Interview Tips with Victoria Brown - Savic Motorcycles
Interview Tips with Victoria Brown - Chief Growth Officer at Savic Motorcycles
Job interviews are nerve-wracking. Candidates research the company, rehearse their answers, and walk in hoping for the best. But after sitting on both sides of the table, one thing becomes clear - most of what candidates stress about isn't what gets them hired or rejected. We asked Victoria Brown, Chief Growth Officer at Savic Motorcycles, to share her top four tips on what actually matters in the interview room - and how to nail it.
Connect on a Human Level
An interview is not a performance. It’s a mutual assessment.You’re asking yourself, “Do I want to work with this person?”And the hiring manager is asking the exact same thing.It’s easy to get caught up in the theatre of interviews (delivering perfect answers, remembering key messages, ticking competency boxes), and forget to show who you actually are. From the hiring side, this matters more than most candidates realise because if someone is flat, unfriendly, or disengaged in a first phone screening, it’s almost always a no for me.
I’m thinking: Do I want 1:1s with this person? Would I look forward to their calls?When things get hard, do I want to be in the trenches with them? I’ve hired someone before who had minor technical skill gaps, but they were warm, proactive, punctual, and clearly showed personality. The decision was easy.
Skills can be developed. Attitude and rapport are much harder to teach.Before your interview, remind yourself: “I’m not here to perform. I’m here to show what I’d be like to work with.”
Answer the Question Directly
This sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly common for candidates not to answer the question being asked. If you’re unsure what they want, clarify. For example, I once asked a candidate:“In your first week, what CRM capabilities would be non-negotiable to set up for a sales team?” They explained how a CRM works, but that’s not what I asked.
A candidate I did hire handled this beautifully. She structured her answers in two phases: Q: “In your first week, what CRM capabilities would you prioritise?” A: “Top three priorities would be X, Y and Z. If helpful, I can walk you through how I’ve implemented that before.”
Clear, structured and direct - and opens the door to showing more of your capability. In an interview, listen carefully, pause before you answer (give yourself time to construct the answer), and start it with a clear headline. Then expand.
Use Specific, Concrete Examples
You have limited time in an interview. Don’t waste it on generic statements.
If the job description says: conceptualise events, deliver campaigns, report on performance you should walk in knowing exactly which examples you’ll use to demonstrate each of those. If you say, “I’ve managed events before,” you're expecting the interviewer to fill in the gaps and take your word for it.
If you were up against a candidate who answered with: “I conceptualised a 200-person launch event, managed pre-production and supplier negotiation, oversaw bump-in and on-site execution, and delivered post-event reporting showing a 32% uplift in qualified leads.” You'd be behind.
The second answer tells me: you’ve done it, you get the full lifecycle, you measure outcomes. Simple formula to use: Situation, What you did, The result [bonus points for what you improved next time]. That level of specificity dramatically increases credibility.
Reduce Their Uncertainty
I think it was Kim Scott who said that your job in an interview isn’t to “sell yourself”, it’s to reduce the hiring team’s uncertainty. It's to give them complete confidence that you can do the job. Every hiring manager is thinking: “Can this person actually do the job? And will they make my life easier or harder?” Approach the interview with that mindset and it changes your tone and how you present yourself. It gives you a clear goal in the interview, and ensures you answer each question with this lens, and also ask the right questions in the interview.
One mistake I see often is candidates trying to “do the job” inside the interview. For example, diving into hyper-specific operational questions like:
“Do you have a pixel installed?” “What’s your email segmentation logic?” “Are you running xyz automation?”
Those are execution questions. Execution happens after you’re hired. In the interview, your questions should signal impact and strategic thinking instead. For example: “What would success look like in the first six months?” “Where do you feel the biggest commercial bottlenecks are right now?” “If I stepped into this role tomorrow, what would you want me to fix first?”
Those questions show maturity, commercial awareness, and leadership readiness. Use affirming language like: “I’ve done something similar before, here’s how I would approach that, if I joined, my first 30 days would look like…” When you frame answers around how you would operate in the role, it shifts the conversation from hypothetical to practical. The best interviews don’t feel like interrogations. They feel like two competent adults discussing how they might work together. If you can consistently reduce uncertainty, you make it very hard for someone to say no.
