Preparing for Internal Interview

[Anonymous]

I am being given an opportunity to interview for a director position at work. I'm currently a manager of a small team and have been with this company for 5 years, I was with my last company for 12 years before that so in the past 17 years I've only had a handful of interviews all of which were with different companies so I had to do a lot of research on the company, culture, etc. I like the company I work for and really want this position but I'm not sure what's the best way to prepare for the interview. I already know the company history and culture, there are things that I would change but I don't want the interview to turn into "here's all the negative stuff and here's what I could do to make it better." Any advice or tips on how to best prepare for an internal interview? How should I approach this? What questions should/could I ask?

[Anonymous]

Focus on what you've accomplished so far and what you will do in the upper-level position. Make sure you understand the differences between the upper-level position and your current role and focus on how you're ready for the new responsibility.

[Anonymous]

Good questions to ask in internal interview- what would success look like in this role? What are the goals/priorities for this role? Things like that.

[Anonymous]

I had an internal interview last year where I knew the general topic would be my leadership style. I prepped by selecting three aspects I thought were key to leadership and for each mentioned a particular colleague (one current, one retired, one in a different department so not my competition) who i thought exemplified those traits and whom I’d learned from. For me, a big perk of the new role was being more public facing. Perhaps emphasize what’s worked well that you’d like to build upon and what you’re excited about and can offer that others can’t as well. (I was pretty established as loving public speaking and mentoring so emphasized that part of my “brand”.)