The Interview With the CEO: What a Chief Executive Tests

The interview with the CEO is often the conversation that decides a senior hire. By then the panel has been through your record and the checking is largely done. What the chief executive still has to decide is whether they can trust you with their reputation in front of the board. JOH Partners, which has closed more than 1,000 senior mandates since 2014, sees finalists lose this meeting less on competence than on three things: bad news passed on late, disagreement handled badly, and ambition that is either hidden or oversold. This guide is for chief financial, operating, people and legal officers and divisional managing directors who will report to the chief executive. It sets out what the chief executive is testing and how to answer.

It is one of the board-level interview guides. If you are the candidate for the chief executive job itself, read what a board decides in the CEO interview. If the last conversation is with a managing director, read the final interview with a managing director. This guide is about being interviewed by the person you would report to.

What is the interview with the CEO actually for?

It is for deciding whether the chief executive wants you next to them. That sounds soft, and it is the hardest part of the process to prepare for, because there is no scorecard.

The chief executive has usually heard good things about you before you walk in. They are not going to re-run the competency questions. They have two quieter questions instead. If something goes wrong in your area, will I hear it from you first? And if I put you in front of the board next month, will you make me look better or worse?

Most of the questions you are asked will sound like conversation. "How did you find the last year?" "What would your team say about working for you?" "What do you make of what we are doing in the Gulf?" Each one is a way of watching how you talk about other people, how much you claim for yourself, and whether you say things you will have to take back.

Will you tell me bad news early?

This is the question behind most of the others. A chief executive carries every surprise. If a forecast slips, a regulator writes, or a key person resigns, it is the chief executive who stands in front of the board, and in a family-controlled group, in front of the family. So they want to know how you behave when the news is bad.

Expect a version of the question: tell me about a time you had to give bad news to a board or a senior person. Listen for what the chief executive listens for. How soon after you knew did you speak? Whom did you tell first? Did you arrive with a view on what to do, or only with the problem?

Take a finance chief who can see covenant headroom closing before the half year. One kind of answer says the board was told when the numbers were final. Another says the chief executive was told the same week the trend appeared, with three options and a recommendation, and the board heard about it from the chief executive before it was in a paper. The second is the one a chief executive remembers.

Do not tell a story where the bad news was somebody else's fault, and do not choose a story that was already public when you spoke. Pick one with a date, a number, a name and a decision. Say what it cost you to raise it.

A chief executive will forgive a mistake you told them about on Monday. They will not forgive the same mistake if they hear about it from the chair on Friday.

Can you disagree with me in private and back me in public?

The second test is about disagreement, and it runs in two directions. A chief executive does not want a team that agrees with everything. They have seen what that does to the quality of decisions. They also do not want someone who argues in the leadership meeting, argues again in the corridor and then explains to their own team why the decision was a mistake.

You will probably be asked about a time you disagreed with a chief executive or a board. The answer that lands has a clear order. You raised the concern early, in private, with your reasons. You listened to theirs. When the decision went the other way you carried it out as if it were yours. And if events later proved you right, you did not mention it, or you mentioned it once and moved on.

The mistake is to tell a story in which you were right and everyone else was slow. The chief executive in front of you is wondering how you will describe them to the next person. Speak about your current chief executive with respect, including when you left because of a disagreement. Anyone who is unkind about a former boss in an interview will be unkind about this one in a year.

There is a mirror risk. A candidate who agrees with every view the chief executive offers in the meeting is giving the chief executive nothing to test. If you hear a plan you doubt, say so once, ask what they can see that you cannot, and say what would change your mind. A chief executive who has been challenged calmly in the interview will believe you later when you say you are on board.

Do you want my job?

Sometimes it is asked outright. More often it comes as "where do you want to be in five years?" or "what would you want after this?". Either way, the chief executive is working out whether they are hiring a colleague, a rival or a successor, and whether you know the difference.

For many chief financial and chief operating officers the next step is the top job, and the chief executive knows it. They are not offended by ambition. They are put off by ambition that is hidden, because they will work it out in a year and wonder what else was left out, and by ambition that is oversold, because it makes them feel they are being measured for the exit.

A good answer is short. You would like to be considered for a bigger role one day. You are not in a hurry. Your job for the next few years is to make this chief executive and this business a success. The board decides who becomes chief executive, and you would not want it any other way. If you are asked about the top job directly, the deputy CEO interview deals with the same question when the role sits right beside it.

Santi Rasanayagam talks about the move from finance chief to chief executive in his episode of The Leadership Blueprint, which is worth hearing if that is the path you have in mind.

Ambition is not what puts off a chief executive. What puts them off is a candidate who hides it, because they start to wonder what else is being left out.

What does the chief executive want to know about your team?

Your team will be seen as an extension of theirs. So the chief executive will ask how you hire, how you deal with a weak performer, and what happens to people who work for you. Have a plain account of the last time you removed someone from your team and how you went about it. Have another of someone you developed who has moved on to something larger.

They will also ask about the people already in the room. If you are joining a leadership team the chief executive built or inherited, expect "what do you make of the team so far?" Say what you have seen, not what you suspect. If you have only met three of them, say so, and say what you would want to learn before you formed a view. The chief executive is checking that you will not arrive with a verdict.

The third thing they want to know is how you will treat the board. A chief executive does not mind you having a relationship with the chair, or with the audit committee if you are the finance chief. They mind surprises. Say that you will keep them informed of every conversation that matters, and that you would not give the board a view on the chief executive's performance. That is the chair's work, not yours.

How does the conversation change in a Gulf family group?

In a family-controlled or state-linked group the chief executive often has a different job from the one the organisation chart shows. They may be a professional manager answering to a family council, or an executive chairman who shares authority with the family. Our piece on the executive chairman and the chief executive explains why that split matters, and it is worth knowing which model you are walking into.

In the groups JOH works with, the meeting with the chief executive is often longer and less structured than in a listed company. Do not mistake the looser format for informality. The chief executive is reading your character: how you speak about your family, your former employers and the people who have helped you. In a group of the kind described in our anonymised case study of the first non-family chief executive placed into a Saudi industrial group, the chief executive's own position often rests on the principal's trust, so a new report is judged partly on whether they will protect it.

Ask early who else holds authority. If a family member or a principal will review your appointment, you need to know whether the chief executive can promise you anything. Do not ask this as a challenge. Ask it as someone who wants to be useful: "Who else should I be speaking to in the next few weeks so that nothing I do surprises them?" This also helps in any group holding company where authority is shared.

What should you ask the chief executive?

You will be invited to ask questions at the end, and you can use the time well. The questions to ask at the end of an interview covers the general case. With a chief executive, one question is worth more than the rest: what would make you regret hiring me?

It is a risky question and it works. It shows you can hear a hard answer. It tells you what the chief executive is afraid of, whether that is slow decisions, politics, cost, or a leader who wants the credit. And it gives you a final moment to answer the worry directly before you leave the room. If the chief executive says "someone who goes quiet when things get difficult", you have a reply to give that no other candidate has.

Follow it with two plainer questions. What would you want to be different in twelve months? What does the board worry about that the leadership team does not talk about? Leave pay, title and start date for the offer stage, unless the chief executive raises them.

How should you prepare for the interview with the CEO?

Prepare three stories and no more. One about bad news given early. One about a disagreement that ended with you backing a decision you did not make. One about what you want next and how you will earn it. Say each aloud until you can tell it in two minutes without sounding rehearsed. Then ask someone who will push back to interrupt you.

The place to say those stories aloud is AssessYou, the candidate platform from JOH Partners, which is built on the diagnostics the firm uses on retained search mandates. Start with the free judgement under pressure interview question bank on AssessYou, with how to approach each question and example answers. It holds both the question about disagreeing with a chief executive or board and the one about giving bad news to senior people, which are the two you are most likely to hear. Every other free bank is listed at assess-you.com/interview-questions and none needs a sign-in. To have your own answers tested against your own CV, with candid feedback on each, sign up to AssessYou.

At the end of the meeting the chief executive will ask themselves a short question: would I be glad to see this name on my screen on a bad day? Everything you say should help them answer yes.