Interviewing at Podium? You’ll want to be prepared to answer a wide range of questions that dig into your previous experience knowledge of the industry, competencies, and fit for the company culture. While every interviewer will have their own style, there are some common podium interview questions that you can expect to encounter.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll discuss:
- An overview of Podium and their hiring process
- The most frequently asked podium interview questions with sample answers
- Tips for preparing for the Podium interview
About Podium
Podium is a leading interaction management platform designed to help businesses manage customer interactions across multiple channels. The company was founded in 2014 and has seen tremendous growth, raising over $90 million in funding. Podium is headquartered in Lehi, Utah and has additional offices in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Arizona.
Podium aims to modernize how local businesses interact with customers through their suite of products for messaging, payments, reviewing, and more. Their solutions empower businesses to deliver convenient, personalized customer experiences.
The company culture at Podium emphasizes innovation, transparency, empathy and company values like “Adventure” and “Forward Progress”. Employees highlight the collaborative environment and opportunity to learn and develop skills. However, some candidate reviews mention lack of diversity and occasional “bro culture”.
Podium’s Hiring Process
The Podium hiring process typically follows these steps
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Initial screening call or recruiter chat An introductory call or LinkedIn message to evaluate basic qualifications,
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1-3 interview rounds: Includes technical/skills-based interviews, mock sales pitch, or take-home assignments. Meeting with hiring managers and potential teammates.
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Reference and background checks: Thorough verification process before final offer.
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Offer: Quick turnaround in some cases, with offer letters sent within 24 hours of final interview.
The interviews are described as conversational but can incorporate prompts like whiteboard coding, mock sales pitches, and situational scenarios. The focus is on assessing competencies and culture fit.
Common Podium Interview Questions
Here are some of the most frequently asked interview questions at Podium to help you prepare:
Sales Interview Questions
1. How would you pitch Podium’s products to a potential client in your first interaction with them?
This behavioral question tests your ability to understand the customer, communicate value, and deliver an impactful sales pitch.
- In your answer, explain how you would learn about the prospect’s business to tailor your pitch. Highlight specific Podium products/features that could solve their challenges. Convey enthusiasm and provide examples of successful pitches. Focus on starting a relationship, not just making a sale.
2. How do you go about generating new leads for a business?
They want to know your experience with lead generation and thoughts on strategies to expand Podium’s reach.
- Share your knowledge of tactics like events, digital marketing, partnerships, and how you’ve leveraged them in the past. Emphasize relationship-building, not just landing clients. Discuss ideas tailored to Podium’s target market.
3. Walk me through your approach to the entire sales cycle from prospecting to closing.
Demonstrate your expertise across the full sales process. Show you can identify leads, build relationships, negotiate/close deals, and forecast trends.
- Outline the sales stages, then give examples of how you navigated each one. Share success stories that exhibit tenacity, strategic thinking, and customer focus.
4. How do you handle negotiating pricing or contracts with prospects who are concerned about costs?
They want to see your ability to negotiate professionally and overcome pricing objections.
- Share an example of overcoming a pricing objection. Emphasize listening, understanding the concern, clearly conveying value, and negotiating creatively to find a “win-win”. Show the positive outcome.
5. How do you balance meeting your sales targets and quota with supporting team success?
Prove you can juggle individual and team goals in a competitive yet collaborative environment.
- Discuss strategies like sharing best practices and celebrating team wins. Give examples of helping colleagues while still driving towards your own goals. Highlight the importance of healthy competition balanced with camaraderie.
Culture Fit & Behavioral Questions
6. How would you describe Podium’s company culture and values? Do you think you align with them?
With this question, interviewers want to see if you’ve researched Podium and understand their culture and values. Share how they resonate with you.
- Do your homework to speak knowledgably about their culture: innovative, transparent, customer-centric. Tie their values like “Adventure” back to your own qualities and work style.
7. Tell me about a time you received negative feedback from a colleague or supervisor. How did you respond?
They are assessing your humility, self-awareness and ability to accept constructive criticism without getting defensive.
- Share a specific example and be transparent about the negative feedback. Explain how you responded politely, worked to understand their perspective, and used it to improve yourself. Focus on the positive outcome.
8. Describe a time when you had to collaborate with colleagues who had very different work styles than you. How did you work together successfully?
This looks at your teamwork, adaptability and conflict resolution abilities – critical for Podium’s collaborative environment.
- Provide a detailed example that shows you recognized differing styles, communicated to find common ground, and compromised to achieve team success. Share any tactics that helped.
9. Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work. What was the situation and how did you handle it?
They want to see you can admit errors, take accountability, and show judgment in rectifying issues.
- Share a real example being candid about the mistake. Then give a brief overview of how you took ownership – whether apologizing, making corrections, or implementing processes to prevent it in future. Focus on what you learned.
10. Where do you see yourself professionally in 5 years?
This looks at your career ambitions and desire for growth and development. Tailor it to the company and role you are interviewing for.
- Align your 5-year goal to the opportunities at Podium. For example: “In 5 years I see myself becoming an expert in Podium’s products and solutions, leveraging that knowledge to cultivate major enterprise clients as a senior account executive.”
Technical Interview Questions
Podium’s technical roles may include questions like:
11. What coding languages and frameworks are you experienced with, and how have you leveraged them in past projects?
Demonstrate your hands-on expertise in languages like JavaScript, HTML/CSS, React, and projects you’ve built using them.
12. How would you go about debugging an issue where transactions intermittently fail on our payment platform?
Show your systematic debugging approach and technical knowledge needed to troubleshoot payment systems.
13. Explain how you would improve the performance and scalability of an application that sees heavy traffic spikes.
Discuss technical strategies like caching, load balancing, and horizontal scaling to showcase your knowledge.
14. Tell me about a time you had to integrate multiple systems or data sources. What were the challenges and how did you handle them?
Share a specific example that exhibits your experience with system integration and overcoming challenges like incompatible APIs or schemas.
Manager Interview Questions
Prospective managers may be asked leadership-focused questions like:
15. What qualities do you believe are important for an effective people manager? How have you demonstrated those qualities?
Highlight key management traits like empathy, accountability, coaching/mentoring and share examples of exhibiting them.
16. Tell me about a time you had to resolve a conflict between team members. What was the situation and how did you handle it?
Show your conflict resolution ability by outlining a real scenario where you facilitated compromise or mediation between conflicting colleagues.
17. How would you go about onboarding and training a group of new hires joining your team?
Discuss your approach to ensuring smooth onboarding through training, mentoring, and supporting new employees.
Tips for Acing Your Podium Interview
Here are some top tips for preparing for your Podium interview:
Research the company extensively – Have a deep understanding of Podium’s products, mission, culture, and values. Look through their website, blogs, and news articles, and speak with any connections you have who work there. This shows commitment.
Review the job description – Look closely at the required and preferred qualifications. Think of examples from your experience that align with each one. This will make answering questions easier.
Practice answering questions aloud – Have a friend quiz you or record yourself. Practice until you can confidently convey your points and examples in a clear, concise manner. Reflect on your tone, filler words, or nervous tics to improve.
Prepare questions to ask – Researching will help you generate thoughtful questions that show your interest in Podium. Ask about career development opportunities, new products/features, or managerial style.
Review your resume and experience
Contact us to find out more
Get in touch with our team to learn more about video interviews and how they can help you hire people.
Researchers, psychologists in the workplace, and technologists from around the world have joined forces to improve the standards and ethics of our field.
The Podium platform was created so that companies can give their employees high-quality tests that give them a better understanding of their employees and show off their company’s image.
Use our Contact Form to send us an email. This will help us get your question to the right person.
Unproctored online video interviews
Set interview questions for your candidates to remotely record.
As part of the normal evaluation process, you will set up and write your own interview questions in the Podium system. Include other assessments together with the interviews and administer them remotely via email invitation all in one place.
Write the question, tell the candidates how long they have to read and think about their answers, and set the time limit for their answers. The video interview system keeps track of the time it takes to read and answer questions, showing the candidate exactly when information is being recorded.
On recorded videos, an administrator can watch them and rate them using either a simple five-point scale with comments or the more complex STAAR scale scoring system.
FINAL INTERVIEW TIPS! (How to PASS a Final Job Interview!)
FAQ
What is a podium interview?
What are your three weaknesses?
What does it take to be on the podium?
Avid Marathoner Ranjini Gupta gives us an insight into what it takes for a runner to be on the podium. In competitive sport, a podium is a raised platform, where individuals or teams who finish in the top three positions are rewarded.
What is it like to work at podium?
Salary estimated from 61 employees, users, and past and present job advertisements on Indeed. Rating is calculated based on 28 reviews and is evolving. Podiums biggest factor is it’s culture and support you get. Great culture with great people. You’re not micro managed at all as long as you’re putting in effort to hit quota.
What is the work environment and culture like at podium?
Great place to start your tech career and movement is there if you stick it out. Super fun atmosphere, interesting work. I’ve loved working for Podium. Everyone is so fun and friendly and they have a lot of employee perks. Tons of things to do around the office, and free lunch on Wednesdays. Interesting work, dynamic day-to-day.
