Melissa Llarena is the president of Career Outcomes Matter, where she coaches top executives how to prepare for a job interview.
Melissa is an employee transition expert, interview specialist, career coach and blogger. Her articles have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post just to name a few.
She is the author of the eBooks The Mommy shift: A reentry strategy, The guide for landing a global assignment and the ebook we will discuss today How to get back in the driver seat Become the strongest job candidate.
MELISSA LLARENA’S CAREER JOURNEY
Melissa started her career in careers after soon earning a full-ride scholarship from Chase Bank to attend NYU. At the time, Chase, now J.P. Morgan Chase, offered many different professional development programs to participants in their scholarship program.
As a result, Melissa was exposed to many career-related workshops such as how to write an effective resume and how to interview more effectively. Because she attended these courses, she was always surrounded by high-level senior executives.
The combination of exposure to these executives and the workshops provided Melissa with the opportunity to apply what she was learning with her peers for free.
This eventually led Melissa to turn her “pro-bono” work into a full-time business helping senior leaders or corporate Olympians as she refers to them, prepare for job interviews.
THE 90 DAY PLAN
Melissa recommends going into the interview with a 90-day plan. The plan is both for you and the employer. You develop the plan as you prepare for the interview.
The 90-day plan you develop could very well be the plan you follow in your first 90-days in the role. The plan is derived from your research and forces you to scale up your knowledge of the company, the role, the competitors, the skills required, and how you meet or exceed all of them.
The plan gives you a good sense of how you would approach this new role if you were to be hired. In addition, it once again allows the employer to see you in the role as well.
When developing your plan Melissa recommends starting with the job description and using it as a skeleton to draft your plan. Look for “themes” within the job description.
As an example, one theme might be you in the role of leader with five direct reports. In this case, as yourself what will you do with those reports in the first 30, 60, and 90 days.
Will you review their current projects, will you attend their meetings, will you travel with them to a customer location?
If the role is cross functional, how do you plan to interact with your peers over the 90-day period? List out the activities you intend to complete.
The 90-day plan will show you’ve given serious thought to the role and that you’re able to hit the ground running.
I think the 90-day plan framework might just be the best way to prepare for a job interview.
THE BEST WAYS TO CONTACT MELISSA LLARENA
Web: http://melissallarena.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CareerOutcomes
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