Interviews are Product Research

Most people don’t interview well.

That’s okay. If you perform an activity infrequently, chances are you’re not very good at it. You’re not going to know how to fix a car engine if you’ve only opened the hood a couple of times.

Unless you’re job-hopping every six months (do not advise), the number of interviews you actually do is likely quite small. In past generations, it was common to work for the same company for 10-25 years. In those days, a person might have had only two interviews in their entire lives.

This doesn’t mean that you have to show up to an interview feeling like you’re going to horrify yourself and others by blurting out the wrong thing. Framing what an interview actually is can help you reduce anxiety, reframe your responses for success, and generally just make you feel better about the whole experience.

You are a product.

“Nobody wants a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” - various

In reality, nobody wants the hole, either. They want to hang a shelf, but really, they just want to display some pictures of their kids.

An interview is a company conducting research before they buy. We do this all the time, like when I’m in a hardware store trying to figure out what’s different about five cordless drills that all seem to do the same thing. Some companies are good at research; many are terrible. They buy the wrong thing all the time because they’ve never formalized their process. You can typically find these companies by the quality of their interview questions; lots of hypotheticals, repeat questions across multiple interviewers, “stunt” questions that make no sense, arbitrary decisions based on unrelated criteria like whether your car is dirty, etc.

You can’t control what a hiring company does. But you can control how you frame the interview itself. You’re selling yourself as a product to fulfill a need. That’s it. Free yourself from attaching your ego to the job prospect and avoid the soul-crushing rejection if the company picks somebody else. They’re not picking you as a person. They’re choosing a cordless drill.

Ensure product market fit

Do your research. Learn about the company you’re interviewing with. What is their industry? What challenges do you think they encounter? Are there specific areas where you think they can improve? Walking into an interview armed with this knowledge enables you to ask insightful questions, and insightful questions tell an interviewer three things: you’re prepared, you’re interested, and you’re already a better fit than the last candidate who had no idea where they even were.

Tailor your resume for the job you’re applying for. List relevant experience. For instance, if you’re going up for a program manager position, leave off your dishwasher position you had as a teenager.

Showcase your value at every opportunity. When listing experience on your resume, include 1-2 sentences describing the impact of your work to the company. Don’t just list the job duties, demonstrate why the company benefited by having you there. Example: “Built a program from scratch to do X, saving the business $N annually and reducing delivery delays by Y%.”

Demonstrate adding value when answering interview questions, too.

Be honest

This one should be a no-brainer, but lots of folks feel the need to lie to get a job. Padding a resume, faking credentials, bullshitting inexperienced interviewers, etc. Even if you make it through the hiring process, this will eventually backfire at some point when someone notices, “Hey, you’re not what we ordered.”

Please note: if you disagree with this, please do not contact me for help. I only work with honest people.

“Humble, hungry, and smart (about people)”

I think I stole this from Patrick Lencioni. This is what I look for when interviewing someone. Humble: do they know their gaps and share credit? Are they hungry, in that they have a growth-oriented mindset and are trying to consistently improve? Do they play well with others? Can they collaborate effectively, influence without authority, and resolve differences like adults? It’s not enough to hire for job competence if they’re going to be miserable to work with. A high-performing team is easily destroyed by hiring one toxic employee.

If you can demonstrate by example that you’re humble, hungry, and smart about people, the only thing you have left to do is demonstrate you can actually perform the role’s job duties.