DBH - Behavioral Flashcards
Tell Me About Yourself
I am orginally from Louisiana and went Southern University. I have an MBA and MPA and a CBI. I’ve been in the the finance industry for over nine years, primarily working in financial operations and M&A. Currently, I am a Sr. M&A Analyst and Project Manager at Johnson Consulting Group and a M&A Management Consultant.
Before that, I was the Head of M&A at Dragonflip and a founding member of the financial operations team at BBSI. While I enjoyed the work I did at BBSI and Dragonflip,I have become increasingly interested in in-house M&A and have been looking for the right opportunity. I am so excited about the position at Integris because I can apply my M&A and finance experience to the company’s in-house corporate development team.
Why Do You Want This Job?
a. I like that Integris is brining innovative solutions to managed IT services. It would be exciting to learn more about Integris’ service offerings and operations and facilitate smooth integrations of acquired companies to both enhance customer experience and align with the company’s long term strategy.
b. The position aligns with a number of my skills. It requires business acumen (I have an MBA and MPA and analyze businesses operations and finances every day as an analyst), communication skills, problem solving, critical thinking, and attention to detail. I have also built an M&A practice and financial operations section from the ground up.
c. I have always wanted to work in on the buy-side and I am excited about this position because it is the ideal intersection of my experience and interest in more strategic M&A.
What’s Your Experience in M&A?
My first full-time role in M&A was at Flippa. Its basically a M&A marketplace for digital assets. I worked as analyst on the sell-side to manage transactions for businesses in the $100k - $2M range. This included finding new sell-side clients, analyzing the businesses, creating marketing packages, finding buyers, managing due diligence, and closing the deal.
In 2016 I moved to Dealflow Brokerage and performed similar tasks for businesses in the $750k - $4M dollar range. I had increased responsibilities and also contributed to strategic direction.
In 2021, I was hired as the Head of M&A at Dragonflip. A boutique M&A firm for ecommerce businesses. I was hired to grow Dragonflip’s presence in the US/UK and build the M&A team. In addition to managing a range of M&A activities, I spoke at conferences and on podcasts about ecommerce M&A and I led cross functional teams within the company.
Currently, I am an M&A Analyst/Project Manager at Johnson Consulting Group and an M&A Management Consultant. I manage the entire M&A due diligence and integration process. The extent varies by client. Some clients just want tools to help them manage the integration internally while other ceede the entire responsibility.
What Financial Tools have you developed in your past experience?
At BBSI, I was a founding member of the Financial Operations team.
Because there was no foundation, I had to create a number of budgets, forecasts, models and KPIs to analyze the company and support decision making
I developed a model for our pipeline and accompanying graphics that helped our executives and sales team understand our current pipeline performance and how many leads and prospects we needed to achieve our new customer and revenue goals. This tool increased our conversion rate by 10%.
I also developed an executive dashboard with a number of relevant KPIs for the COO and Director of Finance. This helped improve executive decision making because they could quickly understand how the company was performing.
Why should we hire you?
I have extensive education and experience in the business, legal, and finance sectors. I have also built a financial analysis structure and M&A practice from the ground up. Through these 9 years I have gathered all the practical knowledge about the field and through several ups and downs, I learned adaptability and negotiating skills.
I am interested in Integris’ mission and am eager to find and integrate promising acquisition targets that align with the long-term strategy.
I have experience working independently and with a diverse group of clients and I would be excited to assist with other initiatives as well.
My financial operations experience will help me contribute to post-acquisition operations/analysis as well.
What Are Your Greatest Professional Strengths?
Diligent/Hardworking- Happy to work as long as necessary to get the job done.
Time Management- I worked full-time throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. With the limited time available I had to make every minute count. Somehow I managed to have a social life as well.
Problem Solving- The brokerage of a business is an exercise in problem solving and crisis management.
Cool Under Pressure
Ambition
Curiosity
Describe to me your communication style and why you think your style will be a fit here.
When it comes to communication, I am typically open and direct. At work, I am usually communicating for a reason (usually to obtain information), I like to get the information I need and get back to work.
I prefer to communicate via email because it creates a record for me to refer to.
I believe this will fit well with Integris because I will be working remotely and email/slack will be the primary communication method. Everyone is busy, so my direct communication style will hopefully make conversations more efficient.
Tell me about your ideal workplace culture.
My ideal work environment is one that is centered around working as a team and allows for the use and growth of employee skills.
I like to be given a task/goal and then have leeway to go about achieving it. I also like working on cross-functional teams so I can get experience in a number of disciplines and learn from my coworkers.
If there is an option to work remotely or travel, that would be great too.
When have you been asked to perform a function or complete a task in which you had little or no experience in doing?
When I joined BBSI, I was the first member of the financial operations team and there were virtually no systems in place to assess operations.
I was asked to build a model that would monitor the company headcount expenses and help the COO and branch managers make hiring decisions.
Because I had no experience creating such a model, I started the process by conducting significant research on the various methodologies that have been used to forecast headcount. After I found a methodology that I could use, I conducted an analysis of BBSI’s headcount expense trends for the previous 3 years and began creating the model. After I completed the model, I back-tested it with company data and ran the results by a few branch managers to determine if the results were realistic.
Tell me about a time when you took the initiative to improve work related procedures.
As a M&A Project Manager at JCG, one of my major tasks is to oversee the smooth facilitation of due diligence and enusure that the acquring company is setup for a successful integration.
After analyzing the process in place, I realized that a number of acquisitions were stalling during the due diligence phase because various tasks were not being completed in a timely manner.
To rectify this, I instituted bi-weekly meetings with the relevant parties. This gave us an opportunity to provide status updates, assign ownership over tasks, and address any issues.
The meetings also introduced a sense of urgency/accountability to the process.
What is your greatest professional achievement?
SBF Case
Required review of over 45 depositions
Millions of pages of exhibits
Reports for the NTSB, CPUC, and operations/management consultants. I have no background in this area, so I had to research the field in order to understand the material I was reading.
All had to be done under significant time restraints.
What are your goals for the next 5- 10 years?
I’m excited about this position because in five years, Id like to be someone with expertise in strategic M&A, transaction advisory and acquisition integration, and I know Ill have an opportunity to gain that expertise here.
Eventually, I would like to be Head of Corporate Development or Strategy, so I am also really excited to take on more managerial responsibilities in the next few years and potentially build a high-performing M&A team.
Describe a time when you had to work exceptionally hard to provide great service to a customer or client. What did you do and what was the outcome?
Hoffman Example
Daily meetings
Constant follow up/communication
Deal closed
Tell me about a time when you’ve had to work with difficult stakeholders, and how you handled it.
When I worked as a business development analyst, I had a supervisor that was very hands on and one could describe him as a micromanager. He insisted on having daily meetings and wanted progress reports every Wednesday and Friday.
My coworkers and I grew frustrated because nothing really got accomplished in the meetings and they along with the reports took up valuable time (time was literally money in this case)
During a one on one meeting, I brought up these issues in a non-confrontational manner and asked why we needed to have daily meeting AND file a report. Turns out he had a report that he needed to file with the COO every Friday.
I suggested that we have a meeting every Tuesday and file a report every Thursday. The team would spend more time on business development and he would still get the necessary information in time. He agreed to implement the new strategy for a trial period two weeks later.
What are your salary expectations?
I’m open to discussing what you believe to be a fair salary for the position.
However, based on my previous salary, my knowledge of the industry, and my understanding of this geographic area, I’d expect a salary in the general range of $165 to $1175k. Again, I’m open to discussing these numbers with you.
