Most people looking for their first job run across these 4 problems:
- No prior job/industry experience
- Difficult to answer job-specific interview questions
- Outdated (or empty) resume that isn’t compelling enough
- No coherent story for why they want to pursue this career
And this rings true if you’re just out of school, changing industries, or re-entering the workforce.
In this article, we’ll go through the story of how AJ Aminrazavi, a casting expert in the video production industry, overcame this to get 7 job offers for his very first job in tech, and how you can steal his techniques to do the same.
Have you tried interview preparation yourself? Big Interview training is designed to help make you more confident, sell yourself better, and give you canned answers to even the hardest interview questions.
How He Started
AJ was working in the video production industry for years but wanted to move on to something different. He craved more strategic work that would also allow him to work from anywhere.
To do this, he set his eyes on a position in SaaS Sales — not an easy task for someone with 0 experience in the industry.
AJ knew he needed to tell a compelling story about why he wanted to make this transition and show how he could succeed in this role without any experience. Otherwise he had no chance of passing the interview.
He started how anyone would, by looking up the most common interview questions. He went through articles one by one, noting down the most important questions and the example answers. He really needed to focus on the hardest questions for someone just entering the industry, like “Tell me about yourself”, “Why do you want to transition to SaaS Sales”, “Can you tell me about a time you dealt with X”, and “Why should we hire you?”.
The problem with searching for this online is that most answers you find are:
- Overused, since everyone else who found it is also using them.
- Often not based on real experience, mostly written to please search engines instead of actual people.
- Just examples, but won’t really give you the templates you need to craft your own answer.
And doing this manually takes way too long — we’re talking about days wasted just googling and copy/pasting.
How He Prepared, Better
To speed up the process and make his application relevant, he looked up sales training courses that would give him some entry-level coaching and help him answer the scary interview questions.
That’s when he found Big Interview. He was taking a sales training course, SV Academy, and at the end of their course, they included Big Interview assignments.
It had training on all of the most common interview questions, mock interview practice, and interview questions if you’re changing your career.
At first, AJ didn’t trust it. He thought “I’ve interviewed before and had a job in the past, I should be fine.”But he continued going through the motions so he could pass his training.
But shortly after starting the lessons, he realized the training was much more helpful than he expected — it gave him everything he was looking for.
The training was straightforward and organized well. He took the fast track and added a few additional questions specific to sales and career transitions. He loved that he had a set of questions already defined he needed to learn how to answer, and he knew at the end he was gonna be confident and ready to ace the interview.
And Big Interview is organized so he could watch the lessons, get sample answers, then record his response with some additional tips in the recording area.
So AJ created his answers to all of the most common interview questions, all without any prior sales experience.
He had all the answers he needed to succeed. But that’s only half of the struggle of passing the interview.
The other half is being confident and convincing.
Practicing Until He Was Perfect
That’s where the practice sessions came in. These were the game changer for AJ, the one thing that took him from being an average applicant to a stellar one.
You just need to go to the “Practice” section, select the practice set you want to use, and you’ll get the list of practice questions populated for you.
And as you record, you can check the tips for each question as you go. So you can practice and perfect your answers as you go.
AJ went through the mock interviews and practiced all the questions he would face on the interview day.
After finishing the mock interview, he analyzed his responses and ability to handle unexpected situations.
He also got an automatic analysis of his response (eye contact, speed, filler words). 
After practicing, AJ was confident in his answers and able to adjust naturally (without having a mini panic attack, rushing through the response, or sounding too scripted)
The Result
On interview day this is how he felt, “I think Big Interview was super helpful in that aspect of having canned answers for every possible scenario and being in the moment of answering those questions.”
He was completely prepared and felt entirely confident in crafting his responses.
The result? He got 7 job offers and ultimately accepted one as an SDR at Chili Piper.
AJ has been killing it at Chili Piper for two years, has been promoted in the process, and just accepted an AE role with Thoropass. Which of course, he also prepared for using Big Interview’s training.
Want the same playbook and mock interview practice AJ used? Start training to land your next job!
