Leading Up To The Interview
A combination of “Preparing For An Interview” by David Cummins and “Doing Your Homework” by Linus Chung, this article details the Venture Capital hiring process, and what an applicant should do to prepare for an interview.- Venture Capital firms tend to prefer people with degrees in engineering, computer science, business, or finance, but there are always exceptions.
- Once the initial flood of resumes have been sorted, the firm will contact 20 or 30 people for a phone interview. For the people they contact, they feel like you can likely do the job on paper, so it’s about getting to know the candidates and evaluating fit with the team.
- After the phone interview, there will be a series of in-person interviews with partners.
- Do your homework—know the firm (i.e. recent news, portfolio, investment focus), the partners, and the field.
- Ask intelligent questions, and build rapport. Show you’re interested.
The Venture Capital Hiring Process
Venture capital firms have a hiring process that works a little differently from most businesses. Once a firm has received a stack of resumes—through personal networks, the Internet, job recruiters, and various other channels—they’ll sort through them to pick out a few candidates for interview. Typically, they’ll first look to ensure that the applicant went to a solid school and has relevant experience. Generally, analysts at venture capital firms have 2-4 years of previous professional experience. They’ll also look at the degrees of their applicants—more often than not, venture capital firms like to hire people with degrees in engineering or computer science, or those who have a background in business or finance. Once the firm has sorted through a stack of sometimes hundreds of resumes, they’ll narrow it down to a more manageable level. Here’s where the presentation and construction of the resume comes in. All of the applicants are qualified for the job, but there are only a precious few openings. Only about twenty or thirty of those two hundred to four hundred qualified applicants actually make it to the next step—the interview process. These people will generally end up in a phone conversation or an initial interview with one of the younger members of the firm. These younger members are usually looking for a couple of things. The first is a personality fit. Venture capital firms are small teams, and the ability to mesh with the existing team members is extremely important. If your personality isn’t a fit with the team, then your qualifications don’t really matter all that much.A large part of that first meeting with the analyst involves getting to know the applicant a little better. They want to know who you are, and what makes you tick. Younger analysts have been in hundreds of meetings with the partners in a firm, so they have a good idea of who will “fit” the firm and who won’t. To determine if you’ll fit the job, they’ll ask a lot of questions that might be considered unusual in other interviews.
They’ll want to know not just what you did, but why you did it. They’ll certainly ask the standard questions about your background, but they’ll frame them in a manner such as, “I see you went to Stanford and studied engineering. What motivated you to do that?” Or, “I noticed you joined a start-up. Tell me about that.” Venture capital interviews are all about storytelling.
You need to be able to tell a concise, logical story about your educational and professional background. Remember, the resume tells them the “what,” but the interview is designed to reveal the “why” and “how.” Be ready to walk them clearly through your background in a matter of minutes.
After the first interview with the associate (assuming you make it through), there will be a second and sometimes even a third and fourth interview—these ones with partners. It seems intimidating, but don’t worry—you’ve made it this far, after all. Be adequately prepared, and you’ll do just fine. Even in the initial interview, a personality fit is only half the battle. You need to know the firm you’re applying to join. You need to know the industry you’re focused on, and have at least a passing knowledge of the firm’s other focuses.
Be able to talk about how you would evaluate an prospective investment. For example, be able to talk about how you would go about identifying interesting companies and how you would evaluate them (e.g. market, stage, business model, competitive landscape, product/technology, investment return potential).
Doing Your Homework
Review the firm’s website. It seems like basic knowledge, but not enough people do it in enough detail. There’s a lot of information to be found on both the firm and its portfolio. By looking at their website, you can get a sense of what kind of companies they invest in and what investment theses the fund is excited about. Don’t stop there—look up specific companies. When you make it past the first interview, look up information about the specific partners you’ll be meeting, if you’re told who you’ll be meeting with. Learn about them: who are they; what’s their background? As with networking, look for common threads. If the partners or associates have worked similar jobs to you before venture capital (e.g. consulting), you could talk to them about going from their previous positions to their current ones, and ask them what advice they could offer you. Questions like that build rapport in the interview. You should also learn about the specific investments the interviewer made so you can ask smart questions about the company. Don’t ask them for confidential information, but instead ask about the company strategy, why they made that investment, what caught their eye about the company, or what future they see in the investment. You should have a well thought out set of questions specific to any given firm you interview with. The amount of time you spent preparing will be revealed by the questions you ask. If the partner writes a blog or has been featured in the media, read what they have written or said. Make some interesting comments or ask intuitive questions about things they said in public. Doing so demonstrates to them that not only are you serious about the job, but also that you find the industry surrounding the job interesting and intellectually stimulating.Keep up with general start-up news by consistently reading blogs such as TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Actively use products related to the firm's portfolio or areas of interest. If the firm focuses on e-commerce, be able to talk about which online commerce sites you use and why you prefer one over another. Before you get to the second stage interview (or for bonus points in the first stage) build up some investment ideas of your own that would fit the fund’s portfolio.
