well. They were the captive insurance experts who were not sales people and I was the salesman who didn't know about Captives. It was important for me to impress them with my sales ability which is what they lacked, not to try and show that I knew more about their bread and butter than they did.

The other bloke stayed up all night cramming about the subject of captives and presented a bunch of slides telling his prospective employers that he knew their job better than they did and subsequently bombed.

I go the job despite being the the second choice before the second round of interviews.