300-820 Questions and Answers - Implementing Cisco Collaboration Cloud and Edge Solutions Updated: 2023

With a nearly $60 billion revenue run rate, growing at 14% and throwing off more than $5 billion in operating cash last quarter, Cisco Systems Inc. has an awesome business.

But customers are vocal about the complexity of Cisco’s portfolio and, if their concerns are not addressed head on, the company risks encountering friction beyond just economic headwinds. We believe Cisco’s challenges are most decidedly not product breadth and depth. Rather, the company’s mandate is to integrate the piece parts of its intricate offerings to create more facile and seamless experiences for customers.

In this Breaking Analysis and ahead of Cisco Live in Las Vegas June 4-8, we dig deeper into Cisco’s business and double-click on three key areas of its portfolio: 1) security; 2) networking; and 3) observability. We have spending data from Enterprise Technology Research and a guest appearance from SiliconANGLE contributor and market watcher Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research.

Stocks of pure-play competitors outperforming Cisco year-to-date

Let’s start by doing some stock market comparisons.

The chart above shows year-to-date comparisons among Cisco, Palo Alto Networks Inc., Arista Networks Inc., Extreme Networks Inc. and the Nasdaq Composite. As you can see, the pure plays, as well as the NAS, are outperforming Cisco by a wide margin. That’s despite Cisco’s double-digit growth last quarter, 65% growth margins and a $200 billion market cap.

The reason is Chief Executive Chuck Robbins set modest expectations for 2024, which, when modeled out relative to Cisco’s longer-term outlook, suggest slowing momentum in the near- to mid-term. In addition, we believe the breadth of Cisco’s portfolio, while a key strength, also creates adoption challenges for the company’s customers.

What follows is a summary of how Kerravala interprets this data.

Kerravala sees this as a nuanced comparison between Cisco, a behemoth with an impressive cash generation capability, and smaller companies such as Arista and Extreme. Despite acknowledging the somewhat fair comparison, he suggests that Cisco is handicapped because smaller entities may capture the benefits of a market trend more swiftly, Cisco’s broad scope often hampers its ability to do so. But Cisco throws off more operating cash in a quarter than these companies generate in annual revenue.

He used the example of Zoom Video Communications Inc. and RingCentral Inc., noting how Cisco’s performance paled in comparison two years ago, but the tide has turned since then, with the unified communications sector waning, but Cisco thriving in relative terms.

Kerravala believes Cisco’s breadth and stability make it a safe investment bet, but its size prevents it from realizing the rapid growth that smaller, more specialized companies can. The broad spectrum of markets that Cisco operates in implies a reduced likelihood of success across all these fronts simultaneously.

Watch Zeus Kerravala comment on the comparisons between Cisco and the pure plays.

Cisco’s complex business remains anchored in core networking

The table below represents the contribution of Cisco’s lines of business as reported in its financials. As we said at the top, 14% revenue growth is pretty astounding for a company of Cisco’s size. With tough comps ahead, it’s unlikely Cisco can keep up this pace.

Networking makes up more than half of Cisco’s revenue, but the company is growing its software contribution, which is just under 30% today, and its annual recurring revenue accounts for more than 40% of revenue, which gives the company better visibility on the future. This all helps prop up Cisco’s alluring 65%-plus gross margin model, which unlike many of its large incumbent competitors has held up well over decades. Moreover, Cisco’s shift to a recurring revenue and subscription model has been executed quite well compared with many firms (some much smaller, such as Splunk Inc.), which have struggled with that transition.

To break this down further, examining Cisco’s 10-K provides the following added context:

Secure, Agile Networks comprise core networking, switching, routing, wireless and compute. This includes products such as Catalyst, Nexus, Meraki and Cisco’s software-defined wide-area network products.

Internet for the Future includes optical networking, 5G, in-house silicon and optics solutions. This includes products such as the Cisco 8000, NCS 5500 and ASR 9000 series.

Collaboration includes Webex and call center solutions.

End-to-End Security comprises network security, cloud security, endpoint, threat management and zero-trust solutions.

Optimized Application Experiences includes AppDynamics, ThousandEyes and Intersight.

Here are Kerravala’s thoughts on Cisco’s portfolio, the challenges they face and what’s needed going forward:

Watch Zeus Kerravala unpack Cisco’s vast portfolio and how they can simplify.

Spending data underscores the macroeconomic impact on Cisco’s overall business

The ETR spending data for Cisco, at a high level, shows what virtually all tech companies are facing: a decrease in the percentage of customers that are spending more relative to last year.

The candlestick chart above shows the granularity of Net Score, ETR’s proprietary spending metric that measures customer spending patterns. Of the 1,700 information technology decision makers in the most recent ETR survey, more than 1,000 are Cisco customers – so we have a nice sample. The lime green is the percentage of those customers adding Cisco new, the forest green represents those spending 6% or more relative to last year, the gray is flat spend, the pink is spending down 6% or worse and the bright red is churn. Subtract red from green and you get Net Score, which is the blue line.

You can see the steadily declining trajectory because of the gray and the reds increasing. The brown line is the pervasiveness in the overall data set, which has actually held up well. Cisco has a massive installed base and it is stable, although more customers are leaving than are being added within this survey. Remember, this survey doesn’t measure spending amount, only the percentage of customers in each bucket.

We asked Kerravala if this accurately reflects his view of the market and is the deceleration a function of economic headwinds, complexity or both? What follows is a list of his key takeaways:

• The competitive dynamics in the networking industry have significantly shifted, with Cisco now facing more formidable rivals such as Arista, Fortinet Inc., VMware Inc. and Extreme Networks.
• The entry of cloud companies and Aruba into the networking market introduces additional competitive pressures.
• These industry changes necessitate sharper sales execution from Cisco, as it can no longer rely on competitors’ missteps to retain its advantage.
• In light of this more complex competitive landscape, Cisco’s strategy must evolve to distinguish itself effectively and maintain its leading position.

I do think a lot of what you’re looking at there is more credible vendors are in market and that has forced sharper sales execution than it did before. In the old days, Cisco could just show up and be assured that its competitors would mis-execute. That luxury is no longer in play.

Watch Zeus Kerravala comment on Cisco’s spending momentum data in the ETR survey and the changing nature of the competitive dynamics.

Cisco’s center of gravity starts with core networking

Let’s drill into the segment data, starting with networks.

The chart above shows Net Score or spending velocity on the vertical axis and pervasiveness in the data set on the horizontal axis. The red dotted line at 40% indicates a highly elevated Net Score. We’ve highlighted Cisco overall and Meraki, a company Cisco bought in 2012 to help better control network devices.

As is evident, Cisco stands out as the clear leader here in both presence (X axis) with very respectable customer spending velocity on its products (Y axis). In fact, we saw earlier a 29% year-on-year revenue growth figure from last quarter in networking. That is amazing for such a large business. As Cisco works through its backlog, it creates uncertainty in the forecasts, but underlying demand for Cisco’s networking products is sound.

As well, you can see a number of other companies here, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s Aruba, Arista, VMware with NSX and a number of others, including Cloudflare Inc., which all are hovering near the elevated 40% line.

Kerravala laid out his thoughts as follows:

He is somewhat critical of Cisco’s approach to its Meraki and Catalyst product lines, not on the merit of their features and value but on the lines between them. He asserts that customers should not have to choose between them. He suggests a unified hardware line that offers customers the flexibility to manage it either through Meraki or the command-line interface, or CLI. Currently, a switch from Meraki to Catalyst necessitates a complete hardware overhaul, a problem that could be resolved by a common set of hardware compatible with both management methods.

Further, Kerravala notes that Cisco’s potential to integrate data center, campus and Wi-Fi certifications to Boost the user experience has yet to be fully realized. While some integration has occurred at the campus level, the data center side remains separate. He concludes that networks should deliver applications and experiences as a single, unified entity instead of being sold as separate silos, an approach that contributes to unnecessary complexity.

His key analysis points include:

• He believes Cisco should offer a unified hardware line for customers, which could be managed either through Meraki or CLI, mitigating the need for a hardware overhaul when switching between the two.
• By integrating data center, campus, and Wi-Fi certifications, Cisco could enhance the overall user experience.
• The current siloed approach to network products adds unnecessary complexity, which, while non-trivial, will be addressed by treating the network as a single, unified entity focused on delivering applications and experiences.

Watch Zeus break down the Cisco’s networking challenges and thoughts on how it can simplify.

Security is perhaps Cisco’s best upside opportunity

Let’s shift gears and look into the all-important and exceedingly crowded security sector.

Above we show the ETR spending data in the security market – same dimensions – Net Score on Y and Pervasion on the X. Microsoft Corp. is in the upper right and skews the data, but you can see Cisco has a major presence. As do Palo Alto Networks and Splunk. All credible on the vertical axis.

The leaders in presence are below the 40% line, but that’s expected for such large companies. The squiggly line represents Cisco’s path over the past 10 quarters. There is no debate that the company is very strong in security, but we believe it needs to do a better job consolidating the piece parts and simplifying customer outcomes.

Note that Cisco doesn’t have the spending velocity of the pure plays such as CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Okta Inc., Zscaler Inc., CyberArk Software Ltd. and SailPoint Technologies Inc. — or even Cloudflare – but its Net Score is respectable. Cisco also just purchased Armorblox Inc., which uses artificial intelligence to reduce email and other risks.

In many ways we think Cisco could be a leader in the security supercloud, bridging on-premises, multiple clouds and edge security experiences.

The following summarizes Keravala’s thoughts:

Kerravala claims Cisco has succeeded in cybersecurity despite itself but has a great opportunity if it can address some of the stovepipe challenges.

The emerging observability opportunity

Let’s now dig into observability, which is sort of the confluence of log analytics, application performance management, monitoring and related fields. Cisco has a major stake in this business through its acquisitions of AppDynamics and ThousandEyes.

Before we look at the spending data, here’s what one customer said in an ETR roundtable about this topic:

This is a head of engineering… a customer who says I’m sticking with AppD. This person references the value of the ThousandEyes acquisition along with AppD and security. The application-centricity is an attractive dynamic to this Cisco shop. SecureX is Cisco’s integrated security play, which admittedly needs more and better integration. But basically in the second quote this person calls out the attractiveness and value of a single platform. If you’re a Cisco shop. And if not it’s a “free game” – perhaps implying a free-for-all of complexity.

AppD perhaps presents the biggest opportunity for Cisco since they’ve acquired it. I really expect AppDynamics to become the tip-of-the-arrow sale for Cisco… and I would like to see AppD become a lead sales tool across Cisco’s portfolio. I think it must (and will) happen -Zeus Kerravala

Watch Kerravala’s commentary on Cisco’s observability play with ThousandEyes & AppD.

Comparing key observability players’ spending profiles

Let’s get into the ETR data. ETR doesn’t have a full-stack observability category, but through this next view below we’re able to bring in various companies that are hovering around the space to see their relative positions.

It’s a similar chart above where we show Net Score against pervasiveness in the data. And we’ve plotted Splunk, Datadog Inc., Elastic N.V., Grafana Labs, Dynatrace Inc. and New Relic Inc.. You can see AppDynamics, which Cisco bought in 2017 for almost $4 billion. And it introduced Intersight shortly thereafter as a visualization and orchestration tool. But there were still holes in the portfolio as the market moved to full-stack observability, so Cisco bought ThousandEyes during the COVID pandemic for about $1 billion. Then it sort of strung them together with an overlay, but the story is not over.

Cisco has an opportunity to really take these pieces and integrate them across the portfolio in a potentially game-changing way. At least in the manner that one customer described earlier – especially for Cisco shops.

Kerravala’s primary argument is that the industry needs to to deliver on the vision of full-stack observability. Cisco has an opportunity to lead by streamlining its many panes-of-glass solutions into a unified, intuitive dashboard. The diverse range of visibility tools it currently offers could be more effectively utilized if they were integrated into one comprehensive system, with AppD serving as the principal lens. Operational specifics could then be accessed through drill-down features, allowing for a more organized and efficient user experience. This could be game-changing for Cisco.

Kerravala’s key takeaways on observability:

• Cisco must make good on its promise of full-stack observability.
• The current multitude of Cisco’s single-pane-of-glass solutions should be streamlined into a unified dashboard.
• AppD should be the main view, with the ability to drill down into the other specific tools.
• He recognizes that Cisco already has all the necessary components; the challenge lies in integrating them into a cohesive system.

Kerravala comments on Cisco’s many panes of glass.

What to watch at Cisco Live 2023

Kerravala just published a “Know before you go” post on SiliconANGLE, outlining his thoughts on what to expect at Cisco Live. Let’s review that and what we’ll be looking for next week.

Whither AI for Cisco?

A key question is how Cisco will handle AI. These days, brands run the risk AI washing, but if you bury the AI lede, you look less relevant. In our view, Cisco at the very least has to use AI to make Cisco infrastructure run better and more secure through automation and better management.

Here’s a summary of key points from our conversation with Zeus on what to expect from Cisco Live in terms of AI:

• We don’t expect Cisco to brand itself as an AI company like Nvidia Corp. or even IBM Corp.’s attempts to do so. Instead, AI will remain an integral part of their overall toolkit used to build their products.
• AI has been part of Cisco’s portfolio for a while. It underpins products such as intent-based networking and Encrypted Traffic Analytics, which uses AI to detect malware in encrypted traffic.
• The company’s collaboration portfolio is also AI-rich, but it is considered more of an operational tool rather than a product that’s sold separately.
• AI might be highlighted more during keynotes due to current hype, but it’s not the company’s primary focus.
• The use of AI, such as a ChatGPT-like interface, could be beneficial for Cisco’s operations, like using Webex to find information or for network operations to identify areas in need of upgrades. This would essentially make their portfolio more user-friendly.
• Natural language processing can simplify interfaces, relieving the load from high-level engineers and delegating tasks to tier one or two support.

The security opportunity calls for Cisco

We’ll be watching the security space closely. We believe it’s a mandate that Cisco integrate its vast portfolio across on-prem, all the major clouds and out to the edge. Palo Alto Networks has the leg up on consolidation in our opinion, but Cisco has such a major presence that it can do very well in this area, coming at the problem its strength in networking.

Here’s a summary of what we think Cisco needs to do in security and what we’ll hear at Cisco Live:

• Security is important because it offers the most substantial growth potential for Cisco, as it is a single-digit player in a market projected to be worth $75 billion-plus.
• Even a slight increase in market share, such as reaching 10%, would greatly boost Cisco’s revenue.
• The long-term vision is to have Cisco’s security share match its network share, and to have Cisco network and Cisco security working together for improved risk identification and resolution.
• We hope to see more integration of Cisco’s cloud security products to create a more unified and user-friendly experience.
• The security industry often makes the user the integration point, which can lead to confusion and inefficiency. This needs to be addressed by the industry at large and Cisco has an opportunity to attack this problem.
• Cisco is in a unique position to make security more user-friendly and seamless because it owns the network and can embed a lot of security features into it.
• We anticipate hearing more about Cisco’s progress on its vision for security and expect to see more of the product roadmap at the upcoming event.

Can Cisco be the supercloud network?

Core networking is always a the forefront of Cisco Live. I keep coming back to the supercloud concept – a singular experience across clouds in a cloud-native fashion. Can Cisco bridge the legacy world of apps and infrastructure with cloud-native?

• Cisco is not going to become a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services Inc., but it has the potential to be an abstraction layer that enables the concept of a “supercloud.”
• A network supercloud would allow customers to use multiple cloud providers, edge locations, and private data centers seamlessly as one logical cloud.
• Traditional cloud providers will not enable this, as their tools are specific to their platforms. Cisco, however, can provide network transport, security and optimization that transcend individual cloud platforms.
• Cisco can become the bridge between physical clouds and create a logical supercloud thanks to its work with cloud providers, telcos and tools such as ThousandEyes and AppDynamics.
• This process begins with networking, hoping to see more progress with the Meraki/Catalyst integration at the upcoming show. We are also looking for advancements in consolidating different versions of Wi-Fi and other disparate parts of Cisco’s networking story.

Collaboration: Hybrid work is still a big thing

What about collaboration? That business went from rocket ship to rapid deceleration post-pandemic, but hybrid work isn’t going away and it brings real challenges. Is this a game of integrating with your security portfolio to reduce risk? Or creating better and more simplified user experiences? We know that Jeetu Patel wants to make Webex 10 times better than any other platform.

• We believe Cisco’s primary challenge in the collaboration market is Microsoft Teams. Despite having a poorer user experience compared with competitors, Teams is widely adopted thanks to its inclusion in Microsoft licensing plans.
• Teams, however, can prove costly when additional features such as voice and security are added.
• Cisco has accepted the coexistence with Teams, allowing its devices to run Teams natively. This could be beneficial as companies are likely to use more than one collaboration vendor.
• We believe Cisco’s WebEx, loaded with extensive features, can offer a better experience for specific departments and expand its presence within organizations gradually.
• A suggested strategy for Cisco is to manage other collaboration platforms through the WebEx console, offering better management for those platforms and then gradually introducing their own solutions.
• In the context of observability, the application-centric view is crucial. Prioritizing network upgrades and security deployments based on their impact on application performance can provide quantifiable business metrics.
• Cisco’s AppDynamics offers a unique perspective into application performance that other infrastructure vendors may lack. This tool could be instrumental in making such decisions.

Application centricity is the opportunity in full-stack observability

Cisco we think has an opportunity to make some moves in full-stack observability, but the linchpin as Kerravala wrote on SiliconANGLE is the application-centric view of the world. The two main takeaways from our conversation on observability include:

• The application-centric view is crucial. Prioritizing network upgrades and security deployments based on their impact on application performance can provide quantifiable business metrics.
• Cisco’s AppDynamics offers a unique perspective into application performance that other infrastructure vendors may lack. This tool could be instrumental in making such decisions.

Every large tech company has to address ESG

And finally we asked Kerravala if he has ever been to a Cisco Live where Chuck Robbins hasn’t done his part to address environmental, social and governance issues? Here’s a summary of what we discussed:

• Cisco has a corporate goal to positively impact a billion lives by 2025. It’s making significant progress toward this goal through a variety of programs. It’s part of the Global Citizen group, and it conducts contests and provide financial support to entrepreneurs aiming to make the world a better place.
• Cisco’s products also help with sustainability. They are embedded with features such as EnergyWise, which shuts off the network when it is not in use and turns it back on when it is needed.
• Cisco’s custom application-specific integrated circuits are optimized for specific network functions, leading to lower power consumption.
• The company offers Power over Ethernet features to further support sustainability.
• At events such as Cisco Live, it has highlighted these sustainability features, and we expect to see more of this in the future.

We didn’t talk much about edge, but it’s a significant part of the future and we anticipate hearing more about it in the future.

Here’s the full conversation about what to expect at Cisco Live

Finally, theCUBE will be at Cisco Live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. We’re on the expo floor across from the Net Vet Lounge, which is Booth 1427. We have a small space so we’re doing the pop-up CUBE and we’d love to see you. By all means please stop by and say hello.

Keep in touch

Many thanks to Zeus Kerravala for stopping by the studio to share his knowledge. Thanks to Alex Myerson and Ken Shifman on production, podcasts and media workflows for Breaking Analysis. Special thanks to Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight, who help us keep our community informed and get the word out, and to Rob Hof, our editor in chief at SiliconANGLE.

Remember we publish each week on Wikibon and SiliconANGLE. These episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen.

Email david.vellante@siliconangle.com, DM @dvellante on Twitter and comment on our LinkedIn posts.

Also, check out this ETR Tutorial we created, which explains the spending methodology in more detail. Note: ETR is a separate company from Wikibon and SiliconANGLE. If you would like to cite or republish any of the company’s data, or inquire about its services, please contact ETR at legal@etr.ai.

Here’s the full video analysis:

All statements made regarding companies or securities are strictly beliefs, points of view and opinions held by SiliconANGLE Media, Enterprise Technology Research, other guests on theCUBE and guest writers. Such statements are not recommendations by these individuals to buy, sell or hold any security. The content presented does not constitute investment advice and should not be used as the basis for any investment decision. You and only you are responsible for your investment decisions.

Disclosure: Many of the companies cited in Breaking Analysis are sponsors of theCUBE and/or clients of Wikibon. None of these firms or other companies have any editorial control over or advanced viewing of what’s published in Breaking Analysis.

Image: mehaniq41/Adobe Stock

CRN is live in San Diego for Cisco Live 2019. Bookmark this page for the latest news, videos and exclusive videos from the show floor.

Cisco CEO Recalls 30 Years Of Innovation At Cisco Live
CEO Chuck Robbins discusses Cisco’s success and transformation during his keynote at Cisco Live, a conference now three decades old.

Cisco Global Channel Chief On Easier Enrollment, More Partner Resources And First-Ever DevNet Certification
Cisco Global Channel Chief Oliver Tuszik tells CRN at Cisco Live that Cisco has delivered on promises made at Cisco’s Partner Summit in November.

Cisco Partners, Customers Can Now Secure SD-WAN From The Cloud Via Cisco Umbrella
‘Protecting SD-WAN, whether partners or customers have on-prem, in the cloud, or both as a deployment, they are covered,’ Gee Rittenhouse, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Security Business Group, says at Cisco Live 2019.

'No More Islands' Across Cisco Collaboration Portfolio, Tech Giant Says
‘You're going to see us hold to the promise of building bridges and integrations. No more Islands,’ Amy Chang, senior vice president of Cisco Collaboration, says during Cisco Live 2019.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins To Partners: The Importance Of DevNet And How IoT 'Is Coming Into Its Own'
Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins sits down with CRN at Cisco Live to talk DevNet, the importance of small but strategic acquisitions, and the growing opportunities around IoT and automation that that partners should pursue.

Cisco Live 2019: CEO Chuck Robbins Weighs In On The News Partners Need To Know
On the 30th anniversary of Cisco Live, Cisco unveils new innovation around software and collaboration, which Presidio’s Vinu Thomas describes as a “paradigm shift” in networking.

Cisco Live 2019: Cisco IoT Just Got More Rugged
At Cisco Live 2019, the tech giant rips the sheet off a new line of industrial switches, access points, and an SD-WAN-powered router built to withstand extreme environmental conditions as Cisco pushes its intent-based networking approach to the IoT edge.

Cisco Live: New DevNet Certification, DevNet Automation Exchange Debut
Day one of Cisco Live 2019 saw a brand-new DevNet certification track, as well as a dedicated DevNet Automation Exchange community for the IT teams of the future.

Cisco: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Key To Networking's Next Evolution
‘Machine learning is going to help us augment our mental capabilities so we can process information faster when there's information overload,’ says Prashanth Shenoy, Cisco's vice president of marketing for enterprise networks, IoT and developer platform.

The New Cisco Americas Channel Chief Is John Moses: Exclusive
Cisco crowns channel veteran John Moses as the new leader of Cisco's Americas Partner Organization, succeeding Rick Snyder, the tech giant told CRN exclusively.

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 07:46:00 -0500 en text/html https://www.crn.com/cisco-live-2019

Let's imagine a leadership team meeting with a cost-cutting proposal on the agenda from the Chief Information Officer to increase centralization of shared IT resources. The CIO and their team have prepped the cost efficiencies after a request from the CEO and the Chief Financial Officer. At the meeting, the CIO presents the proposals to frame a discussion. But they have already pre-sold the package to the CFO and brought up many of the likely challenges with the CEO and asked both for their backing before even coming into the room because they expect pushback from business unit leaders against the idea of more central control of IT and loss of customized attention. The CIO’s presentation is a standard report out. Some of the business unit leaders can tell this has already been politically stitched-up with the CFO and CEO and decide not to express their discontent, risks or concerns. Some individuals have clicked into listen mode, don’t believe they really have a dog in the hunt, nor would it matter if they did say anything. Some are unwilling to make recommendations even though their gut tells them there is a better way to do this. Of the 12 people in the room, only four voices are heard. Real candor is noticeably absent. There’s an unspoken belief that it’s best to move to the next agenda item, for now, and try to deal with this outside the meeting. Welcome to an everyday meeting in corporate life anywhere in the world today.

A high return practice of world-class teams

Let me lay out a different scenario. Not an imaginary scenario, but one that happens in the top 15% of truly world-class teams who don’t believe that meetings are the only way to collaborate, and they happen to be the digital native disruptors of most industries who, since school, used the google collaboration software and naturally carried these tools like Google Docs into their early professional life and created collaboration processes that fully leveraged such tools.

In this second scenario, the CEO has framed a north-star understanding that under the current economic climate, there are cost constraints and a need to identify cost reductions. The CIO, in response, creates a quick one-pager in the following format:

• Here's what we know and have done already.
• Here's where we're struggling and there are challenges and knotty issues on this topic.
• Here's our plan for going forward as it stands today.

The one-pager is shared either in the form of a simple narrative document, or slide. And it could be accompanied by a simple 10 minute video sent in advance. In all cases, the one-pager is accompanied by a group editable spreadsheet with all 12 executive team meeting attendees named in the left-hand column. Along the top row, there are three simple questions for each member of the team to answer:

1. What challenges do you see that we're missing?
2. What innovative/bold ideas or solutions do you have that could benefit the situation?
3. What help or support can you and your team provide to address this?

This is sent out at least a week before the meeting for all teammates to read, giving every contributor serious time to think, consult their teams, and answer those questions before the meeting… and then to read each other's answers. Knowing that in the past, preparatory work before meetings was often not done, use of assigned names on a shared document increases the likelihood of completion because of open accountability among peers with the visibility of the CEO. What we've just done, is Meeting Shifted. There is now a cycle of thinking, dialogue and collaboration—in a shared sheet, a format that everyone can see—prior to the meeting. This, the level of collaboration prior to the meeting has a number of key attributes:

1. We've created something that didn't exist in the meeting: instead of four people feeling they're fully heard in the meeting, every single individual had a chance to put their full voice into the question at hand: 100% of everyone's point of view is on the table.
2. The willingness to be courageous and speak up increases in written assignments versus a room full of people. It takes a fairly courageous individual to have a strong voice in the face of potential opposition. Whereas the assignment in the shared sheet grants the permission to be bold and creates more of a challenge culture. In a sense, we are taking the culture we all wish we had in meetings and we're assigning it a Meeting Shifting exercise.
3. Everyone has the opportunity to be more thoughtful. Some people naturally think on their feet and excel in meetings. Many people prefer to be more contemplative and take time to be reflective and thorough in their thinking; Meeting Shifting fully taps the talent of this group.
4. Inclusion. People can involve their teams. In fact, one could suggest to any of the 12 that if they feel that there is somebody whose point of view would be missed they can send this document along to them, and let them add their name and let them fill it out as well. When we do this, often, the number of collaborators can rise from 12 to 30 individuals and two or three multiple layers in the organization can have equal voice to a critical Topic that they're actually closer to understanding than the original We often find that the most innovative breakthrough ideas actually come from individuals who would have never been in the meeting in the first place.

Psychological safety goes up, bolder inputs begin to occur. More importantly, the CIO, witnessing all of this valuable input of challenges and insights and offers of support or help, can recraft the agenda for the meeting that will follow to address the most important dissent that exists among the team or just quickly to land the plane on the critical issues. Rather than two or three rounds of meetings where only four people would have been heard, we have built an entirely more efficient round of collaboration. There is no place for sidebar and shadow conversations lobbying behind the scenes. There’s no lack of transparency. We know that without Meeting Shifting, eventually, the decision would have been made without everybody having full information as to why and the level of buy-in would be significantly lower. In this instance, buy-in is directly proportionate to co-creation, not just for the sake of the patina of getting people involved. The aperture for new ideas is truly being opened up, and everybody has transparency and full information as to why we came to certain conclusions. Finally, we can recognize that not everybody even has to be in this particular meeting. Clearly, when we see everyone's input, we can easily see that certain individuals are just not needed for this conversation, decreasing unnecessary meetings for many. We could find that there is a vital component of this conversation that should happen in the upcoming meeting of 12—and then there are other components that need much smaller groups of individuals to finalize.

Faster, bolder, inclusive decision-making—and fewer meetings

What we’ve done is significantly shorten the cycle time of collaboration and getting to the answer. By virtue of having everybody's input, we have not abdicated the responsibility or authority of the CIO, nor diminished the authority of the CFO and the CEO to make the final decision. Decision-making hasn't changed. What we've done is we've opened a much more transparent, bolder, inclusive process that would achieve faster decisions with better, bolder information. This also allows us to reduce our meetings by 30%, which we have seen repeatedly in our research.

This simple practice of shifting collaboration from traditional meeting practices to an asynchronous practice is a critical step on a team's journey to becoming what our research calls world-class hybrid. Our dataset of thousands of teams compiled over decades of working with Fortune 500 businesses, fast-growing unicorns and global brands shows that only 15% approach levels four and five on our five-point hybrid index for leveraging the most innovative practices for collaboration, and decision-making, and innovation. They recognize that the belief that collaboration must start with a meeting is a myth. They also know it's a myth that the broader you get people’s involvement, it thins down and creates consensus and mushy outputs. Those are the myths of old meeting strategies. It’s not the truth of today's powerful best practices for world-class hybrid teams, leveraging the best tools that have been available to us for years.

Introducing The Collaboration Stack

World-class teams recognize that collaboration happens in a stack and they become uniquely capable of working up and down that Collaboration Stack. The Collaboration Stack has the team starting with asynchronous work then moving to leveraging practices best suited for remote/hybrid meeting efficacy, and then in-person meetings. Each stage of the stack requires its own best practices (describing them all is beyond the scope of this article, but will be covered in my next book). But there's an entire set of asynchronous practices that are incredibly powerful and valuable of which Meeting Shifting, is just one simple example.

When we deal with remote business practices, we show the value of remote/hybrid meetings for transparent sidebar conversations in the chat function and the use of breakout rooms, which also increase psychological safety significantly. Opening a shared document in those breakout rooms allow us to capture insight from everybody in the room, improving the perspective and sense of inclusion and engagement. Unfortunately, most teams moved from boardrooms pre-pandemic into remote meetings that looked exactly like the meeting style of a boardroom. And now we're crawling back into those boardrooms with the same meeting and collaboration structures we always did, fully missing how to leverage valuable collaboration tools. What's even sadder is the recognition that now that we are back in the office, we've dragged people in with resentment to being in the office. They're sitting still alone in cubes on remote and hybrid meetings that they feel they could have done equally as well from home and still been able to eliminate the commute. Organizations have been real estate baiting with better food to get people back to the office to “earn the commute.” In reality, we need to change the way we work so that we engineer when we are together in person, for the most powerful things that we should be doing: wrestling gritty issues, eye to eye, celebrating, playing, serving, bonding, connecting—things on the emotional spectrum should be reserved for the physical times we're collaborating together.

Awakening to faster bolder collaboration

This awakening to faster and bolder ways of collaboration is despite the great laboratory we all had to test remote work during the pandemic when too many of us barely scratched the surface. Our research institute has been studying the field of remote and hybrid work since 2010 and published a series of articles in Harvard Business Review. The lessons and best practices were laid out like a buffet to us if only we were just more curious. These are the ways of working the unicorn companies that are disrupting business models and disrupting ways of working and have been for some time, and it's available to anybody. We ignore them at our peril.

Tue, 30 May 2023 05:39:00 -0500 Keith Ferrazzi en text/html https://www.forbes.com/sites/keithferrazzi/2023/05/30/meeting-shifting-how-the-worlds-top-15-of-teams-unlock-faster-and-bolder-collaboration-and-cut-wasteful-meetings/ © Provided by TheGamer

Quick Links

• September Classroom Answers

• October Classroom Answers

• November Classroom Answers

• January Classroom Answers

• Rewards For Doing Well In School

As if stealing the hearts of Tokyo’s most corrupt in Persona 5 Royal wasn’t a big enough task on its own, you’ll also have to contend with all the worries of a normal high schooler, and that includes your schoolwork. Throughout your year at Shujin Academy, you’ll be asked a number of questions both in-class and on exams, and the perks for doing well are numerous.

RELATED: How Long Does It Take To Beat Persona 5 Royal?

The questions you’ll get can be a little tough, though, but that’s where we come in. Below, you’ll find every classroom and test question and answer for Persona 5 Royal. Good luck in school!

This answer guide is only for Persona 5 Royal. If you're playing vanilla P5, your answers will be different.

This guide contains slight spoilers for Persona 5 Royal.

April Classroom Answers

April Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
4/12	Tell me what the Devil’s Dictionary defined as the chief factor in the progress of the human race.	Villains
4/19	Between A and B… which line seems longer…?	They’re the same.
4/23	Between music, theatre and chariot racing, which sport did Nero win when he participated in the Olympics?	All of them
4/25	What’s that phrase meant to convey? “My country, right or wrong?”	You unquestioningly support it
But the original meaning was different? So I guess it’d be something like…	You have a duty to correct them
4/27	Do you know the name of the theorem named after this number?	Four color theorem
4/30	First off, the "wunder" part probably means...	Wonder
Next, the "kind" part. That's probably...	Child
So a "wunderkind" would be...	Prodigy

May Classroom Answers

May Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
5/7	So what’s the literal translation of the phrase “femme fatale?”	Fatal Woman
5/10	You know the time period Yoshitsune was active in, don’t you?	The Heian Period
Exam Period: 5/11-5/14
5/16	What do we call the phenomenon where believing in a treatment’s power is enough to Boost your condition?	The placebo effect
5/19	Which famous ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period is said to have moved residence over 100 times?	Katsushika Hokusai.
5/21	The golden ratio is 1:1.618, but do you know the silver ratio?	1:1.414
5/23	If we think about what these words have in common, then maybe “syn” means…	Together
And “aisthesis,” huh? That’s a little like the word aesthetics. I wonder if it means…	Senses
So that means the full word basically means…	Senses coming together
5/26	Do you know which author Leblanc borrowed from?	Arthur Conan Doyle
5/31	Do you know which peg-legged, parrot toting historical figure’s appearance became a visual shorthand for pirates?	John Silver

May test Answers

May Midterm test Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
5/11	What historical figure inspired the term of “favoring the magistrate?"	Minamoto no Yoshitsune
Yoshitune had a brother, right? Oh, I think his name was…	Minamoto no Yoritomo
But they ended up coming into conflict. And in the end, when they had to oppose each other…	Yoritomo won
That’s probably because people tend to sympathize less with figures in power, and sympathize more with…	The weak
5/12	Which brain function is responsible for the phenomenon of seeing an illusion in this figure?	Cognition
Which of the following maps can you paint without any adjacent areas being the same color?	Both
5/13	Name the book that defined malefactors as the chief factor in the progress of the human race.	The Devil's Dictionary
What character archetype refers to a mysterious and seductive woman, typically with ulterior motives?	Femme Fatale

RELATED: Persona 5 Royal: Complete Confidant Gift Guid

June Classroom Answers

June Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
6/4	What do you think the name for this phenomenon is?	The Halo Effect
6/7	The red king crab is biologically related to the hermit crab. So how is it different from a crab...? Do you know?	The number of legs
6/8	Where does totalitarianism take things a step further than authoritarianism?	Controlling public thought
6/13	... What color do you think it turns?	Green
6/15	Between paper bills and coins, which one is issued by the government?	Coins
6/20	What do you think? One of these has minor metals in it, right?	Smartphone
6/23	Now, do you know what this woman’s position was?	A pope
6/27	Which of these animals is involved in an English idiom about the weather?	Dogs
6/29	What do you think it says on the back of this piece?	Gold

July Classroom Answers

July Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
7/1	What’s the meaning of the original Chinese phrase that these dumplings’ name came from?	Barbarian's head
7/4	Two people are responsible for July and August having 31 days. Do you know who those people are?	Julius and Augustus
7/7	So Tanabata's about gods crossing a starry sky to reunite once every year. It might have something to do with...	The Milky Way
What's the traditional food of Tanabata?	Soumen
7/9	Do you know what shape it is?	A triangle
7/11	What is long-term memory, anyway?	Memories that last a long time
Maruki mentioned something about the amount of memories you could store, right? Something like…	Infinite
If you have theoretically infinite space for them… then theoretically, you’d be able to retain them for…	Forever
7/12	Do you know what he did?	Thievery
Exam Period: 7/13-7/16

July test Answers

July Final test Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
7/13	If angle C is 28 degrees, and angles A and D are 88 degrees, what is the angle of B and E?	64 degrees
I think this came up in class. They were invented by that famous guy from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, right?	Zhuge Liang
And they were offering something to quell the river…	Barbarian's heads
This master strategist came up with the baozi to…	To offer them instead of heads
7/14	Write the name and biological classification of this creature.	Red King Crab (Paralithodes)
What happened when the government issued paper and hard currencies in Japan for the first time?	It caused confusion in the economy
7/15	What is the English equivalent of the Norwegian idiom ‘raining witches’?	Raining cats and dogs
Which of the following is another name for the soumen noodles traditionally eaten on Tanabata?	Demon guts

RELATED: Persona 5 Royal: Guide To Every Trophy

September Classroom Answers

September Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
9/3	Each hand in this famous statue means something, but… do you know what the right represents?	Prosperity
9/6	Do you know the name of that phenomenon where the second hand looks like it’s stopped moving?	Chronostasis
9/13	What does a pawn shop offer that a secondhand shop doesn’t?	Money loans for collateral
9/17	What’s one of the origins for the phrase “cat got your tongue?"	Cats eating human tongues
9/21	Robot comes from a word in Czech. But where in Europe is the Czech Republic located?	Central Europe
9/24	How many white and black shapes are there respectively on a soccer ball?	20 white, 12 black
9/28	So “PVS”, referring to when you mistakenly think your phone is going off...	Phantom
The next part is the V part. That means it’d be “phantom…” what?	Vibrating
Last is the S. So if we have “phantom vibration” so far...	Syndrome
9/29	But the fishermen of Nagaragawa are actually civil servants as well. So, tell me which sector they belong to.	Imperial Household Agency

October Classroom Answers

October Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
10/3	If we use “three watermelons in the sun” to visualize a certain matter’s size against the universe’s, what are the melons?	Stars
10/6	Now, do you know who invented this instrument?	Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
10/11	Which name was most commonly ascribed to shape B	Bouba
Exam Period: 10/17-10/20

October test Answers

October Midterm test Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
10/17	Counting both black and white surfaces, how many surfaces are there in total on a soccer ball?	32 surfaces
Didn’t the teacher say that the number of colors used to be different? Do you remember?	It used to be one color
Oh yeah, I remember. I think she said that unlike now, soccer games were broadcasted with…	Black and white picture
10/18	Who conducted executions using this device?	Charles-Henri Sanson
What is the reason that most people cannot become a cormorant fisherman of Nagarasawa?	It’s a hereditary profession
10/19	What is the meaning of “robota,” the etymological root of “robot?"	Slave labor
Which of the following describes the density of stars in outer space?	3 bees in all of Europe
Now, tell me the total count for each column in this magic square.	15
From a psychological standpoint, what is a key reason our memories can differ from reality?	Memory bias

RELATED: Persona 5 Royal: Complete Persona Fusion Chart And Arcana Fusion Guide

November Classroom Answers

November Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
11/2	Can you tell me the meaning of the word “wack” in the Thieves’ Cant?	A share of stolen goods
11/4	Clubs is a club, diamonds is a gem… So, what does a spade represent?	A sword
11/8	Tell me how old you have to be to listen in on a trial.	Any age
11/10	Do you know why it’s missing in the character for “crow?"	Crow eyes are hard to see
11/12	I wonder. Do you know why our voices sound so different over the phone?	Because the voice is synthetic
11/14	Tell me why that is.	Because of high altitude
11/15	How was he punished?	His head was put on display.
11/17	Do you know the name for this graph? Your hint is “snails”...	Cochleoid

December test Answers

December Final test Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
12/20	Choose the graph that became the origin for the name for the Chinese yoyo known as a diabolo.	D
He was a really famous thief from the Edo period, right? How much money did he steal, in the end?	Over one billion yen
As a result, he was sentenced to…	Having is head displayed
Criminals, especially famous criminals being paraded around, was mostly done for…	Public performance
12/21	Which suit of cards represents the Holy Grail?	Hearts
According to Japanese judicial law, what is possible for even an infant to do in court?	Attend
12/22	What country refers to a person who controls politics behind the scenes as a “prime minister in black?"	Japan
The Japanese word “dokyuu” translates to “massive.” What English word inspired the initial “do” in dokyuu?	Dreadnought

January Classroom Answers

January Classroom Questions and Answers In Persona 5 Royal

Date	Question	Correct Answer
1/11	What’s this phrase supposed to illustrate about the gods of Shinto?	How numerous they are
What’s that phrase again? The one about how many gods there are in Shinto…	The Eight Million Gods
1/14	Where do you think the fictional land of “Ihatov” is modeled after?	Iwate
1/18	What did the word “awful” originally mean?	Impressive
1/21	Do you know what she’s stepping on?	A snake
1/24	What does that mean when describing a person?	Kind-hearted
So what kind of connotation would “salty” have in that context?	Negative
So with all that in mind, “salty” probably means…	Resentful
1/27	How far did this study suggest personal happiness can spread?	To friends of friends of friends

Rewards For Doing Well In School

Sometime throughout the year, if you're studying and following our guide to get all the questions in P5R right, you'll unlock the achievement or trophy, "A Most Studious Disguise" for placing first on an exam.

It requires not only a maxed Knowledge stat, but also getting all questions correctly on said exam.

Additionally, be sure to tell Sojiro Sakura that you've done well on your exams - he rewards you for doing well by offering Joker a handful of accessories.

Sojiro's Rewards For Joker's test Scores

Month	Accessory Reward	Skill
May (Midterms)	Tough Belt	Defense Master
July (Finals)	Dandy Mirror	Counterstrike
October (Midterms)	Leblanc Charm	Null Sleep
December (Finals)	Boss Undies	Endure

Be sure to check in with your Coffee Dad after getting your scores to let him know how well you did! You need to manually talk to Sojiro to get the rewards, but it's worth doing so.

NEXT: Persona 5 Royal: What Carries Over In NG+?

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:17:00 -0500 en-US text/html https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/every-classroom-and-exam-question-and-answer-for-persona-5-royal/ar-AA1abISb

Employers and their workers are at loggerheads over returning to the office.

More from Fortune: 5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year—all while working from home Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now Buying a house? Here's how much to save This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home

On the one hand, many businesses are still paying to lease a large office space and understandably want their workers to use the money pit.

Plus, many CEOs Fortune has spoken to feel that staff work harder in the office where they can be seen—even if research consistently shows that staff can be just as productive from home.

But employees simply don’t see the point of wasting money and spending hours commuting to do the very same tasks that they’ve been proving for the last three years they can do efficiently from home.

Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins gets that.

“You’re going to tell somebody to go to the office and get on video and talk to people in another office all day long?” he said in an interview with Forbes. “They could do that from home.”

That’s why the tech giant is giving the traditional office an overhaul and building workspaces fit for the future of hybrid working—called “collaboration centers”—with just 10% of the space reserved for working alone.

Just last month Cisco unveiled its latest hub in Atlanta, exactly a year after opening its similarly smart New York space (which Robbins unveiled to Fortune at the time) with further plans to refurbish some of its other offices and relocate several of its underutilized offices to areas where they’ll get more employee foot traffic.

The office is 90% for communal gathering

In the year since opening its 58,000-square-foot space in Manhattan, Robbins learned that workers don’t want to go into the office to then work on their own.

“When employees were showing up, they weren't going in private rooms. They were just sitting at tables,” he said. “They wanted to spend time [with coworkers] and they wanted those interactions.”

Story continues

So Cisco decreased the amount of space for individual work from 30% in its New York office to 10% in its new Atlanta space. The majority of the hub’s square footage is dedicated for meetings, communal gatherings, and team-based work.

Plus, as Cisco’s own research found that up to 98% of all meetings will include at least one participant attending remotely, hybrid collaboration hasn’t been forgotten.

For example, the meeting rooms in its new Atlanta office have been decked out with the latest video conference system that follows each speaker's voice and points the camera to whoever is talking.

Meanwhile, even the furniture is aimed to help workers collaborate, whether they are in-person or dialing in remotely, with slightly curved conference room tables to maximize each person’s visibility on screen.

You have to earn your workers commute

After having splashed out the cash on such a lavish space, you’d assume that Cisco is now mandating workers make full use of it.

But actually, employees are “not going to come five days a week,” Robbins told Forbes, while adding that even pre-pandemic some 15% of Cisco employees already worked remotely full-time.

Instead, the company is hoping it will get its return on investment just simply by making the office worthy of its workers' commute.

“We're trying to create a series of events in offices” to get people on-site, he adds, including all-hands meetings and a leadership summit for Black employees.

It all comes down to “What’s your return on commute?,” according to Robbins—and that’s a worthy question for employers trying to entice their workers back into the office.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

More from Fortune:
5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year—all while working from home
Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now
Buying a house? Here's how much to save
This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home


Fri, 05 May 2023 21:04:00 -0500 en-US text/html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cisco-ceo-rebranding-office-collaboration-112842883.html No result found, try new keyword!This blog aims to answer common questions about the VanEck CEF Muni Income ETF (XMPT), an ETF that seeks to replicate the S-Network Municipal Bond Closed-End Fund Index, offering investors ... Sat, 20 May 2023 07:58:00 -0500 text/html https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/xmpt%3A-question-and-answer

Job seekers are advised to ask questions at the end of an interview to show interest in the opportunity. The challenge is that most candidates worry so much about what to ask that they can’t focus on the real discussion happening right before them.

To ameliorate the anxiety, you should have a few questions ready when the interviewer asks, “Do you have any questions for me?”

Here is what you should say to demonstrate your interest in the role and some suggested insightful questions you can ask the interviewer.

Let Them Know You Are Interested In The Job

Before you ask any questions, use the wrapping-up phase of the interview to sum up your take on the process and express your genuine interest, citing examples. You can tell the interviewer, “I greatly enjoyed our conversation. Everyone I met was wonderful. I appreciate that you all have been open and honest about the job responsibilities, the corporate culture, what’s happening with hiring and layoffs, the organization's financial situation and where the company is headed next. I am very interested in the opportunity and would like to know a little more about the process.”

Avoid Questions That Are Easily Answered On The Firm’s Site

Asking thoughtful questions at the end of the interview is a simple way to show your enthusiasm for the job and to gather more information about the company and the role. The questions you ask should not be easily answered by researching the company's website or other readily available resources.

Tailor your questions to demonstrate your enthusiasm about the role and the company while gaining valuable insights to help you make an informed decision if an offer is extended. The best questions to ask are focused and open-ended. Avoid “yes” or “no” questions and any inquiry that is too broad.

Here Are Thought-Provoking Questions To Ask

Questions To Feel Out If You’re The Right Fit

• Do you feel that I’m the right fit for the role?
• Why did you decide to choose me for the interview?
• Is there any additional information you need to help you decide on my candidacy?
• What are the most important qualities you're looking for in a candidate for this role?
• What are the expectations for this role in the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
• What made you join the company? What do you like most about working for this organization?

Learning About The Company

• Can you please tell me more about this role's day-to-day responsibilities and expectations?
• Will the role be remote, in-office or hybrid?
• How does the company support work-life balance for its employees?
• How would you describe the company culture, DEI initiatives and values?
• In light of a possible recession, high inflation and geopolitical uncertainty, do you foresee any challenges or layoffs in the future?
• Can you tell me about the team I'll be working with?

Ascertaining The Next Steps

• If you were to extend an offer, what would be the ballpark salary, bonus, stock options and corporate title?
• Can you share more about the next steps in the hiring process and the anticipated timeline for a decision?
• Could you provide any success stories or examples of employees in this or a similar role and how they’ve progressed within the organization?
Thu, 01 Jun 2023 12:00:00 -0500 Jack Kelly en text/html https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/06/02/how-to-answer-do-you-have-any-questions-for-me-in-a-job-interview/

There’s only one thing standing between you and the job that you want: your answers to common interview questions. When…

There’s only one thing standing between you and the job that you want: your answers to common interview questions. When you know how to answer interview questions in a way that impresses the hiring team, then your chances of being extended an offer are much higher. Below is a list of 29 interview questions and answers. The suggested answers are meant to inspire your personalized approach to addressing these popular questions, weaving in the details that are specific to your own career background and skill set.

1. Tell me about yourself.

2. How did you find out about the position?

3. Why are you looking for a new job?

4. Why do you want to work here?

5. What interests you about this job?

6. What motivated you to apply for this role?

7. What kind of impact do you hope to have in your next role?

8. What do you find the most stressful about this type of role?

9. Have you used our product/service?

10. How would you Boost our product/service?

11. What’s your greatest strength?

12. What’s your greatest weakness?

13. What do you hope to learn and contribute in your next role?

14. What would you do in the first 30, 60 and 90 days on the job?

15. What professional achievement are you most proud of?

16. Do you consider yourself to be a team player? Why or why not?

17. What would former co-workers say about working with you?

18. What annoys me most about working with others?

19. How would you describe your work style?

20. What type of manager do you work best with?

21. What type of work environment do you thrive in?

22. Where do you see your career in three to five years?

23. Tell me about a major challenge you’ve faced at work and how you overcame it.

24. Tell me about a failure you experienced and how you handled it.

25. Is there anything we should know about you that’s not on your resume?

26. There’s a gap in your employment history — why?

27. Why should we hire you?

28. What salary range are you looking for?

29. Do you have any questions for us?

[SEE: The Fastest-Growing Jobs in America.]

1. Tell Me About Yourself

While this may sound like an open-ended question that you can answer however you like, don’t let its simplicity fool you into disclosures that are too casual and personal. The interviewer is trying to get a sense of what kind of person you are and what you value to determine your level of professionalism and how well you would fit on the team.

How to Answer “Tell Me About Yourself”

You might start by focusing on who you are as a professional, since this is a job interview, after all. Tell a bit about your educational and career background and some key facts about your job history. While it’s OK (and perhaps expected) to share something that’s a little bit personal and unique to you, be careful about what exactly you reveal here. Think in terms of sharing one of your key hobbies or interests outside of work — for example, playing volleyball, cooking or volunteering. Be cautious about revealing details about your age or family status that some employers may be unintentionally biased against.

2. How Did You Find Out About the Position?

The employer is trying to see if one of their marketing methods reached you, or if you found out about the job through some other way.

How to Answer “How Did You Find Out About the Position?”

Whether you learned of the opening from a colleague, online or through a job ad, share the method with the interviewer. You may get brownie points if you happened to have learned about the job from the company’s website. If you took extra time to learn about the organization while applying, be sure to mention it.

3. Why Are You Looking for a New Job?

If you already have a job and are conducting a job search, the interviewer might be naturally curious as to what has prompted your desire for change.

How to Answer “Why Are You Looking for a New Job?”

Be careful here, as revealing a dissatisfaction with your current company, boss, or co-workers could serve as a red flag for the hiring team. Instead of complaining about grievances you may have about your current position, focus your answer on your desire for greater opportunities and career growth.

For example, you might say: “While I’ve been excited about the opportunities I’ve had in my current position, I’m looking for a company that I can move to the next level with. I am very invested in this industry and want to be with a key industry player to further my career growth.”

4. Why Do You Want to Work Here?

Hiring managers use this question to try to gauge a candidate’s motives for seeking the opportunity. While your primary reason for applying may be financially motivated, this would not be the emphasis to share during the interview.

How to Answer “Why Do You Want to Work Here?”

Think of other reasons you chose to throw your hat in the ring at the specific organization. Maybe you like the company’s culture that you read about online, or maybe you’ve heard from current employees that they love their jobs. If so, spend some time figuring out the best words to use to explain that.

Another good answer could tie back to your career interests. For example, if you’re a marketer applying for an entry-level marketing position, you might focus on sharing what it is about the company that makes you feel this would be the right place to develop your career skills in your field.

5. What Interests You About This Job?

This question may seem tricky, since you may feel you don’t know enough yet about the job as simply a candidate and not a hired hand. But you can prepare for this query in advance by doing some due diligence before your interview.

How to Answer “What Interests You About This Job?”

Spend at least an hour reviewing the details of the company’s job description and determining how to draw links between what the manager wants and the talents you bring to the table. You might even bring a printout of the job description to the interview to refer to specific language as you answer this question. Point out to your interviewer that you have been thinking a lot about the specific needs of the position and how your background and experiences make you the right fit for it.

6. What Motivated You to Apply for This Role?

Early in the interview, you may be asked about why you felt drawn to the position. If the question is phrased to determine your motivation for applying to the role, the interviewer may be trying to determine whether your interest in the role is more self-serving or if it stems from a desire to tackle tough industry challenges that can help the company.

How to Answer “What Motivated You To Apply for This Role?”

A smart way to answer this question is to focus on the latter. Sure, you likely have multiple reasons for wanting the job, but highlight the ones that the company cares about, such as making an impact and helping the team reach their goals, emphasizing that your interest in the company itself was a motivating factor.

You might say something like: “At this point in my career, I have a ton of energy to solve complex problems, and our industry is at an exciting time for this. I chose to apply to your company specifically because of your industry-leading role, plus I love what I’ve heard about your culture.”

7. What Kind of Impact Do You Hope to Have in Your Next Role?

Hiring teams want to know what candidates can do for them, and this impact question gives you the perfect opportunity to impress them with your drive.

How to Answer “What Kind of Impact Do You Hope to Have in Your Next Role?”

The specific type of impact you emphasize will depend on the specific industry or job you’re applying to. But in general, you can stress that you want to build on the skills you bring to the table and that you hope to leverage your experience from your last position to help the company achieve its goals.

For example: “One of my biggest goals that I plan to achieve with my next employer is to take all of my learnings from my career to date to create something big. The first part of my career has been about understanding as much as I can about the industry, and now I finally feel like I’m in the perfect place to have a significant impact in whatever key projects I’m working on.”

8. What Do You Find the Most Stressful About This Type of Role?

This is another potential minefield that you should answer with care, rather than off the cuff. Interviewers are looking for examples that suggest you handle stress well. Your goal is to show that you do know how to manage stressful situations with grace.

How to Answer “What Do You Find the Most Stressful About This Type of Role?”

A winning response might be: “It’s true that this role can be stressful, and I’ve certainly dealt with my share of it in previous positions. If I had to say what the biggest stressor is, I’d pinpoint timing issues. I’m a stickler for meeting deadlines and delivering to my team what I say I will — so when it comes to crunch time, I feel the pressure until I’ve crossed the finish line.”

9. Have You Used Our Product/Service?

You don’t want to be caught off guard by this question having not tried out the product or service that you would be working with.

How to Answer “Have You Used Our Product/Service?”

Knowing that this is a common interview question, you would be wise to provide the company’s tools a test drive prior to your interview, if at all possible. When trying it out, take notes about your experience and share specifics during your interview.

10. How Would You Boost Our Product/Service?

The employer wants to know specifics on the previous question and likely wants to gauge how you provide constructive feedback.

How to Answer “How Would You Boost Our Product/Service?”

It takes a bit of diplomacy to navigate your response here, since you don’t want to imply with your answer that the product or service is substandard. By coming up with a good idea here — for example, for an additional feature or other bells and whistles that customers might enjoy — you could earn points with the interviewers for your creativity.

11. What’s Your Greatest Strength?

The challenge of answering the standard “greatest strength” question is that you want to strike the right balance between sounding confident but not arrogant.

How to Answer “What Your Greatest Strength?”

The strength that you share need not be related directly to the position that you’re applying for, but should be clearly tied to an attribute that the specific employer would value.

For example, highlighting your effectiveness working with teams and groups is something that would come in handy in most jobs, so this would be a good choice to share if it’s true for you.

12. What’s Your Greatest Weakness?

The best answer to this has changed over time. While the go-to response used to be to choose an area that shows your tendency to “care too much” about your job, this response has been overused. If you try it, you may receive pushback from a savvy interviewer who wants you to share a true weakness.

How to Answer “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?”

An effective approach is to share something legitimate that isn’t your top strength — but also share some concrete ways that you are working on improving in that area.

13. What Do You Hope to Learn and Contribute in Your Next Role?

This question is a variation of the “impact” question, but it’s more targeted at whether you value learning and development, and the contribution you see yourself making in the role, as opposed to what you hope to personally accomplish. Employers are looking for new hires who are eager to learn and be of service to the company.

How to Answer “What Do You Hope to Learn and Contribute in Your Next Role?”

You could say: “I’m always interested in learning new things about our industry, particularly in relation to my own role and self-improvement to help my team. I’m hoping to learn and ultimately master the job, and beyond that, to stay current and keep learning so I can continue to bring value. That way, I can maximize my contribution in my department and eventually, across the company.”

14. What Would You Do in the First 30, 60 and 90 Days on the Job?

Active listening will come in handy here. This common interview question may be hard to prepare for in advance, since details that you learn during the interview itself about the employer’s priorities may help you formulate a better, more specific answer.

How to Answer “What Would You Do in the First 30, 60 and 90 Days on the Job?”

If you need a refresher about any points that your interviewers have raised in terms of their priorities, or if they haven’t shared them yet, it’s fair to ask for clarification before you begin answering. Knowing what the hiring manager cares most about is key to how you should frame your plan for what you would do during your initial months in the position.

[Phone Interview Questions to Prepare For]

15. What Professional Achievement Are You Most Proud Of?

While you may actually consider saving someone’s life as a lifeguard in high school to be your proudest moment on the job, don’t take this question literally unless you are actually interviewing to be a lifeguard.

How to Answer “What Professional Achievement Are You Most Proud Of?”

The correct approach to describing your greatest professional achievement is to hone in on the position that you’re applying for and find a relevant experience in your past career arsenal to showcase something that the hiring manager would hope to find in an employee. An equally smart strategy is to focus on a general accomplishment that would impress any employer, such as creating a tactic to increase your department’s productivity.

16. Do You Consider Yourself to Be a Team Player? Why or Why Not?

Be careful here, as interpreting this question too literally can backfire on you. Companies are asking this question because teamwork is essential, on some level, in most roles — even those where you’re primarily an individual contributor. If you don’t consider yourself a team player and prefer to work on your own, it’s best to be diplomatic in how you explain this. Stating your preference is one thing, but flat out saying that you aren’t a team player will backfire and provide you a red flag from most interviewers.

How to Answer “Do You Consider Yourself to Be a Team Player?”

If you truly hate teamwork and want to be upfront about it, try stating something along these lines: “I’m honestly an amazing individual contributor since in this role, focus is so important — but I also understand and very much value partnership and collaboration. I’m a team player when it helps everyone achieve our goals, and I’m also very self-motivated to work individually as needed.”

17. What Would Former Co-Workers Say About You?

When asking this question, the hiring committee is trying to gain a sense of your personality, work style and how well you work with others.

How to Answer “What Would Former Co-Workers Say About You?”

While not every past colleague may have reacted to you in the same way, focus on finding commonalities in how people have perceived your best assets. If it is in fact true, then you can’t go wrong with indicating that past co-workers and bosses have found you to be a dependable, trustworthy, conscientious and deadline-driven team player.

18. What Annoys You Most About Working With Others?

A variation of the “teamwork” question, this tricky question requires finesse. The employer may be hoping to hear about your pet peeves, or what triggers you the most about your past colleagues — but resist the urge to dish on this. As tempting as it may be to replay your worst work relationship ever, pointing out how annoying this collaboration was, this approach would be a big mistake.

How to Answer “What Annoys You Most About Working With Others?”

Instead, take the high road and keep your answer more general. You might say: “There are always personalities to deal with at work — nobody’s perfect and everyone has their own way of doing things. Sure, co-workers can be annoying sometimes, but I try to notice if I feel annoyed and think about where the other person is coming from. For example, the thing that used to annoy me the most was the way some colleagues didn’t use punctuation in their written communications, like emails, which made the message sound unfriendly. I later realized, though, that this is just a style preference of mine, and it didn’t necessarily reflect any negative intentions from the person who wrote the message.”

19. How Would You Describe Your Work Style?

Anyone considering hiring you may want to gain a basic understanding of what your work style is, so that they can determine whether that style will be a fit for the position. Work styles that many employers value are collaborative, team-oriented, detail-oriented, conscientious and supportive

How to Answer “How Would You Describe Your Work Style?”

There are no right or wrong answers here, though if you know something in advance about the types of qualities that this particular employer or company values, then that can help inform your response. For example, if you’re applying for a sales position, it’s more important to emphasize that you’re an energetic go-getter with people skills than if you have a work-from-home job as a graphic designer that you can do independently on your own schedule, where the work style of detail-oriented conscientiousness may be more valued by the hiring team.

20. What Type of Manager Do You Work Best With?

This is a very difficult question to answer when it’s being asked by a potential new boss whose working style you don’t yet know. The best approach here is to keep your comments general, so that you don’t end up describing the opposite of who the interviewer is. Another smart strategy is to express your flexibility in working with a wide range of personalities and management styles.

How to Answer “What Type of Manager Do You Work Best With?”

You might say: “I’ve been fortunate to work with a many different types of managers, and knock on wood, but I’ve gotten along with all of them so far! I value managers who communicate about their needs and the needs of their department, so that I can do my best to help them reach their goals. Beyond that, I think it takes time to adjust to a manager’s style, and I’m happy to work with my manager to create a productive partnership.”

21. What Type of Work Environment Do You Thrive In?

Much like the “type of manager” question, candidates need to step carefully when answering this one in an interview. If you end up describing the opposite work environment than the company offers, then you’ve just talked yourself out of the job. To avoid this, it’s best to frame your answer around flexibility. If you’re offered the job, then you can always explore specific setups and preferences then.

How to Answer “What Type of Work Environment Do You Thrive In?”

If it’s early in your interview process, an open-ended response is a safe bet: “I’ve worked in many different settings, and lots of different company cultures. I’ve found that as long as I have a supportive team and manager, and work that I love, the setting isn’t a deal breaker. I do love what I’ve learned about your company’s culture and work environment, though, and I think I would be a great fit.”

22. Where Do You See Your Career in 3-5 Years?

This question requires some diplomacy, since indicating that you see yourself in the hiring manager’s position might not be well-taken. It would also, in most cases, be a faux pas to share your dream of launching a startup, particularly if it’s in a different field altogether from the job for which you are currently interviewing.

How to Answer “Where Do You See Your Career in a Few Years?”

A more prudent answer would be to emphasize a vision of yourself making an impact in your industry and mentoring more junior members of your team as you move up the ladder.

23. Tell Me About a Major Challenge You’ve Faced at Work and How You Overcame It

Like with most interview questions, it’s important to tread carefully and phrase your answers in a positive way. This is particularly true with a question like this one that requires addressing difficulties. Your goal should be to share an experience that showcases your ability to persevere and move beyond obstacles without revealing details that could paint you or your colleagues in a negative light.

How to Answer “Tell Me About a Major Challenge You’ve Faced at Work and How You Overcame It”

While your answer will be unique to your experience, here’s a sample of how to strike this balance: “I once was faced with the challenging situation of needing to generate a key deliverable to the company’s top client in a tight timeframe that made it impossible for me to do everything I wanted. I solved this by recruiting some co-workers from a different department to lend a hand so that we could create the best product possible under the circumstances, and we ended up impressing both my boss and the client.”

24. Tell Me About a Failure You Experienced at Work and How You Handled It

Like the challenge question above, it can be tricky to talk about professional failures and career disappointments. But many employers will understandably want to know how you react in less than optimum circumstances, so you should be prepared to address the question of failure during your interview.

How to Answer “Tell Me About a Failure and How You Handled It”

When discussing missteps, always plan to end on a positive note. And avoid oversharing personal details to make your point; keep it professional and top-level rather than going into the nitty-gritty about the failure.

Here’s a possible response, which you can tailor to your own circumstances: “At my last job, my teammate’s department had been relying on my department to collaborate on a goal they had developed independently of me. I had initially agreed to help out, but quickly realized that doing so would jeopardize my own department’s deliverables to the CEO that week, so I had to pull out of the collaboration before we’d really gotten started. This felt like a failure on my part since I wished I had pushed back initially about my limited bandwidth rather than agreeing on working together. I apologized to my colleague and she understood when I explained about my own deadlines.”

[Read: Questions to Ask During a Job Interview]

25. Is There Anything We Should Know About You That’s Not on Your Resume?

Again, speak carefully here … This question represents an opportunity to share something personal about yourself and make a connection with the hiring team, but avoid letting it all hang out. Managers use this question as a “get to know you,” and it’s a bit of a wild card since it’s very open ended. Your best approach is to stick with fairly neutral subjects rather than go out on a limb.

How to Answer “Is There Anything We Should Know About You That’s Not on Your Resume?”

While your answer will be very individual based on your own interests, you might share something about either a work achievement that you haven’t had a chance to share yet, and/or a hobby or interest that helps the hiring team see you as a well-rounded person.

Try something like this: “One thing I wanted to be sure to share is that I just joined the Marketer’s Alliance and volunteered for a committee — that just happened so it’s not on my resume yet. Also, I’m a huge gardener. I love to spend time on the weekends rebooting in the garden so that I come back fresh and ready to go, and I find it gives me great balance.”

26. There’s a Gap in Your Employment History — Why?

Astute managers will scrutinize your resume to see if you have a consecutive employment history, and will quickly pinpoint any gaps. If you have a gap in your resume, you need to prepare in advance to explain why you weren’t working for that period of time.

How to Explain Gaps in Employment:

Honesty is the best policy here, and many employers will understand that in times when the job market is tight, some candidates may have gaps in their work history. It helps if you can add some things that you did during your break from employment that facilitated your career goals, such as any volunteer work, education or training that you may have done.

A sample answer: During that period, my entire company faced layoffs, and we had short notice about the fact. I quickly set to work on my job search and landed a position pretty quickly, but it’s true there’s a small gap in my employment history because of that. During the time that I was job hunting, I also took an online course on [add industry topic] to learn a new skill that would help in my next position.

27. Why Should We Hire You?

You should be prepared to respond to this classic interview query no matter what type of position you’re applying for, so it’s a good idea to prepare and practice your response to it.

How to Answer “Why Should We Hire You?”

If this question comes early in the meeting, use it as a chance to hit on the most relevant points of your experience and skill set, pointing out how well your background fits with the job requirements. If it arrives toward the end of the interview, then take the opportunity to recap the highlights of what you would bring to the company, as well as how you would leverage your abilities to solve the employer’s biggest problems.

28. What Are Your Salary Expectations?

If this is your initial interview, err on the side of caution with this question by avoiding specifics. A smart tactic is to switch the question around and ask if a salary band has been identified for the job based on your experience level and location.

Some hiring teams save the most anxiety-producing Topic for last: money. Some managers may be hoping that you’ll share numbers based on your prior salary, even though you aren’t obligated to do this — and it’s best to avoid doing so too early in the interview process. You’ll have more leverage as a candidate if you can get the employer to share the job’s salary band first. Otherwise, any number you put out there might end up either too low, pigeonholing you at a lower range than might have been offered, or too high, which might convince the hiring team that they can’t afford you.

How to Answer “What Are Your Salary Expectations?”

An answer like this can help you keep your options open, and hopefully lead to the manager being the first one to share a salary number: “That’s a great question, and I’m hoping you can help guide me on this one. Is it possible to share the range for this position?”

If they won’t share, stay guarded and try to wrap up the discussion by saying something like, “I understand. I’d like to keep this question open to learn more about the job and your needs, and revisit it later in the process.”

29. Do You Have Any Questions for Us?

While you may feel like wrapping up the interview experience as soon as possible, answering with, “No, I think you’ve covered everything!” won’t impress most hiring managers. Instead, you should come prepared to ask some standard questions of the interviewers, which shows that you’re interested in learning as much as you can about the position and company.

Some strong questions to ask include:

— What is your favorite thing about working here?

— What are the three biggest challenges that I would face in the position if I’m hired?

— Would I be working directly with you, and what are the other key departments that I’d be working with?

— What is the company culture like, and what do employees like most about it?

More from U.S. News

The Fastest Growing Jobs in America

10 Jobs to Consider for a Career Change

Mistakes to Avoid on a Thank-You Email

29 Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 05/17/23: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

Tue, 16 May 2023 08:00:00 -0500 en text/html https://wtop.com/news/2023/05/common-job-interview-questions-and-how-to-answer-them/