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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?

#81

Post by noneeeed »

ryandrake wrote: post #50

Take breaks as you talk! Pause in silence. Whether you are giving a technical answer, or answering a behavioral/scenario question, make it a conversation with pauses and opportunities for your interviewer to help steer. As an interviewer, the worst candidates are the ones who just launch into a stream of words, talking and talking and talking with no break. Just a continuous stream of consciousness or memorized prepa…

We are doing graduate/junior interviews at the moment and the first one was just like this. He was like a politician with prepared points he wanted to make and would reel them off after hearing some key word in s question. Thankfully that was in the first half hour screening interview.

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

#82

Post by GordonS »

klenwell wrote: post #37
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 o…

This is gold, I'm definitely banking this idea. 10 suddenly feels like a lot of stories to come up with though :)

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

#83

Post by throwbigdata »

glitchc wrote: post #78
jrh206 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those clips are painful. DeGrasse Tyson interrupts Rogan right before important words - punchlines. For instance, in the first clip, Rogan begins “what’s interesting is that the town is -”, and DeGrasse Tyson takes that moment to pattern break: “wait, wait, wait, have you seen that they did Starry Night in bacon?!”. Rogan blinks, stunned. His point about the town lost forever. Regardless, it’s possible to be well pre…

This might be on purpose, especially if Mr. Rogan is pandering to the audience and Dr. Tyson is aware of his behavior.

Pandering?

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

#84

Post by lucisferre »

The one tip I'd give any interviewee is to take time and *pause*.

Often the interviewer is looking for fairly short and concise answers to their questions so they can direct the flow and conversations to what they need to hear through further questions. Filling all the available air time either forces them to rudely interrupt you (which feels awkward) or wait for you to finish even though they aren't that interested in the content.

As an example, if you are asked a very open ended question like "tell me about about role X and company Y.

Start with a brief overview of the role, the company and responsibilities and then pause. Then if they don't immediately ask a more detailed question about the role suggest something. "Would you like to me get into some details about my most recent project/success/challenge?"

Staying brief helps the interviewer get to what they want to know and eases your own burden of maintaining all of the flow in the conversation.

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

#85

Post by kettro »

kube-system wrote: post #36
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.

A coworker I had (a good friend and an _amazing_ engineer) would generally just pause silently and think after a question. It was initially off putting, and I couldn’t tell what was happening, but very quickly got used to it. I started doing it myself, but start with a short “hmm” to indicate that I’m now thinking about the question, or just say “let me think”.

Waiting helps you ignore the impulse responses, and double check if you heard the question correctly, whence you can just ask for clarification.

No one complains about a sorta slow speaker, but a frenetic one is hard to follow and will blurt things out.

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

#86

Post by crispyambulance »

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…

You're right about "C-A-R", although I find it jarring and difficult to think directly in those terms. It can be too daunting, much like in a game of billiards when someone announces what their shot is going to do in advance and then takes the shot and expects everything to unfold as it was pre-declared. It's wonderful when it works, but it can be really hard to recover from if things go sideways.

Many of us achieve the same end in an easier way by putting our experiences into a narrative-- like telling a story in a way that's relatable to the audience. That way it's possible to discuss problems both technical and non-technical, how they were solved, and how the project succeeded. Along the way it's totally OK to digress into interesting aspects of the story. Someone who is skilled enough can then even plant breadcrumbs that stimulate questions for which they've thought through a carefully considered answer.

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

#87

Post by hinkley »

scrozier wrote: post #74
unsupp0rted wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He calls it his Batman utility belt. You anticipate every question you'll get and do your research. Part of the reason Neil DeGrasse Tyson is so painful to watch/listen to (especially on his recent appearances) is that this over-preparation or expectation of specific talking points comes off as smugness, interrupting behavior, etc... is it this which hurts the flow of conversation and even seemed to exasperate Joe…

Thank you! I've always found DeGrasse Tyson unbearable. He's clearly a very smart guy, but as a communicator of the people? Not at all sure why he's so popular. That clip is positively grotesque.

Speech and conversation are not the same skill.

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

#88

Post by mattlondon »

Echo the question back to confirm understanding - this buys time for your brain to start filtering ... and makes sure you are answering the right question. Start with high level aspects as a "summary" rather than "drilling down" too deep in any one thing early.

Pause mid-way and confirm "Is this answering your question? Do you need more detail?". "No I was hoping to hear more about databases" "More about database theory, or more practical aspects of running a production database?" "I'm interested in the practical aspects" "Alright the practical aspects - ok sure!" Etc

Practice also makes perfect. General rule.od thumb for presentations etc is prepare for 10x times the length of presentation (so 60 mins = 600 prep). You may want to consider something similar.

Good luck

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

#89

Post by jeffrallen »

One thing that can be helpful is preparing several stories from your past that show useful aspects of your experience, and your character (conflict resolution, managing schedule problems, etc). Then when a question can be answered with your prepared story, make a small intro explaining why you want to tell this story and then tell it.

Politicians do this: they listen to the question and then reply to the question they wanted you to ask. You need to be a bit smooth about it, but you are certainly allowed to adapt questions to the story you want and need to tell.

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

#90

Post by yodsanklai »

cl42 wrote: post #19

Here is what I recommend for everyone , regardless of role. 1. Make an Excel/Google sheet with 50+ questions you think will come up in an interview. 2. Open Zoom and start recording. 3. Randomize the question list and practice answering each question in 1-2 minutes. Take a break. 4. Watch the video and critique yourself. 5. Rinse and repeat. You will get very, very good over time.

I wonder if people actually do that. I think watching how much I suck will be depressing.
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