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Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

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Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#31

Post by sintMaartin »

What I have realised is that there is no trick or shortcut to communicate better.

You have to read more, be more knowledgeable, practice speaking and writing, then you will have more intelligent things to say.

Also the fear of making mistake is what holds back. To let creativity flourish you have to let yourself go, not be afraid of being wrong, not be afraid of opening up or be judged. For that you also need to have sincere good intentions and straightforward life that is not based on lies. Then there is nothing to be afraid of from spilling your thoughts. As you do it more, you learn that opening up produces good results, and people don't judge you as much as you thought they would, this creates feedback loop which extinguishes your anxiety in future. This is why talking to different people that force you to open up and be transparent also helps to unblock that blockage.

I see that a lot of people have basic hangups about opening up deeply. And it does more bad than good. I'd be much more likely to accept the person when he is upfront about his worries, than a mr. perfect who is stonewalling every question and answers them the way he is expected to answer, but not in a deeply truthful way.

Nobody is perfect, we just want to work with real humans, not robots. Opening up about your imperfections provokes empathy. Selling yourself too strongly provokes skepticism.

As for the interview, the reason you seem unconfident is because you are unconfident. That means most likely you are trying to pretend to be someone you are not.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#32

Post by whiddershins »

Record yourself, watch the recording, repeat.

It’s tough, and can make you self conscious in the short term, but it is the fastest way to radically improve your communication.

And as others have said, pause. It’s ok to pause. It’s good to pause. It’s ok to collect your thoughts silently.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#33

Post by tokamak-teapot »

publicola1990 wrote: post #4
muzani wrote: post #2

Preparation. Anyone who has done public speaking knows that it's a lot of work to be a good speaker. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says you have to be 10x more prepared than you need to be. He calls it his Batman utility belt. You anticipate every question you'll get and do your research. One interviewer asked Neil whether it was worth the $3B mission to Saturn. He brought up that it's $3B over 12 years and that it's how much…

But some people seems so at ease with spontaneity, dealing with dynamic, emergent conversations, and even the ability to direct it to particular directions or narratives. I doubt all of it is preparation.

I come across as one of these people and I do minimal practice of what I’m going to say, maybe thinking about what I want to say as an intro - and that’s it. Most of my thinking is done while building slides that I use as cues for what I want to talk around.

I can’t be sure of course, but I would guess that the reasons I get away with very short prep time are:

1. 99% of the time I know the subject inside out, because I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I didn’t, so that is already covered.

2. Sharp focus on prepping exactly the right things - and nothing else. If I’m trying to get a point across, that’s the bit I need to make sure I’ve considered - what the obvious holes are in my argument, how I would answer the obvious questions, etc.

I’m definitely not the smoothest presenter, but I do get great feedback (and am still surprised considering I feel like I’m cheating by not spending hours in prep) so if you are already armed with deep and broad general knowledge in your area, maybe going for the laser focus on the specific points that you really care about and then ‘winging’ the rest might work for you too.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#34

Post by sowbug »

jcpst wrote: post #18

I can’t speak to this directly, but I’ve heard from a few people in my company that joining their local Toastmasters group really helped them out. Could anyone speak to that?

It made an enormous difference for me. Over the past 15 years, I've attended TM in three phases: once for a couple years to get through the initial course of about a dozen speaking assignments, and then twice since then for tune-up sessions of about a year each. I started out as a typical engineer who meandered and stammered my way through team meetings, and now I've successfully presented before audiences of several thousand people. I admire top Toastmasters speakers far too much to call myself an expert, but if public speaking were a pass/fail test, I know I'd easily pass.

What makes Toastmasters work is the immensely supportive environment. I've never felt so welcomed anywhere as I have at the weekly TM meeting. They want you to succeed, and you can feel their positive energy just as the butterflies are trying to overwhelm you at the start of a speech. They are experts in delivering constructive criticism while still reinforcing what you already do well. Most important, you'll find that you'll start looking forward to public speaking.

As for the original question about spontaneous interview conversation, TM helps there, too. One part of a usual meeting is "Table Topics," where the host calls on random attendees to get up, stand in front of the the room, and spend one-two minutes answering a simple question like "have you ever owned a pet?" It's high-pressure but low-stakes, and it's great practice for getting comfortable with that common situation of having nothing to say but needing to say it.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#35

Post by Shugarl »

eddieroger wrote: post #13

Regarding verbal crutches, the best advice I've received is to just say nothing instead, and pauses never feel as long to the other parties as they do you. So when you feel yourself saying "umm" or "mmmaa", instead say nothing, take a breath, and move forward. With English not being your first language, I think you can apply this plan to formulating your responses in general. Just take a moment, plan your reply, and…

> I remember the acronym CAR - Context, Action, Result. I form my answers in this framework to make a plan for how to get to the reply

I was looking for something like that to organize my thoughts when I speak. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#36

Post by kube-system »

muzani wrote: post #2

Preparation. Anyone who has done public speaking knows that it's a lot of work to be a good speaker. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says you have to be 10x more prepared than you need to be. He calls it his Batman utility belt. You anticipate every question you'll get and do your research. One interviewer asked Neil whether it was worth the $3B mission to Saturn. He brought up that it's $3B over 12 years and that it's how much…

> If you answer immediately, you will "ummmm uhhh" a lot. Learn to take a breather and buy time.

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten for this was: If you're pausing to think, just be silent. Practice for a while and have someone call you out on it. It's a hard habit to break, but someone who doesn't fill space with "um" will sound twice as smart.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#37

Post by klenwell »

muzani wrote: post #2

Preparation. Anyone who has done public speaking knows that it's a lot of work to be a good speaker. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says you have to be 10x more prepared than you need to be. He calls it his Batman utility belt. You anticipate every question you'll get and do your research. One interviewer asked Neil whether it was worth the $3B mission to Saturn. He brought up that it's $3B over 12 years and that it's how much…

On this point, there was some good practical advice in this HN comment that I've adopted and applied successfully:

What I did is I prepared 10 different stories about my career experience and then tagged them with a bunch of prompts. For example I have a story about one project that had dual PMs that experienced a lot of scope creep and eventually fizzled on release. I can now use that story to answer a broad range of questions from failure to various project management approaches. Overall I now have prepared stories to answer probably 50-75 different questions immediately.

Another benefit is that I have also told these stories multiple times in interviews now and I get better telling them each time. Even if the answer isn't 100% relevant, I feel more confident and likely come off better launching immediately into a detailed story about my experience rather than trying to awkwardly come up with an answer on the fly. It is also easy to drop irrelevant parts or expand on specific details when the basic framework of the story is already something that feels natural.

I will even have the document with all the prompts and story bullet points open whenever I am doing phone or remote interviews.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25519718

I also keep a document where I'll record new or challenging questions after I do an interview and outline a response so I'm better prepared next time.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#38

Post by angarg12 »

Practices. It's a skill, you get better at doing it by doing it.

However don't just drone through interviews. Do deliberate practice. Be mindful and participate fully in the process. After the fact reflect on your performance. What did you do well, what could you improve? The first few times will be super awkward. After 30 interviews you will feel more confident. After a 100 it will feel like second nature. Sounds like a lot of work? of course! that's what it takes to become good.

This might be overkill though so apply judiciously. Still, if you feel the need to improve, going through the process with a handful of companies should improve your skills significantly.

Re: Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

#39

Post by billti »

aarghh wrote: post #29

The best learnt behavior I have is to slow down. In practice that means using phrases like "Let me think about that for a second", and maybe looking at or writing notes. As an interviewer, if anyone actually took a minute to think about what I had just asked them, I would consider that a huge positive signal.

Someone posted this Steve Jobs response the other day that demonstrates this well. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o) . Even in front of an audience that size, there is no rush to answer. He takes quite a while to consider a response first.

That said, he is still amazing at how he can have (apparently) a long narrative in mind as he starts to answer. I work with an architect who I can spring a complex question on, and he'll start answering with something like, "There are four things I would...", and I'm thinking "Damn! You already thought through the entire response in enough detail to count the bullet points!". I'm not sure if that is just "practice" or some people's minds just work differently.

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