How to ace your interview at Juro

Interviews don’t have to be stressful, but a lack of expectation can make it difficult for candidates to succeed. Here’s how to prepare for an interview at Juro - and how to ace it.

As the talent acquisition lead at Juro, I’m the main touchpoint for the candidate through the entire interview experience. My job involves guiding candidates in their interactions with the company, and ensuring the business delivers a positive experience - but what can candidates do to ace their interview with Juro? Here are my top tips. 

Value add is just as important as your suitability for the job itself. What do you bring to the team to increase our cognitive diversity?

Do your research 📚

During your interview, you can expect us to ask you about your understanding of the role. Why? Because all the basic information you need is in the job description. We spend a lot of time making sure our job description reflects what we offer and expect. 

How to ace this part

• Read through the job description. Be prepared to summarize, in your own words, what you understand about the role. Demonstrating a good initial grasp of why this role exists and how you’d be an ideal fit for the job gives us a good indication of your enthusiasm and commitment 
• Be prepared to fill in the gaps. You should think about how your experience fits and doesn’t fit the skillset we’re looking for. Don’t be afraid of gaps in your experience or knowledge - we’re looking for potential, not perfection. If you already knew everything we wouldn’t have any growth to offer you
• Tailor your application. 99% of candidates apply with the same CV (and cover letter, if you’re so inclined) to every company. Simply reordering your bullet points to match the job description, writing why you’re applying to Juro in two sentences at the top, or removing irrelevant information can go a long way to show that you’ve taken the vacancy into consideration

While some companies may be known for having a “make or break” question, the randomness of the question generally doesn’t reflect the candidate’s ability to do a good job. As with everything we do, we aim for our questions to be open and transparent. Rest assured, we won’t ask you to estimate the number of Starbucks stores in the UK! 

We're hiring! Check out our careers page, or get in touch to see how you can help us make contracts more human.

‍

Understand our values 🌟

When you spend five days a week working closely together in a fast-growing team, you want to make sure you’ll enjoy your time with them. We want to ensure that regardless of your career path or background, you are like-minded in how you approach collaboration, knowledge-sharing and new challenges. Value add is just as important as your suitability for the job itself. What do you bring to the team to increase our cognitive diversity?

To ensure we’re a good fit for each other, we look at how you align with our four core values at every step of the interview process: be more human; keep it simple; trust and deliver; and love the details. Depending on the role, this can involve an entirely separate interview on our values and company culture. 

How to ace this part

• Know what our values are and which ones you identify with. The essence of our values is present in everything we do - from every LinkedIn post we publish to every milestone we reach. Use our communications across the website, social media, and even our contracts, to get a tangible sense of how we action our values in everyday behaviour. You should also prepare for an honest discussion about which of these values you reflect the most
• Think of specific situations in the past where you’ve exhibited each of these values. We use behavioural questions to assess how you’d fit in with our company values, i.e. questions that ask for specific behaviours you’ve exhibited in the past. Rather than asking: “would you describe yourself as a curious person?”, we will ask you about a time when you had to learn a new skill. This gives us a much clearer picture of how you already demonstrate this value rather than expressing the ideal version of yourself. Come prepared with your own examples (ideally structured using the STAR method) and you’ll be off to a flying start

We aim to deliver a transparent, human experience to our candidates. You will never have to wait more than 3 days between interviews, and your feedback will be tailored to and actionable for you

Ask plenty of questions 🙋

People often get so caught up in showcasing all they can do that they forget about the final part of an interview. Wonder why interviewers reserve time at the end of an interview to ask you if you have any questions? It’s not just an interview habit - it serves as an indicator of your motivation and demonstrates that you’re seriously considering us as an employer and want to grill us as much as we grill you. 

How to ace this part

• Don’t say “you’ve answered everything”, even at the final stage. No matter how many people you speak with, each new Juror will offer an individual perspective. Don’t be afraid to ask the same question to different interviewers — getting different viewpoints will give you a much more rounded view of the environment you’d enter as a whole
• Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions. Wonder what’s not working as well as could be at Juro? What value we haven’t lived up to in the past quarter? Ask us. We prefer candidates who bring out the difficult topics as it shows that you’re considering us as a realistic rather than an idealistic employer

If you struggle to think up questions, I would recommend asking different people the same questions. For example, to your potential manager: how have you empowered the people in your team? To a potential colleague: what do you like most about working in the team? What would you improve? Why are you still staying? 

Know what you want 😎

Most of our interviews start the same way. We’d love to hear about your present situation, your drive for moving to Juro from your current workplace,  and why you’re looking for something new. We like candidates who know what they want - whether it’s progression, stability, flexibility, wellbeing, making an impact, or something completely different. 

How to ace this part

• Give specific motivations to set yourself apart from the crowd. During interviews we ask what other kinds of companies you’re looking at and why you’re applying for a role in a tech startup. We don’t need you to say that we’re your top choice, but make sure you can demonstrate to us that you know what you’re looking for, how it fits into your next career move and what you want to get out of it 
• Be realistic. We often hear “I’m more than happy to learn” — and while that mindset is great at a fast-paced tech startup, it extends only so far. A startup is also messy, often with limited processes in place and a great deal of expectation around taking ownership inside your function. If we don’t have the capacity to train someone up for success then neither employer nor employee will be happy with the experience

Juro’s selection process 🎯

We follow a highly-structured approach to our selection process at Juro. The hiring manager will identify the skillsets and traits that we want to assess, and we determine the questions we will ask for that interview.

We assess for role fit, value add and motivation, with the aim of delivering a transparent, human experience to our candidates. You will never have to wait more than 3 working days between an interview and feedback, and your feedback will be tailored to and actionable for you – no boilerplate messages. The process usually goes as followed:

• Application review. This involves the talent team checking over the application, making sure that, at initial glance, your experience matches the job requirements

• Phone screening. I take a 30-minute call with the candidate to assess role fit, value add and motivation through a set of behavioural questions. I also walk you through next steps and address logistics

• First interview. The first interview is usually an hour long, and can sometimes include a task or presentation, depending on the job. This interview takes place with the hiring manager, and is focused almost exclusively on role fit

• Final interview. Depending on the job role, the final interview takes place with an interview panel, focusing on role fit and value fit

Ultimately, at the end of the process, we want to be able to assess the candidate’s motivation for the job, their suitability for the job, and their ability to work with the rest of the team. And it works both ways - are you a fit for Juro, and are we a fit for you? 

An interview is a two-way discussion, and as long as you keep this in mind, prepare beforehand, and check out our values, you will already be one step closer to acing your interview with Juro.

Interested in joining the dream team? Check out our careers page, or get in touch to see how you can help us make contracts more human ✨