Crack the Product Manager Interview With ‘the Dating Mindset’
Taking a diagnosis of my background -
I came to the US for College — it’s been 5 years working in the bay area — I am currently a senior product manager at a FANG company working in the field conventionally named “Artificial Intelligence.”
I happened to have completed my most recent series of product manager interviews during COVID after massive layoffs started. It took me roughly two months and toward the end I obtained three intended PM offers from top tier tech companies. It wasn’t easy and lessons have been learned.
Interestingly, when interviewing under pressure, carrying a ‘dating’ mindset offered me some magic help. Hope this article can offer some mental preparation for those who are about to start their interview journey.
- First of all, it is all about Demand and Supply.
COVID made the market extremely unbalanced with excessive supply of candidates while diminishing openings for new job opportunities. The tech industry is no exception. Knowing one’s position and relative market power help to set up goals that are attainable. Sadly, it might be the same realistic way in the dating market. Before you start dating, knowing where you stand among your ‘potential competitors’ is analogously important to determine ‘whom you want to target.’
That said, you can try to strategize a bit, think about your interview sequence smartly. The first one or two are normally for practice purposes — leave your dream positions later in the process when you are entirely comfortable with the PM interview process. Now saying this makes me sound unhuman but it is of a similar fashion when it comes to dating/relationships. The first one or two partners in our lives have a low chance of becoming our long-term partners. That does not mean they are less brilliant compared to the people we meet later in our lives, simply the maturity levels are not sufficient when we are younger. Meeting the right person is important but timing plays a bigger role sometimes.
2. Get above the average.
‘Generating’ a resume above the bar to get you the interviews; It’s just like ‘creating’ an above-the-average profile to win you the first dates.
You can’t and should not make things up — however, you can always be a smart ‘marketer’ — or in my case great PMs know what to highlight, how to ‘package’ and how to ‘sell.’ Tailor your resume to the position that you are hunting for. Even if it is a very weak relationship — draw it out clearly for your interviewers — like how you try to ‘create’ similarities during the first few dates. :P
Do your homework yes, no matter how small the chance is, preparation nourishes your mind with confidence during interviews and it does make a different impression to your interviewers. Analogously, keep exercising, reading, gaining more empathy and wisdom — the effort does make a difference during dates.
3. It is a sales pitch, as always.
Interviewing and Dating are both a process of selling yourself. Iteratively brainstorm on your competitive advantages — NO MORE THAN ONE OR TWO — recruiters/hiring managers/or your first dates will only associate you with one or two distinctive qualities after the first interview or the first date, yes unfortunately.
Even if you were a jack of all traits — try to highlight at least one quality of yours that can set up an effective ‘entry barrier’ against your competitors.
4. After you get into the final round — it’s about ‘mutual fitness.’
Once you get into the final rounds — honestly, it is more about if there is a mutual fit and also frankly luck. I personally believe that beyond this point, meritocracy or personal charisma helps though only to a very limited degree.
Does your hiring manager like you? Does he/she believe that you will be a good fit both capability-wise and culture-wise to the team, to the org or to the company? At this point, it is so much more about culture fit than personal competency.
5. Stay chill — he/she does NOT have to be ‘the one.’
I hold a ‘pessimistic’ view that there does not exist ‘the one’ for any romantic relationship — there may exist a small pool of those candidates and fortune determines how many of them you can run into this life. Analogously, you will not ‘die’ if your dream company does not extend the offer to you. Timing, luck and first or second impressions are all noises which can create ‘false signals’. Thus, not winning the offer this time round or not winning your dream girl/guy after two dates means nothing! As time elapses, your dream girl/guy/job will change. When circumstances change, decisions may be altered as well. Yes, life is a marathon.
Staying chill during final round interviews is critical. But the capability of remaining chill under extreme pressure requires confidence and emotional intelligence — ‘I know I can do the job, but I also understand that it is COVID so you are probably interviewing many other candidates.” Therefore, if the result is not as expected, it should not shed any dim light on your personal competency or attractiveness.
6. Algorithms can help in real life!
There is the famous two-sides bandit problem when it comes to dating — similarly it is a two-sides selection problem when it comes to job interviews. We all want to find out about the optimal explore-exploit threshold as early as possible — but usually what ended up happening is that we spend too much time exploring that we missed the great candidates/positions/girls/guys hoping that the best is yet to come . alas human stain..
Well I do not have a solution for this problem — but Mathematician Martin Gardner has examined the dating problem in 1960 — you should date and reject the first 36.8 percent of your total group of lifetime suitors. (If you’re into math, it’s actually 1/e.) Then you follow a simple rule: You pick the next person who is better than anyone you’ve ever dated before.
Not sure if interviewers are following this guide but it is probably wise to show up in the interview queue after the company has interviewed a few candidates so that you do not get ruled out because you happen to be in the ‘exploration’ stream. You may consider this formula if you have multiple offers already and are trying to decide if you want to continue interviewing.
7. Toward the end it is a number’s game
Keep on preparing, researching, practicing and keep on interviewing! Grits is essential if you really want to land a good job offer during COVID.
Alas maybe it is the same for dating? Hopefully not, more mature people who know what they want usually do not need to play the number’s game for finding the most compatible partner.
8. It’s the beginning not the end.
The job offer or the first few successful dates are merely the beginning. We all admit that interviews can send false signals just like first few dates sometimes do not provide the correct picture about the person. The game really starts only when the new job starts/when two commit into a long-term relationship.
Finally, I do hope dating and interviewing are fundamentally different. It is unfortunate that the bay area has made many things transactional and ‘formulative’ to the degree that we can draw analogies among many things. We still hope that as for love and for serious companionship, we play less games and strategies, but trust our guts and follow our true hearts. :)
[Disclaimer] The article above represents personal views only, has no affiliation with any organization including my employer.
On the side, we are building a machine-learning based e-commerce/beauty product — check out BeautyBuy!
