interview prep no. 51
Negotiation Part 1 | Travel Fails and Delights | How Companies use AI | Interview Anxiety | 5 Common Mistakes | Have A Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Thank you for your patience. I was out last week to see friends and family. It was further complicated by a contentious compensation negotiation I am going to talk about this week and next.
This Week’s Highlights
Job Search Negotiation Part 1
Product Sense Travel Fails and Delights
GenAI How Companies Are Using AI
Interview Anxiety An Introduction
Communication 5 Common Mistakes
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Coach's Mock Parking for Google Maps
Insider Info Have A Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Job Search
Negotiation Part 1
This week (and last), I learned how much companies will lowball a woman if she doesn’t have a competing offer. I was offered $130,000 below the standard for the role. I know this because I coach, and I know the industry. I even tried hiring a negotiation specialist, but I was told that I knew more than they did, so they didn’t feel they could help me!!
The offer was so low I was asked, “Was there a typo in your offer?” I had some people tell me ask for double what they offered as that was what they knew friends to be making in the same position at the same company. Men more than women had a long list of people making 2x what I was offered. One woman said, she had heard on a Women in Product discussion thread that this lowballing has been happening more and more to women in the last 6-8 weeks.
Unfortunately, I don’t have another offer at the moment but 2 final rounds are in play. So I had to (try and) work with logic. The recruiter negotiating my package bold-faced lied to me and told me I wasn’t being paid at the level below where I was being hired. They tried to tell me what I was seeing on Levels.fyi was wrong, but none of my data was from Levels. I was also told it was my fault for not setting a specific pay expectation — it felt like I was being told there is a secret menu, if you know what is on it, you can order from it, but if not, you get what I am giving you.
For now, I am still in the middle of the negotiation, hence why this is Part 1. It did lead me to get help with my anxiety. I was so mad at being so blatantly lowballed that I couldn’t get on the call with the recruiter without anxiety medication!
Product Sense
Product Fails and Delights
For most of the last 2 weeks, I was traveling; it was a journey with three legs that all required 2 flights (that is, 6 flights and 3 connections in 11 days). You don't have much choice when you fly out of a small airport (Reno). This meant I couldn’t risk checking luggage, but it also meant the smallest weather issue or mechanical issue, and I was stuck in airports for 7+ hours. During this journey, I was both delighted and frustrated by product improvements and failures, I will share a few here.
Once again, my goal is to help you learn how to sharpen your product sense skills by identifying simple life moments of delight and frustration through the lens of product.
Let’s start with positives and move to failures.
Delights
$35 Travel Backpack that fits what I need for 11 days and also fits comfortably under even the smaller planes’ seats. I was a happy camper. There were a number of options on Amazon. As a product person, I was delighted to learn that when airlines hiked the price of overhead bin luggage, humans innovated workarounds.
TSA Not Removing Electronics from Bags - At both Reno and Lexington Airports, they have new scanners that don’t require you to take your computers out of your bags. Sadly, at the bigger airports (Houston) it was still a requirement. I have no idea how much the stuff in my bag was nuked at those smaller airports, but the human experience was much better.
In-Seat Chargers—It has been nearly a year since I traveled by plane, so this was new to me. Every flight had a USB charger, and most also had a standard plug available as well. No more dead phone midflight or scrambling for odd outlets at the next gate.
Hand Dryers at Every Sink - In Chicago O’Hare, the bathrooms had a dryer at every sink! Loved it soo much I took a picture. Why did this one take so long for someone to design? No more dripping on floors. It makes air drying of hands more attractive than wasting a paper towel, and no dripping wet hands on floors (which makes the dirty faster).
Dryer on left and the soap dispenser on right Ads for Free Wi-Fi on Plane - I was delighted on my first day of flying (disappointed on the second and third days of flying when it wasn’t an option). I couldn’t help wondering if they could sell more ads if they let everyone get at least 20 minutes per flight with free wi-fi.
No More Mandatory Paper Tickets for Cheap Seats — Last time I flew, to make the cheap seats less attractive, they would’t let me use a digital boarding pass. I am assuming (see above) the number of people opting for no luggage fees increased to the point where making my life painful was too expensive for them to maintain.
Frustrations
Being offered an option to rebook - They told me it was an option every time I few, but it was basically mandatory because my flights were so delayed I wasn't going to make my connecting flights. I would have respected them more if they had told me “You have an x% chance of missing your connecting flight; consider the following new flight options.” Give me the information I need to decide if I want to risk the tight connection.
Being lied to by flight attendants that support for tight connections would be at the gate. They were not. I was sent chasing a flight the gate attendant knew I would never make. This was all the more frustrating because I had just read about how AI was helping reduce missed flights. 2 of my 3 connecting flights had to be rebooked, and no flight was ever held for me even when I was just a few minutes late, and they knew it.
8+ hour Layover - See above on knowing the flights weren’t logistically possible. I had to wait for 8+ hours. I got some work done but I lost a full day with my family because of it.
The design of DFW Airport - Maybe the weather impacting Dallas is Global Warming or maybe the airport was just poorly designed, or both. There does not appear to be a way to run for a connecting flight, you always have to hop on a AirTrain. I will try to never make connecting flights through Dallas again. It was a nightmare with few options and LOTS of delays for weather and equipment failure. AmericanAirlines you failed me.
Next time you travel, note product fails and wins.
Gen AI
Uses of AI in the Workplace
This one is from Department of Product. A list of ways AI is being used in the workplace.
Anomaly Detection - Identify unusual patterns or outliers in data that deviate from the norm. Think fraud detection.
Recommendation Systems - Learn patterns in user behavior and preferences to enable highly relevant and personalized recommendations.
Generative AI - Create new data that resembles the training data.
UX Enhancements - Personalize and optimize the overall user experience.
Predictive Analytics - Train on historical data to predict future outcomes.
Security Enhancements - Augment cybersecurity by learning to detect threats and anomalous behavior.
Read the full story here (might be a firewall).
Interview Anxiety
An Introduction
I have known for a long time that I have above average anxiety issues when interviewing. It has improved over the last 6 months but has never been at normal levels. But when I got the lowballed compensation offer, I was seething so much I couldn’t get on the phone with the recruiter to try negotiating for 4 days, and even then, I was still angry. So, I finally caved and took half a beta blocker pill.
It was a life-altering experience for me. My mind was in control, not my body. I could carry on a conversation without the waterworks in my armpits, without my body shaking the entire time, and I wasn’t freezing cold — all common symptoms for me when I interview. I was still mad, but I was able to (mostly) control my anger and disgust with the person I had to push back on.
I will be finding a therapist in the next 2 to 3 weeks and working with them weekly to get a handle on my anxiety. Knowing what others can do that I have NEVER been able to do in high-stress situations might turn out to be the unlock my career has needed for decades.
I am going to bring you along for my journey because I would guess most of my readers have at least mild interview anxiety. Keep tuned to this space to follow my journey as I learn to control anxiety so that I can succeed at work and interviewing.
Communication Tip
Five Common Mistakes
When we have to come up with an answer in real-time, we typically do one of the following:
We lose eye contact (I look at the ceiling.)
We use excessive filler words - ah to buy time and fill the dreaded silence.
We pause for an uncomfortably long time - looking for perfect word
We lose all melody and intonation in our tone - without tonal clues, negativity bias kicks in and we assume the worst.
We speak too long - been there; done that
If any of these apply to you, read more to learn Claire’s 3 tips on getting better.
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