interview prep no. 74
Happy Thanksgiving | Advice for those with December interviews
Happy Thanksgiving. For many of you, this is a time to enjoy your family, and you will archive this for later. Some of you may be reading this because you need a slight distraction from the chaos. And others have December or January interviews on the brain and will try to use some of the holiday time to practice. This newsletter is for you. Apologies for the delay, but life has been crazy as of late.
This Week’s Highlights
Frameworks | Choose your Fighter
Thinking | Prep your Brain
Human First | Get out of your own head
AI Writing | Cleaning Answers
AI Challenges | Probing Questions
Back to Human | Now Practice with Human
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Frameworks
Choose your Fighter
A quick rundown of six different behavioral frameworks.
S.T.A.R. (Situation. Task. Action. Result.)
The Status Quo: The gold standard, but the “T” is a trap.
My Take: It leads to rambling. At Amazon, we ignored the T. Stick to S-A-R (Situation, Action, Result) to avoid over-indexing on small details.
P.A.R.L. (Problem. Actions. Results. Learning.)
The Upgrade: Designed for those sick of rambling context.
My Take: Focusing on the “Problem” forces a TL;DR naturally. The addition of “Learning” is crucial for negative prompts (e.g., “Tell me about a time you failed”).
i.C.A.R.L. (Introclusion. Context. Action. Results. Learnings.)
The Custom Build: My personal favorite.
The “Introclusion”: An Introduction + Conclusion combo. It forces a “so-what” right at the start.
My Take: Use this if you want to hook the interviewer immediately. Focusing on Context vs Situation is splitting hairs—use whichever mental cue works for you.
H.P.A.R.L. (Hook. Principles. Action. Results. Learnings.)
The Twist: Designed to underscore a thinking Approach/Framework.
My Take: I love sharing your thought process (I am actually experimenting with it). But I worry the lack of focus on context might make some stories devoid of the challenge you faced.
C.A.R. (Context. Action. Result.)
The Minimalist: The original attempt to simplify STAR.
My Take: Safe and effective. If you give an executive Context, Actions, and Results, they know you have it under control.
S.O.A.R. (Situation. Obstacle. Action. Result.)
The Variant: Basically PAR, but swaps “Problem” for “Obstacle.”
The Bottom Line
Pick the one that works for you. Mix and match if you need to, but ensure you hit these beats:
The Hook: Tell them what you are going to tell them (Introclusion).
The Tension: Context, Problem, or Obstacle.
The Execution: Clear actions to implement the solution.
The Impact: Measurable Results (Don’t forget this!).
The Growth: Learnings (especially for negative stories).
I share this now because I am about to explain how I use AI. Telling it how to grade you is important; if it defaults to STAR, you might over-focus on details and miss the learnings.
Thinking
Prep Your Brain
In the following sections, I share my approach to preparing for a behavioral interview.
I have an interview coming up a week from today. I started prepping more diligently on Saturday. Since I have a strong grasp of case questions, but I struggle putting a positive spin on some of my stories, I forced myself to think about what stories I would use for standard questions, focusing on:
Innovation
Failure
Exceeded expectations (frequently: a product you are proud of)
Feedback you received
Conflict resolution
I went around in circles and couldn’t stop thinking about all the reasons I had failed to meet the bar I knew I needed for an interview. So, my next step was talking things out with a partner. It is actually better that you struggle before you meet your partner. This way, you can tell them where you are stuck, they can be more impactful, and you aren’t constantly apologizing for not remembering the story.
Human First
Get out of your own Head
For me, this took the form of a low-key mock pairing. The day before, my partner practiced verbalizing one of their frameworks, and I helped point out areas for improvement. Then the next day, I asked my partner to be my sounding board.
It was like magic. Something about talking out loud to my mock partner made stories I had forgotten about suddenly come to life. Talking to a friend is different than being in your own head or speaking to a bot that doesn’t completely grok what it means to be a product manager.
In my case, my partner could see where I was beating myself up and helped me see what I had accomplished despite any obstacles in my way. They let me vent and move on. Explaining why I felt their feedback “wasn’t appropriate” often had me verbally coming back around to their original point. But I needed to go on that journey to get past my own biases.
I walked out of that session energized and ready to use the AI chatbot for help.
AI Writing
Cleaning Answers
This is how I used Google Gemini 3 (testing it out, but use your chatbot of choice):
Explained that I needed help preparing for behavioral product interviews.
Gave it prep information I got from the recruiter.
Told it I wanted help, but when it volunteered to write it for me from an outline, I pushed back and said, “Let me write it and you give feedback.”
I let it show me where I had rambled.
I corrected a few hallucinations.
Then I kept tweaking it.
The story was mine, the hallucinations were minimized, and I got great general presentation feedback. Gemini was great at constantly going back and referencing the things I gave it from the recruiter. This is something that many of us forget to check back on; we start working with what we thought we read, and often miss a key element that matters to the company.
Note: I am finding Gemini 3 is better at keeping my voice and doesn’t rewrite as strongly as ChatGPT, which is important for telling stories in my own voice.
AI Challenges
Probing Questions
After the answer was strong, the AI wanted to move to the next question, but I prompted it to ask me three questions based on the story I shared. It went back to the grading rubric the recruiter gave me and came up with three amazing probing questions.
Then I gave my solid—but occasionally rambling, and once negative—response. The AI gave me honest feedback and helped me rephrase things that surfaced as NSFI (Not Safe for Interviews). In doing that, I found a few more tweaks for the original answer. Then I was ready to move on to the next prompt. I will do the same thing over again until I have thought through all the core behavioral prompts I need to practice.
What blew my mind was that I ended with a positive story from an experience where I couldn’t help but fixate on the negative. I told the story as it happened, but with my partner’s and the AI’s help, I was able to step away from the little things that nagged me when I was in the thick of it and focus on the crucial message.
Sometimes I pointed out flaws in the AI’s logic that strengthened the final answer. So don’t just set it and forget it—use AI as a partner.
Human in the Loop
Up Next
Monday, I will practice with my partner and make sure I have command of the answers I have worked out together with the AI.
