(Transcript)

tl;dr

Interviewers and candidates want an interview to feel not like an interview. We want it to be more of a “jam” that would feel similar to if we were already working together.

So, why do any of us sound like robots? Besides nerves. Which is a real issue, but not within the scope of this course. Usually because we are over optimizing for precision. Which is useful in coding rounds, or ml design rounds, etc! Yet in behavioral rounds, if we slightly relax that constraint, it can help.

There’s some counterintuitive advice in here that needs a call out. This lesson is going to teach you how to be slightly less accurate and sound slightly more human. Not so inaccurate that you lose credibility, but just enough so you gain credibility for having an organic (and not scripted) conversation. With that being said, being inaccurate might go against your deepest rooted principles. So trust us, and not your knee-jerk reactions, to get the full value of this lesson.

Here are the most effective lessons we’ve found to help you improve your ability to make a conversation feel natural, light, and organic.

Why is sounding like a robot bad?

Heavy penalties are given out for sounding like a robot. Interviewers can express this in different ways, such as:

• A common red flag for senior+ candidates, across FAANG and FAANG-adjacent interviewers, is “sounding to scripted”
• “You can come off as inauthentic if when I ask you a question, it feels like I accidentally pressed play on a recording.”

Sounding like a robot can be a microsignal which contributes to a downlevel. Senior+ engineers are expected to present to some high level employees (executives sometimes); a robotic delivery is not going to inspire conviction in your plans when presenting to upper management or super senior engineers.

Essentially, an overscripted conversation partner is not present. It’s harder to listen to someone who's not present. It almost feels like they’re wasting your time. And it’s hard to be present with someone who clearly might be wasting your time.

Imagine a dial in your head

Imagine a dial in your head from 1-10 where 1 is optimizing completely for organic conversation, and 10 is optimizing  completely for precision. In a coding interview, you have to optimize for anywhere from 8-10 to likely pass the interview. In behavioral, you have more runway; the effective levels are probably closer to 6-8.

Simply put, accuracy is overrated in behavioral rounds–you don’t need 100% exact metrics from that past project, or the exact name for every single piece of tech you used on every project, or 100% of every minute detail of the cross functional collaboration on a project you did a few years ago.

Relax that constraint on accuracy, slightly, not completely. And you are in a better state to do some structured improvisation, to handwave stuff.

A few tactics to get you started

Go briefly off track, briefly

In natural organic conversations, with colleagues in the workplace, we do this all the time. In interviews, for whatever reason, many candidates deny themselves this possibility. When you do it intentionally, and only for a moment or two, it immediately makes the conversation feel more organic.

In his book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin discusses the creative benefits of distraction. The same method can work when applied to interviewing.

If you feel yourself being too precise (being too close on that dial) deviate from the course if only for a few seconds. The easiest way to do this is to wander.

Wandering words are italicized:

“I can’t remember the group that stakeholder was in–hmm, our groups tended to have funny names like Posoiden–so it was probably something like that. But with our naming habit, it could have been anything.”

Another way to implement this helpful distraction for yourself, is when you already find yourself off track. And then you say something to momentarily hold that deviation.

Words holding the deviation are italicized:

“I can’t remember what their exact title was. It might have been something like staff engineer or principal. I’m  not sure it matters to know exactly, but the important thing to note is that they were above me in the org chart.”

Intentionally engage the interviewer

If you can get a warm interviewer to make any sound with their mouth, it can open up a new possibility of what to talk about: making the conversation more alive and organic (which is what warm interviewers want).

Engaging your interviewer is easy if you have a topic you could dive into, and want to check their familiarity before diving in.

If they’re a warm interviewer, say: “When I was at Facebook, I worked in VR. Are you familiar with their VR products outside of Oculus?”

If they are a cold interviewer, say: “Let me know if you’d like more detail about the VR product.”

Put your interviewer on the spot

This one takes a bit of savoir faire. That’s French–the rough English equivalent is “social skills,” if you didn’t know.

If you hear an interviewer say something that you find genuinely intriguing, ask them for more information. Too often candidates deny the possibility of asking an interviewer questions, until the “mandated questions at the end of the interview.” Don’t be afraid to fire off a few outside of that structure, especially if it makes the conversation more organic.

“That sounds really interesting. Tell me more about that.” Can go really far. Because it’s so clearly breaking the mold of a traditional (boring) interview—where the interviewer asks all the questions and the candidate answers them–it shifts the conversation to immediately feeling less like an interview and more like exactly what you would do if you were already colleagues.

Handwave details from your past you can’t remember

Don;t hold yourself to too high of a standard, fall short of it, and then beat yourself up. No one will remember every single detail from every single project when they’re being grilled. Saying “I don’t know”--which by now–you know is a smart thing to do in interviews helps when they prompt you with something you can;t remember

But what about when you can’t remember something you brought up? The best response is light, easy, and lets you skip over it so you focus the valuable time on what you do remember.” When you say “I don’t know,”, the interviewer is less likely to dig on that topic you don’t recall. This releases the pressure, and lowers the bar. Which, in this case, is a good thing.

“I can’t recall the exact technology we used for testing in that project, so I’m going to handwave it for now.”

Key takeaways

When you’re ready to put away the bleep bloops and be seen for the 3-dimensional human you are try these tactics to sound less like a robot: momentarily go off track (intentionally), intentionally engage the interviewer (according to their interviewer type), put your interviewer on the spot, and handwave details you can’t recall in the moment.