My formula for sharing just the right amount of details in an interview

Hey 👋

New year, New beginning!

May this year bring you the good news in your career that you have been waiting for.

After the holidays, I am now seeing an uptick in the number of interview calls and also more offers. One of my clients is in the last round of conversations with Amazon. Hoping the best for her.

Just last week, I was working with a candidate, preparing for his Amazon PM interview.

As we did mock interviews, I noticed something interesting - every time he answered a question about his past experience, he would dive into such intricate details about his project that I found myself zoning out.

At one point, while describing a simple A/B test he ran, he spent 10 minutes explaining the company's testing framework, the various stakeholders involved, and the historical context from three years ago!

By the time he got to the actual results, I had lost track of what problem he was trying to solve in the first place.

This experience reminded me that most candidates fall into two categories — One group, like this candidate, gets so caught up in sharing every detail that they end up overwhelming the interviewer and hurting their chances of selection.

There is the other group that swings to the opposite extreme, keeping their answers so generic that they could be applied to any situation, any industry.

If you have heard yourself speak, you would know where you fall between the two.

Here is what an unnecessarily elaborate answer sounds like:

"I led the redesign of our mobile app's onboarding flow. Our activation rate was 67.2% and we were seeing a 23.4% drop-off at step 3 of the sign-up process. I conducted 45 user interviews, ran 8 A/B tests simultaneously testing different button placements, colors, and copy. Our UX research team provided 127 pages of user feedback. I created detailed user personas for 6 different customer segments, mapped out 15 different user journeys, analyzed competitors including their font choices and pixel spacing. We had bi-weekly meetings with engineering where we discussed the technical debt from our legacy Django backend, the need to refactor our React Native components, and the possibility of switching to Flutter. Marketing wanted to add three more steps to capture user preferences, while legal required us to add..."

And here is what an overly abstracted answer sounds like:

"I improved our app's onboarding flow. I talked to users, made some changes based on their feedback, and our metrics improved. The team was happy with the results."

Here is what you should aim for:

"As the PM for our mobile app's onboarding experience, I noticed our user activation rate was at 67%, significantly below the industry benchmark of 85%. Through user research and funnel analysis, I identified that users were dropping off during the payment information step because they weren't yet convinced of our value proposition. I hypothesized that moving the payment step after a free trial period would improve conversion. While implementing this change, we faced pushback from the revenue team concerned about potential fraud risks. I collaborated with them to implement smart fraud detection rules, and we launched an A/B test. The new flow increased our activation rate to 88%, with no significant increase in fraud cases. In retrospect, I would have involved the revenue team earlier in the ideation phase to address their concerns proactively and potentially launch the solution faster."

Here is how you can follow this structure to craft your answers:

• Beginning - Make sure your start by 2-3 sentences of context setting of the problem. Why was it a problem, how big was the problem etc.

• What were your initial thoughts - Start here with what was your initial approach towards solving the problem, why you believe this could solve etc.

• What challenges did you face in executing it - No plan ever goes as planned. Share the problems that you faced as you executed your well thought out plan, and then how did you revise, and what steps did you take to overcome these unseen challenges.

• How did you win and what would you do differently - Share your win and show how you achieved what initially seemed impossible. Now also add that if you could do it all over again this is how you would change. This shows that you have learned during the process.

In all steps add specific details about the domain and situation so that it is clear for the interviewer.

Usually there are way more layers to a given situation than you can explain in an interview. Learn to abstract out the details and focus on keeping only one angle in your story. Instead of adding details about all the teams that were stakeholders and all the misaligned actions by different actors, limit the details to the areas where you had influence.

Here's a practice tip that has worked wonders for my candidates: Record yourself answering an interview question and play it back.

You'll be surprised at how different your answer sounds from the listener's perspective. That candidate I mentioned earlier? After we recorded his mock interview, he could immediately spot when he was going into unnecessary details.

In our next session, his answers were crisp, engaging, and got straight to the point while still showcasing his product thinking.

Remember, your interviewer is not just evaluating your past experiences – they're also assessing how well you can communicate complex ideas clearly.

The best product managers know that sometimes, less is more.

They can take a complicated situation and distill it down to its essence without losing the impact of the story.

So before your next interview, take a moment to structure your experiences using the framework above.

Practice finding that sweet spot between too much and too little detail.

Your interviewer will thank you for it, and more importantly, they'll remember your answer for all the right reasons.

And now the most exciting PM Jobs for the week.

These are with companies that value your unique perspective and these jobs involve solving some of the most interesting product problems.

Go on, apply to these before they are gone.

For more such PM Job opportunities, visit www.bestpmjobs.com

I have created this job portal to give you access to high-paying Best PM Jobs in the US - before they get flooded with applications.

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Wishing you a week filled with positive updates for your job.

I will see you next week.

All the Best

Aditi