Author Archives: Elan

How To Win An Interview With Polished Networking

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I’m dismayed by how frequently totally qualified job candidates mess up the basics of interviewing. While playing ‘recruiter’ for my friends is quite fulfilling, seeing qualified candidates shoot themselves in the foot is equally disheartening.

Based on real-life mistakes I’ve observed on multiple occasions, here’s an interviewing checklist for anyone I help find a job moving forward:

1. Keep Me Updated
If I refer you for a role, update me when you hear back from the employer about an interview. Why? If you hear back, I can help you prep for the interview. If you don’t hear back, I can follow-up with the interviewer. Also, once the interview is over let me know so I can check in with the employer to see how you did.

2. Show Up Early To Your Interview
I can’t believe how many people arrive at interviews late. Early is on time. On time is late. Late is embarrassing. Leave two trains early. Double expected commute time if you’re driving. Get there on time.

3. Bring copies of your resume (and make sure they aren’t creased or coffee stained)
The printer doesn’t work. She just ran over from another meeting. He just didn’t even bother. There are so many reasons why the person interviewing you won’t have a copy of your resume, so bring a handful of copies so you can give one to each person you interview with.

4. During the interview . . .

A. Explain exactly why you’re super passionate about the job and why you’re the best person in the world for the role
B. Ask one ridiculously good question
C. Ask: “Now that we’ve talked, do you have any concerns about hiring me that I could address now while we’re still sitting together?”

5. Ask for a business card from each person who you meet
You need to know how to contact the person interviewing you. See step #5

6. Send a thank you email immediately after the interview
As soon as possible, and no later than that same day, send a personalized email to each person you interviewed with. Yes, each person should get their own email. Here’s what to write:

  • Line about your enthusiasm for the role
  • Line about one thing you learned while interviewing
  • Line about why you believe, now more than ever, you’re a perfect fit
  • Thank you for the opportunity

That’s it. More than 50% of people I personally interview don’t even do that.

7. Send a hand-written thank you note within a day
Thank the person who referred you to the job and thank everyone you interviewed with. Send this in the mail the same day or the next morning. Write it on nice stationary. Make it personal. I’m serious. It works!!

8. Do something nice for the person who referred you once you get the job
For me this isn’t required, but I do highly recommend it in general! Take them to lunch, send their family flowers, or something else fun. They just risked their reputation and time to get you a job. The least you could do is send a nice bottle of scotch. I once got someone a big consulting job, and he donated 50% of the first month’s retainer to the charity of my choice. That’s BALLER. Who does that?

9. If the job isn’t a fit, continue to stay in touch
If you’re looking for a job, let me know occasionally how the process is going and certainly let me know one you’ve landed a job.

Does this really work?

1. Doing the opposite certainly doesn’t help.
2. I can’t tell you how many people missed one of these steps and didn’t get the job
3. Everyone I’ve helped who followed this advice has landed an awesome job they love

I don’t work in recruiting and honestly used to think these steps were interviewing 101, but I’m regularly shocked by how few candidates actually follow through so hopefully this guide will help you interview like a boss next time around.

GEM MARKETING – Growth, Engagement and Monetization

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With 10,000+ hours of startup marketing under my belt, here’s an outline of how I’ve synthesized my own successes with several popular theories into one framework that I like to call GEM Marketing.

GEM Marketing stands for Growth, Engagement & Monetization. For a successful startup, you need all three legs of the marketing stool.

Growth is about getting people to discover your product and work their way through the traditional marketing funnel. By filling and widening the funnel as efficiently as possible, you grow your company faster. The Growth Hacker Funnel looks like this:

  • Acquisition
  • Activation
  • Retention
  • Referral
  • Revenue

The trick is to figure out for each step how to continually improve so you’re maximizing your growth. To learn more about growth, read Startup Metrics For Pirate and Growth Hacking Tactics.

Engagement, according to Nir Eyal, is about creating an experience designed to connect a solution to the user’s problems with enough frequency to form a Habit. You do this through the acronym ATARI:

  • A hook
  • Trigger
  • Action
  • Reward
  • Investment

Here are all of the detail about the Eyal’s Hooked Model for creating high engagement.

Monetization is about making money. This is a must have for most successful businesses. My favorite resource for this is Fred Wilson’s Web & Mobile Revenue Models List.

Ultimately, if you deliver growth, create engagement  and make money you’ve got a good shot at building a successful startup. Most companies that stumble do so because they are missing one of the three legs of the GEM Marketing stool.

 

Lessons From Winning The Booth New Venture Challenge

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In my opinion, these were the best questions the panel of venture capitalists asked. Here is our CEO’s account of how Matchist won.

I’d argue the primary reason we won is the team. The competition was fierce and intimidatingly impressive. We did NOT have:

  • Biggest market opportunity
  • Smartest team
  • Most domain expertise
  • Funniest pitch
  • Prettiest slides

The reason we won is simple. Our CEO put together the best team:

  • Prior startup experience (acquisition by Groupon)
  • Prior experience running a business together (Entrepreneurs Unpluggd)
  • Prior relationships (Three judges were investors in my last startup, for example.)
  • Prior experience winning business plan competitions
  • Prior experience judging business plan competitions
  • Range of talent (e.g. LinkedIn, Amazon, family hotel business, & a fortune 500 web developer)
  • Partnerships with the hottest tech companies on the market in under 10 weeks
  • Amazing advisory Board (Matt Moog & Troy Henikoff)
  • Most importantly, we enjoyed working together and it showed

Again, we didn’t have the prettiest slides. We didn’t have the biggest market opportunity  We didn’t have the smoothest pitch. We did have an all-star team (in business school terms). We did work our butts off. We did leverage our experience, relationships and expertise to make the most of the feedback and resources the New Venture Challenge class offered.

Most importantly, we couldn’t have done that without each and every person on our team. Thank you Stella for recruiting and leading that team.