How to give career advice – Interview Edition

Hiring a product team is one the most challenging tasks for hiring managers due to over or under supply of experienced local or international professionals for specifically tailored job requirements. To make the ship sail, it is important to nail interviews perfectly and here comes your part as a coach to make sure your client understands the specific requirements. Know how to guide your client to avoid getting that awkward moment of the interviewer struggling to understand information or get on in a conversation during an interview. Let’s say it another way, make sure that your client is capable of meaningful discussions to keep the ball rolling.

While specifics are company or job centered, you need to train your client to be able to demonstrate general strategy, show business acumen, touch on analytical research, be able to communicate well and exercise creative thinking during an interview. ProductHired connects you with a specific market and your hands on industry experience provides our clients the opportunity to reach the top of the pile of candidates for any company that they interview with. Communicating with a professional approach to hit the right demeanor and language can make or break your interview performance, we strongly advise practicing this in remote environment to improve the odds.

As a coach, you know why coaching is so popular in your industry, but here are some tips to help you understand requirements of coaching a little bit more. Research and understand how to approach career advice before starting a session and during the first session and most importantly stay in touch with clients to gauge success of your sessions and coaching to add a mark to your portfolio.

Table of Contents

1. Before you start the session
2. During the session (Listen, Ask interview Questions, Provide Feedback)
3. Guidance to help the candidate succeed (Tips and Next Steps)

Pre Work for the Coach

The enigma that a coach must have a clear purpose with the client before starting any session, is absolutely essential. When all sessions are dependent on targeted jobs, it is important to have some Self Reporting Questions ready for the client. Probe and tailor their needs to find general strengths and weaknesses at their respective level. Don’t invest too long in understanding their situation and reserve it for the time when you meet the client personally or over the call. It helps accelerate the coaching process – coaches can end up with a slightly incorrect picture of client sometimes, but eventually it helps coaches and clients to sync underlying issues.

During the session 

As a coach, figure the pain points of your client during the initial talk to understand logical requirements and the amount of input needed during the session(s). Make sure to talk about changes, goals, challenges, stresses, struggles, and motivations. When no interviews are exactly similar, keeping a roster to standardize questions for similar or near similar candidates helps you keep track of requirements covered equally for each one of them. Some considerations include:

• Figuring out the ideal job client is looking for (ie, Product Manager vs. Senior Product Manager) and work backwards (Focus in one area)
• Listening to the client needs
• Practicing a few high level questions (ie, Tell me about yourself)
• Providing targeted feedback on interview style, communication etc.
• Explaining a few questions and how to answer them (STARS, CIRCLES, other frameworks) 
• Having some semblance around the target roles

I’d like to provide an example question we see a lot in the product management space around designing a solution. The typical format would be as follows: Design a [product blank] around a certain [persona blank]. In other words: Can you design a fridge for visually impaired customers? This is a very common question where interviewers will interchange the persona. 

To go about answering the question, presenting a framework to the client would be helpful. You can use the following as guidance, but have a framework ready. 

1. Structure your answer in a logical manner:
   1. Outline the structure of your answer
2. Focus on Goals:
   1. What are you trying to achieve?
   2. How will we achieve success?
3. Focus on the Persona:
   1. Define their pain points
4. Brainstorm a few solutions:  
   1. address the persona, pain points, and goals
5. Present the best solution and why?

This format would be useful for product design questions but you are welcome to explore it in STAR format. You need to help clients shape their answers around specific lines and in a format to enable transitioning of responses to make the right sense in the right order during an interview.

Guidance to help the candidate succeed (Tips and Next Steps)

The right guidance can help clients achieve continuous success and growth, after all that is what a client is looking for. You need to identify the following:

• How to effectively score a client so they know actionable advice?
• Cover all the different types of interviews (ie, in the Product Management space – metrics, analytics, estimation, design, business, behavior, and strategy questions are all a fair game)
• Overall feedback to the client, what’s the general impression you have felt, and focus on weak areas for improvement (coach can use the google or any other employer’s interview framework for evaluating as any standardized interview format will work initially)
• How does the client’s character reflect in the interview? How do they carry themselves?
• Track Important verbal cues during your session (ie, Tone, monotone, pitch, stress, pace, chunking) 

Check with your clients after the sessions to make sure you keep track of their progress and success through their interview rounds. Consider a follow up session and keep a journal or a progress report to understand the impact of coaching for your clients.

Coaching is continuous learning

There are countless tools and techniques used for coaching and tracking records- research and find out the best that suits you. Eventually, support and engagement helps retain a long lasting relationship and success of your client. Sessions preps, assignments, documentations, industry research and templates need careful planning for any successful coaching session. As a coach, you will also evolve with time and understand what needs to be emphasized more or what brings out the best value for your clients. Stay on top of the needs and know how to be connected with industry and requirements to provide best and most practical advice to your clients.

Ambreen Salman is a freelance writer, specialised in writing clear marketing copy to promote products/services. She has been preparing well-structured content using various Content Management Systems. Her marketing research has focused on various industries including recruitment, coaching, marketing and IT as a Content Manager / Copywriter.