Product Interviews: how to be less nervous

that's the number one mistake people make for interviews keep watching because in this video we're gonna share you some tips that you can use in your upcoming interviews to come off and communicate more confidently and be less nervous so you can say i've got the job hey guys i'm diana and i'm a senior product manager at a large tech company based in silicon valley california in this video we're going to cover four things today first we're going to talk about the best way to prepare secondly getting into the right mindset third how to communicate and

fourth some strategy and how you can get confident right before the interview so we're starting off with preparation preparation before the interview is going to be your best friend and please do not wing it because that's the number one mistake people make for interviews either because they don't have time or they let their egos get to them and say like i can do this so how do we prepare the first thing you can do is to gather the questions that you're expected to answer you can either start off by asking the recruiter or hiring manager

check glassdoor or ask friends that you might know that work at the companies and the last resort might be reaching out to someone at the company on linkedin because if you don't know what questions they're going to ask how the heck are you going to prepare second part of preparation is the practice answering the questions for behavioral questions like tell me about a time you want to brainstorm stories ahead of time and then organize it into a structure like the car structure that i talked about which i'll link in the description below and you'll find

in the card above which goes into how you should organize your answer and what are the key things that you want to hit in delivering a good answer third thing you want to score yourself and track progress so it's not just about sharing an answer and telling an answer you want to give a good answer and hence you have to assess for yourself from 1 to 10 how was that answer was that a 2 or was that an 8 and if it was a 2 you might ask how do i use some of the strategies

that diana talks about to get it to an eight and there you wanna ask yourself what score do you wanna hit before you're confident that you can pass the interview and a lot of times that's closer to an eight and above number four is you wanna practice live so finding other people that you can mock interview with using other companies that you might care less about and set up interviews with them or you can even talk to yourself to a camera and record yourself and then look back at the recording to see oh where did

i mess up did i sound confident basically gather feedback either from someone you're not interviewing with or watching the video yourself and look for areas of improvement and then incorporate them and the last thing you want to do in preparation is to learn about the company and this means learn about the products heck even use some of the products that the company is selling or providing and establish an opinion on it maybe there are some products that you hate and maybe there are some products that you love and for the products you hate think of

how you might improve the product you also want to read about the company's values and missions to get you excited about why you might join the company because they might ask you a question like why are you interested in joining said company you might also read reviews on glassdoor on what it's like to work there and based on what you read in the reviews they can serve as good questions to ask in your follow-up question at the end of the interview so i'm thinking about creating another video to cover some commonly asked interview questions so

comment below and let me know what are some common interview questions you want me to cover and make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss when that video comes out next we want to talk about developing the right mindset for interviews and this starts off with having constructive thoughts a lot of the times our thoughts work against us and that is what causes the nervous feelings because we're thinking thoughts like oh i'm gonna bomb this or i'm so not prepared and those feelings trigger a lot of adrenaline and that jitters that you

feel and it's not very positive and again not conducive to helping you succeed during the interview at all so you have to counteract that with more constructive narratives for example if what is triggered in your brain is oh i'm gonna bomb this you have to counteract that with another thought telling yourself well i've spent the last two months preparing so i've done all the preparation work to make sure that i don't totally bump or let's say you didn't prepare that much and you can't use that argument you might say well it's not the end of

the world if i don't get this job because i still have my current job which i like i can always re-interview in six months or i actually have a couple of other companies lined up that i care more about to interview for so these counteractive constructive thoughts help you be less nervous and kind of almost care less which have you noticed in the interviews that you care less you end up performing flawlessly also sometimes here you might feel up powerless because in the interview you're being evaluated so you often put the interviewer on a pedestal

but instead realize that you're interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing you which means if it's not a good fit based on your interview experience let's say the interviewer was not nice to you they weren't very collaborative you might realize you have power there to also say well no i don't want to work at this company so take power back into your own hand so the second way to develop the right mindset is prepare for the worst because sometimes they might happen and hence you have a backup plan to know how to react if

it happens because let's face reality sometimes actually a lot of times you get interviewers who just don't care or who are just jerked as people and if we don't prepare for that in advance at least prepare a mentality we're gonna be shocked when it happens and we're gonna feel really bad hence i use the if then method and this if then method is me thinking through the different scenarios beforehand and how i might react so that way when i'm put in the situation i already have a plan to react versus needing to think in the

moment and reacting it allows me to be proactive versus reactive so an example is if the interviewer seems this interested then i might try to engage them again first and if it still doesn't work i might just assume and shrug off that they've had a busy day or if the interviewer is a jerk then i'm just going to assume it's more about how they are versus how i am and i just won't take it too personal and the third part of developing the right mindset is don't take it personal whatever happens during the interview whatever

happens after the interview don't let it be a reflection of your self-worth if you don't do well in the interview that doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't do great on the job the interview is such a small glimpse of who you are so don't use whatever happens from the interview as a reflection of you as a person or you as a professional if you get rejected realize they might reject you for reasons that are beyond your control for example one time when i was interviewing for google again well first i got a yes and then i

got a no but then no was because they got rid of the role and another time i initially got a yes and then got a no because they decided to go with someone that was more convenient to hire because that person already had a work visa so you see those are not signifiers that i'm a bad candidate it's just signifiers of companies put themselves first now we're going to talk about how to communicate so my first tip here is always be structured if you're given a case problem or if you're given a question try to

break it down for example you might say something like how i want to approach this is first i want to talk about thing one then thing two then thing three or you wanna make sure you communicate transitions for example now i'm moving on to my second point this is to help the interviewer make it easy for them to digest information so that they can take notes and it's easier to listen to the next point is to pause and pace yourself here most times interviewees immediately react to a question think about it the first thing that

pops in your head isn't always the best answer so give yourself time and space to think thoroughly through and answer before you respond and a lot of people don't do this because they're scared to ask for time they think it's awkward if i take a whole minute oh my god a whole minute of silence but let's pretend that you're the interviewer and i ask do you mind if i take a minute to think through this and jot down some thoughts and present it back to you so as an interviewer how would you feel you'd probably

think no big deal and another symptom of people not pacing themselves is when they speak too quick and that is also detrimental because as an interviewer i'm jotting down notes and later i have to represent you in the hiring committee but if i can't understand what you're saying because you're talking so fast at the speed of light and talking like this they're not going to be able to get the signal that they're looking for so pause in different sections and also pause to allow the interviewer to ask you any clarifying questions that they might have

and the last part of how to communicate is to write it down so communication yes mostly is verbal during the interview but don't be afraid to jot down notes either on a whiteboard or on paper or in a google doc if that helps you organize your thoughts lastly we're going to talk about how to get confident and this part's fun so the first step that can help you build confidence during the interview is to build a rapport with the interviewer and here you can make a good first impression by starting off the conversation building rapport

so asking things like how's your day going how's your weekend do you do anything fun or how's your week going any highlights so this invites them in to talk a little bit about themselves to then allow you to chime in and build rapport with them and connect on something if they're the ones to first ask you how you're doing don't just say a simple answer like oh i'm doing fine but give them something that they can chew on to build rapport with you so you might tell them something interesting about your week where you went

fly fishing they may be like oh that's interesting what the heck is fly fishing and then you guys spend a couple minutes where you're teaching them so this helps you be more confident because when you connect with people you're building those positive emotions the feel-good hormones like serotonin or oxytocin starts being brought in to then help you feel more at ease during the enemy at the same time when you're building those feelings of connection the interviewer is probably going to be kinder to you and want to help you more because we want to help people

that we feel a connection with the second thing to getting confident is to build positive feelings before the interview so i mentioned what causes those nerves and jitters and the butterfly feeling in your stomach comes from a hormonal action basically you're getting adrenaline pumped into your bloodstream and what does adrenaline do adrenaline is a fight or flight hormone and adrenaline comes as a reaction when your mind is thinking uh oh i'm in danger so these hormones are not conducive to performance because you're either thinking okay should i escape and i'm sure many of you during

interviews are just like get me out of here get me out of here or i guess fighting but you're not gonna fight the interviewer like the aggression is not what's needed so you need to counteract that with feel-good hormones like dopamine or serotonin and how you build those is before the interview doing things that you enjoy for example you might enjoy playing with your dog that definitely builds a lot of serotonin for oxytocin one of those feel good hormones playing with their kids doing things that generate laughter watching something that's funny or maybe you do

something that you're good at so you get into maybe a flow state all of these things can build that positive energy that you need beforehand to perform well on the interview and lastly and very importantly i want you to remember your value so we talked about earlier to not connect your self-worth to the results or what happens in the interview and here how you can combat that is to realize well i have a lot to offer too so even if the company doesn't hire me i have so many examples where i've performed well in my

past companies i have other companies reaching out to me wanting to hire me so keeping this in mind can also make you stand up confidently and be like okay if this company doesn't want me so what so you can do all these things we talked about like building positive energy and getting into the right mindset but again if you do not prepare it's going to be hard for those things to work if you didn't do the upfront preparation so check out this video where i go through what's the best way to prepare for interviews especially

behavioral questions like tell me about a time x not only should you have stories prepared but you should organize them in a certain way and also cover certain things to come out with a standout answer and i will see you guys in the next video