Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Chapter 6: Hong Kong Sharks, Round 2 - How to Interview Executives

Upon returning to Hong Kong, Mr. Princeton introduced me to how executive hiring happens and how interviews go when you are an executive-level employee. We had an interview lunch and I sat in as Mr. Princeton’s executive assistant. Mr. Princeton was assisting his friend, who is starting a really interesting insurance company called InsuredForever.  InsuredForever is an insurance targeted at high-net-worth individuals. The yearly insurance policy costs about a hundred thousand U.S. dollars and covers everything and anything you can imagine. It will find you the best doctor in the world, get you a ticket there, and pay for everything necessary if anything goes wrong with your family members. They are solely building up the technology and knowhow for this start-up; one of their initiatives is penetrating the Chinese market.

In recent years, due to the economic boom in China, there are many wealthy Chinese. How do we reach those wealthy individuals and sell them this plan? The person we were interviewing was with an executive who had experience in the Chinese market. It just so happened that this individual was currently a director at a large insurance company and had been working on and off in China for a while.

The way Mr. Princeton conducted the interview, it was not obvious an interview was happening.  To a casual observer, it was no different from listening to people tell each other stories.

First, Mr. Princeton introduced himself to establish his credentials and "earn the right to speak" as he put it to me. Next, this candidate introduced himself, and also "earned his right to speak" by illustrating his academic background and past big company experience. Then Mr. Princeton asked several questions such as, "How would you open a business in China? Did you ever have a start-up there before?" Then, as the interviewee answered, Mr. Princeton would sprinkle in things he already knew about the market and then pull back and let the person talk.  This process of expanding and pulling back is useful in getting as much input from the candidate as possible.

At the end of the interview, Mr. Princeton was able to assess accurately that the candidate was capable of being a large company executive, but not really suited to a start-up environment.  Another item that Mr. Princeton was clear about exploring was the connection strength.  How strong were the candidate’s connections in the business world?  Would he be able to accomplish the task given to them?  Would he have enough connections to help sell the product?  Could the candidate sell?  Only closers get coffee.