Tech Execs Who Win Phone Screens

Laid off or in severance mode? Learn how tech execs master recruiter phone screens, deliver a strong elevator pitch, and earn a second interview.

This month, I’ve worked with 3 tech executives whose roles were either eliminated or they accepted severance. The commonality is utter panic about disassociation from their identity at a company they’ve worked at for 5 to 20 years. What to do next?

The good news is that companies are hiring executives. It makes sense since it’s the start of the year and new budgets are in place to achieve lofty goals.

My role as a career consultant is to prep my clients for the initial job phone screen. The purpose of the recruiter’s call is to pre-qualify the candidate and determine whether this is a good fit for the hiring manager’s requirements.

Today, I’d like to walk you through how my candidates are selected for the second-round “yes” interview with the hiring manager.

Elevator Pitch

You will inevitably be asked to “tell me about yourself” in the course of the phone screen. Never mind that the recruiter reached out to you and reviewed your LinkedIn profile. It’s not a trick question; it’s a way to gauge your communication skills and learn about your achievements firsthand.

Two of my clients haven’t had to interview for a job in decades, so they were caught flat-footed when I asked, “Tell me about yourself.” My role is to bring confidence and positive energy to their response.

So how do I do that? It’s all about compelling storytelling.

I’ve written about elevator pitches before, with tips on how to develop an enticing one for a recruiter’s question. Your elevator speech is a concise description of your brand that explains who you are to any listener in a short time.

Your storytelling should describe your skills, goals, and why you would be a productive and beneficial person to have on a team or within a company:

• Explain who you are from a career perspective
• Place your experience into context
• Highlight intangible strengths you can deliver = your value to the company

Here’s mine, and why clients hire me.

“I’ve come full circle. I started as a corporate brand consultant for Coca-Cola, General Motors, and the U.S. Army. Today, I’m a personal brand consultant for tech execs seeking their next big-impact role.

For 18 years, I was a marketing and sales executive at Fortune 200 companies. It allowed me to retire early with a pension and healthcare benefits, but I got bored!

I made a pivot and went back to school to become a certified career coach.

I’ve coached Amazon VPs, Microsoft GMs, and startup CTOs on the principles of the Visibility Stack. I’m their go-to for career strategy, storytelling, and the occasional spicy truth bomb.

I enjoy collaborating with tech executives to sharpen their story to land roles that excite them!”

It’s a 50-second response with 121 words. I recommend a target of 30 seconds or less to hold the listener’s attention. My elevator pitch took 10 times of practicing and tweaking to respond without a cheat sheet.

Now, it’s your turn to develop yours. Write it out rather than type it into your phone or a document. Then read it aloud and time it. Most importantly, practice it out loud since it will show where you might falter. And bonus points for practicing in front of a humanoid in your life. They will be able to provide invaluable feedback.

Once you have this in place, it’s time to move on to the questions a recruiter might ask.

Recruiter Questions

I provide my clients with a 5-page interviewing guide, and we role-play questions before interviews.

It’s simple, I ask my clients for 3 job descriptions and then create a consolidated view of the overarching skills required for the roles. I place it in a spreadsheet to view commonalities and match to my client’s existing skills on their LinkedIn profile and resume. I use the Jobscan app (an ATS tool) to simplify the analysis.

Lately, I’ve been asking Microsoft Copilot to develop 10 recruiter questions that balance hard and soft skills required for the role. Inputs include the overarching abilities and the 3 job descriptions.

Moving on from skills, I also add a question about compensation, since it will undoubtedly come up in a phone screen. My standard response is: “Without knowing more about the role and your total compensation package, I cannot give you a good number. If you can share your hiring range with me, I can tell if we’re in the same ballpark.” Thanks to my colleague Kate Dixon, executive compensation expert, for sharing this response in her book “PAY UP! Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiation.”

Then I sprinkle in 3 more questions directly related to the hiring company:

• What do you know about our company?
• Why do you want to work at our company?
• What are the top 3 reasons why you’re a good match for this role?

The net result is you have a compilation of 14 questions, but how should you structure your answers?

Question Response Structure

If you’ve ever prepped for an interview at AWS, you know they provide you with a document regarding what to expect in the interviewing situation. To make it very simple, you can access their phone screening via their career website. Whether or not you want to work at AWS, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with their content and their question examples in the following areas:

• Behavioral interviewing
• Leadership principles
• Prep for technical interviews
• The formalities

AWS developed the STAR (situation, task, action, result) response, and I dumbed it down to the CAR (context, action, results), which is easier to remember.

Below are examples of how one of my clients could respond to hard and soft skills questions about being a VP of Software Engineering.

Skill Type & Descriptor	Question	Example Response	Context + Action + Result
Hard Skill – Platform Scaling	How have you scaled AI-powered platforms across global teams?	“I led a 50-person team to build a unified AWS/GCP data architecture platform supporting AI/ML tools.”	Context: My company needed a scalable AI/ML infrastructure across the U.S. and India. Action: I architected a holistic cloud-native platform using CI/CD and QA pipelines. Result: Enabled intelligent automation APIs for 120 customers and 900 employees, reducing insight delivery time from months to minutes.
Hard Skill – Cost Optimization	Describe your approach to consolidating cloud-native platforms for cost efficiency.	“I replaced legacy BI tools with Apache Superset, saving $2.8M in platform costs.”	Context: Multiple BI tools created redundancy and high licensing costs. Action: I led the migration to open-source Superset across teams. Result: Achieved $2.8M in savings and streamlined visual analytics for internal users.
Hard Skill – Automation Strategy	How do you drive intelligent automation in data product development?	“I designed agents that interpret business context and generate visual insights on demand.”	Context: Business users needed faster access to insights. Action: I built automation agents using NLP and visualization tools. Result: Reduced time-to-insight from hours to minutes, improving decision-making speed across departments.
Soft Skill – Team Culture	How do you build high-performing engineering cultures?	“I built a team of 50 that performed like 175, achieving 80% NPS for employee loyalty.”	Context: Needed to scale impact without increasing headcount. Action: Focused on strategy alignment, engagement, and leadership development. Result: Delivered $14M in OPEX reduction and high team satisfaction.
Soft Skill – Stakeholder Influence	Tell me about a time you influenced cross-functional stakeholders.	“I collaborated with 20 business units to deliver SaaS marketplace solutions within a $15M budget.”	Context: My company needed alignment across global units. Action: I partnered with executives to understand needs and deliver scalable solutions. Result: Launched 4 new applications and improved stakeholder trust.
Soft Skill – Talent Development	How do you mentor and grow diverse engineering talent?	“I increased diversity impact from 5% to 30% within 1.5 years.”	Context: My company aimed to improve team diversity. Action: I led inclusive hiring and development initiatives across India and the U.S. Result: Built a more representative team and improved innovation outcomes.

So what’s the best way to practice these CAR responses?

Practice Makes Perfect

Practice elevates your confidence and minimizes your butterflies for the initial phone screen. It’s a head-scratcher when I ask clients if they’ve practiced their responses, and they tell me they read the questions. Saying things out loud is very different than that script in your head.

These are the 3 practice tools I recommend:

• www.finalroundai.com/interview-questions
• https://grow.google/certificates/interview-warmup/ > free, no video recording
• https://yoodli.ai/pricing > select “Starter” for 5 free role plays with video recording

All 3 of these are AI-assisted, and they analyze your answers. You don’t need an in-person coach to use these web-based practice tools. In the comfort of your home office, you can practice when and where you want to. Each provides insights along the lines of clarity of answer and filler words (those pesky “uh’s” and “so’s” that pop up when you’re trying to form an answer).

Final Round and Google Warmup are free to use. Final Round and Yoodli offer the advantage of video feedback. I’ve been a Yoodli subscriber for years and appreciate the dashboard that shows how your answers land in terms of cadence, pacing, clarity & conciseness, word repetition, eye contact, and body language. Every year, before a speaking engagement at a conference, I use Yoodli to tighten my presentations to encourage audience participation.

But Wait, There’s More

The average phone screen is 30 minutes. Factoring in the recruiter describing the role and asking questions, you might be left with a couple of minutes at the end. Use that time to your advantage!

Now it’s time for you to ask questions and flip the script. Based on the job description, I provide my clients with 10 questions. Below are examples you can clone and own.

Category	Question	Purpose
Strategic Alignment	How does this role influence the company’s AI and data product strategy over the next 12–24 months?	Shows your interest in long-term strategic impact.
Strategic Alignment	What are the most significant platform scalability or data governance challenges the team is currently facing?	Opens the door to connect your experience with their pain points.
Strategic Alignment	How does the company measure success for this role, beyond delivery metrics?	Invites discussion on leadership, innovation, and cross-functional influence.
Strategic Alignment	What’s the current maturity level of your AI/ML infrastructure, and where do you see the most significant opportunities for acceleration?	Let’s explore how your experience with Vertex AI, Claude, and automation could add value.
Team Dynamics	Can you describe the team structure and how engineering leadership collaborates with product, data science, and business stakeholders?	Helps you assess cross-functional dynamics and influence scope.
Team Dynamics	What’s the company’s philosophy around talent development and diversity in engineering leadership?	Aligns with your track record of inclusive leadership and team growth.
Execution & Vision	What are the top 2–3 initiatives this role would lead or influence in the first 6 months?	Clarifies immediate priorities and helps you envision your onboarding strategy.
Execution & Vision	How does the company approach responsible AI and data ethics in platform development?	Gives you a chance to highlight your experience embedding explainability and auditability.
Executive Empathy	What excites you most about where this team is headed, and what challenges do you anticipate in the next year?	Creates space for authentic dialogue and builds rapport with the interviewer.
Self-Awareness & Feedback	Do you have any hesitations about my qualifications or fit for this role?	Demonstrates confidence, openness to feedback, and a growth mindset.

That’s a Wrap

Since this is a tsunami of information, I highly recommend a handwritten 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper to capture your thoughts. I advise my clients to create a quadrant on that piece of paper, highlighting:

• Personal Connection: Explain what the company resonates with you: their mission, vision, or ground-breaking technology.
• Their Accomplishments: Describe key accomplishments you learned about the company: market share, history, portfolio, client base, or revenue attainment. Highlight members of the executive team based on impressive attributes.
• Your Fit: Using their keywords, explain why you are the perfect candidate for the job posting.
• Your Questions: Compose a list of 5 questions to ask at the end of the interview.

For the final punctuation mark, double down on your interest in the role and the top 3 reasons you’re qualified.

I’m excited to share that 2 of my clients moved on to the second interview, in part, by utilizing this approach. One is in the process of receiving an offer.

Best to you in finding your next big-impact role!