2qtr2008 - Ask the Coach: 90-Day Plan

Question: Barry, I have an account with The Ladders and read your piece on 90-day plans, which I liked very much. Two questions …

Answer: Glad you liked the article. (For those who didn’t see it, it was a reprint of Help Them Say Yes: Provide a 90-Day Plan, which was first published by http://www.theladders.com/ in March 2006.) Now let’s see if I can answer your questions:

1. When would an applicant offer such a 90-day plan? Before the interview, after the first interview, after successive or final interviews?

I would think that to maximize its impact, you’d want to get the plan into the hands of the hiring manager either after you’ve talked directly with him/her the second time – you could even ask during that second conversation if it’d be all right if you put the plan together “just to clarify in my own mind how I’d best dig in” – or you could bring it with you to that second interview (but only if you have sufficient insight about the position to actually create an insightful plan).

In other words, I don’t think a 90-day plan will automatically put you in the “final few” of candidates still being considered, but once you’re on that short-list, it will definitely help distinguish you from the others.

2. It’s very painful to consider the possibility that your proposed plan becomes another candidate-turned-employee’s blueprint for a work plan you proposed. Is there a solution to this quandary (e.g., copyright marking, etc.)? Or better to just live with that risk?

Is it really ‘very painful’ or is just a pain?! Sure, they could steal your ideas and run with them, but frankly, if you don’t offer up any ideas worth stealing during the interview process, why would they want to hire you to begin with, eh?! Less flippantly, yes, it is a risk you take, but it’s a risk that helps:

(a) Better position you vis-à-vis your competition;

(b) Get you deeper into the mindset – good or bad – of what it’d be really like to work there; and

(c) You learn to better articulate how you think, which is really what companies are trying to figure out through the interview process.

Too, I doubt very much you’ll have actually garnered enough insight from your interviews to provide sea-changing details. Remember the goal of the 90 day plan is not to solve the problems – it’s to show them you understand what the problems are and give them a taste for how you’d start to solve them.

And should they ‘steal’ your idea and not hire you? I suspect that you’d probably not want to work at a place like that, even if they did offer you the job.

Hope this helps. Good luck to you.