Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?
I have noticed that at interviews, I struggle to build a proper narrative and talk coherently. I live in UK and English is not my first language which doesn't help. Most of the times the flow of my conversation is not fluent and it feels like I am putting up sentences one after the another and there is a ot of "mmmaa", "mmmaa" in my talking. Are there any practical resources to improve my conversation skills? 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 Americans spend on lip balm. He researched the reporters, anticipated 10 different questions, and prepared to answer a question on cost. For example, a very common question to rehearse is "tell me about yourself" or "tell me about your biggest or latest major project." A big company might ask your experience with processes - CI/CD, how you work with a team, when you've let the team down. A smaller company might ask about what you think about their product. Don't memorize a speech or answer though. A more advanced trick I learned from public speaking class is to get a topic, draft bullet points in my head within 5 minutes, then speak from those points. An example I love is "Do you think a sewer system or waste disposal system is more essential to a city?" If you answer immediately, you will "ummmm uhhh" a lot. Learn to take a breather and buy time. 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. One step further: Choose characteristics about yourself that you want to emphasize. Perhaps you want to be know as dilligent and detail oriented, or a fast mover, or a creative person. Then craft many stories about those points and have them in reserve. Chances are someone will ask a question that lets you bring up those qualities. I try to mention that I started by making games as a kid. That seems to resonate with a large number of interviewers. Then we can talk about something fun like Monte Carlo effect for calculating which part of a grid has civilization, or procedural story generation. One thing I’m having trouble with is anticipating the questions themselves. Not the technology specific ones, but also the generic stuff and the things that are still generic (tell me about yourself) but also more relevant to our industry and software eng roles. Any resources you could suggest that have worked well for you or anyone you know? If you interview often enough, you'll see a similar pattern. Here's my list: "What's your product development attitude?" "How did you know about this position?" "How did you learn about Technology X?" "Tell me about your latest role" "Why are you switching jobs?" "What would you change at current role?" "Tell me about another project, it can be a side project." "What do you plan on being in 5 years?" "Why aren't you at senior/manager level yet?" "I see you did tech X here, and then Y. Why the career shift?" "What excites you?" (This is a surprisingly common question that throws me off. The first one I got it, I answered "productivity". Which was true, but it sounded like a bullshit answer and lost me that interview. I've learned to talk about AI or cooking or exponential growth and relate that to incremental games. This question is often a bullshit detector) "What advice would you have for younger you?" "What is something you've had trouble with recently?" "How would you change that?" "What's the worst mistake you've ever made?" "Why haven't you joined FAANG?" "Tell me how did you handle disagreements at work" "What's your growth plan? What do you want?" "What's your favourite design pattern?" "How do you manage tech debt?" It's the "What's your greatest weakness?" type of questions that always throw me. Some variations include: - What's something your not good at? - What's the biggest mistake you've ever made on the job? - Describe a time you disagreed with a colleague. How did you resolve it? - Tell us about a time you received some negative feedback from a manager and how you handled it. For these types of questions, it has definitely helped me to have rehearsed a little ahead of time. > - Describe a time you disagreed with a colleague. How did you resolve it?
- Tell us about a time you received some negative feedback from a manager and how you handled it. These questions are incredibly annoying when asked. For one thing I’ve literally never received negative feedback from my manager, but nobody believes that when you tell them, so you have to come up with something absolutely trivial, and somehow blow that up into ‘negative feedback’, then think of a way you dealt with it other than ‘I didn’t do it again’, because that isn’t what they want to hear. The times I disagree with a colleague are not situations we ‘resolve’, it’s something my manager ultimately decides. I don’t know what kind of answer they’re fishing for here. At least ‘we talk about it, and then either not disagree anymore, or escalate it’ does not seem to make anyone happy. There are tons of blogs out there with example interview questions. If you review a few dozen, you start to pick up some commonalities. Another approach that has worked for in the past is a mock interview. Ask a fried or college to interview you and give some feedback. Look at job descriptions for role you are interested in. For each bullet point, you should able able to speak to why you are qualified, probably via an anecdote of a prior experience. Freestyle rappers basically do the same thing! It's very impressive when you see it done in person; very good strategy. Just like Homer, haha. I guess when you think about it, it's all just another form of the prehistoric craft of oral poetry or storytelling. A pessimist might say that this only demonstrates how tech interviews reward the better performance art. :P :| :( This is gold, I'm definitely banking this idea. 10 suddenly feels like a lot of stories to come up with though :) > 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 Rogan during their talk recently? 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 prepared but not interrupt the person you’re talking to right as they get to the juice. I would suggest Sean Evans and Nardwaur as examples from the other side of the fence - interviewers - who are unrivalled in preparation and give their guests a chance to speak. DeGrasse Tyson is insufferable anyway. He takes every chance to pontificate and play the skewering science expert, even when it's not necessary. His generation / audience just wants a scientist to slam dunk on everyone all the time and "Science the shit out of it", and he's responding perfectly. And I work in space exploration! I've seen 100s of better voices for science than him fist hand. Agreed, as is Michio Kaku. They are the Zahi Hawass of astro physics. This might be on purpose, especially if Mr. Rogan is pandering to the audience and Dr. Tyson is aware of his behavior. Pandering? It's the difference between natural conversation and performance. NDT wasn't trying to have a conversation, he was trying to put on a performance. He was using intonation, cadence, and speech patterns rehearsed for putting on a show, whereas podcasters want to have something more like a natural conversation. This can actually be a problem when people try to study social skills and speaking habits from performers and then deploy those habits into natural conversations. It comes off as inauthentic and awkward. 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. He's a little weird/rude in those clips but there is no vindictiveness behind it. He was great in Cosmos. This to me is tangential - I am wondering if you are more annoyed at his preparation (which I believe is an excellent example and suggestion to the OP's question) or that he talked over Joe Rogan and didn't let him finish his joke ... I think it's a great counterpoint. It's unnatural behaviour, even for NDT. He applies the technique where it clearly doesn't work - right in the middle of someone talking. Watched about 3 minutes of this...too cringe to finish the rest. > 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. Using silence strategically is a superpower. Best leader I ever worked with had a "7 second silence" rule. Just don't say anything for 7 seconds. Requesting input on a topic/idea in a meeting? Wait in silence for 7 seconds. Dropping an important point in a presentation? Wait for 7 seconds. Not sure of the answer to a question? Wait for 7 seconds. If you have doubt about what to say or do? Just wait and breathe for 7 seconds. It is extremely difficult to do in practice. But it is crazy what a breather can do to help you organize your thoughts. Or what other people will do to fill the void. (Note: It's not a novel idea, I've seen other folks use 5, 6, or 8 seconds. imo 7 is _just_ on the border of uncomfortable.) I think it's off-putting if you ask someone a question and they stare into your eyes for 7 seconds. "Hmm" and "That is a good question" are good loading indicators. "Errr" and "Uhh" are loading indicators too, just a little harsher. You can be silent and look at the ground, finger to chin, as long as it's clear you'retthinking. Yep. "Hmm, give me a second to think on that" is my favorite pause to collect my thoughts. Take a minute to flip through my prepared stories, potentially think through ones I haven't prepared but that might fit better, settle on one, decide the beats I need to hit to best answer the question, and then "Okay. One time..." It's an especially hard habit to break for people who are "Team Interrupt", because we learn to cling to the speaker position in normal group conversations this way. People from "Team Wait" are probably much more natural in staying silent for a second (I wouldn't know for sure, but I think I'm observing this in others). [1] Team Interrupt/Team Wait: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LuXb6CZG4x7pDRBP8/wait-vs-in... Some good examples by Elon Musk and Steve Jobs described in this article. https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/why-intelligent-minds-like... This was probably one of Steve Job's most impressive example. I clicked to double check, but I knew what Jobs clip you were linking to. That answer is so well done. > If you answer immediately, you will "ummmm uhhh" a lot. Learn to take a breather and buy time. Not just in interviews (I don't interview that often), but just in general, I've trained myself to smile and say, "That is an interesting question!" (and subtle variants so I'm not a robot). It buys me a second or two if it's not that hard, and even more if it is a hard question because now they know I'm thinking about the answer and, well, that is okay. Edit: And it often buys you points, so to speak, with the person asking. > And it often buys you points, so to speak, with the person asking. I had a tech interview with some folks... 15 years ago. Smallish agency, and I was meeting with the owner and his #2. I got asked some question - "how would you do X?" - I think it was something like "build a house". Not a tech task, just "how would you go about X". I went to a whiteboard and picked up the marker. Just before I started to draw something, I asked some questions. "Who's going to live there? How many people? Do they have any specific needs?" Stuff like that. Just a handful of questions, and I started answering/drawing based on their feedback. I asked a few more questions, got more answers, drew some more and explained things, then sat down. I got a job offer the next day (turned it down - couldn't afford me). But I was told (both by the owner and later someone else I met who worked there) that I was the only person they'd interviewed who'd ever asked any clarifying questions before answering. Seems like a good technique, but boy, is that overused these days. Let's face it, not all questions are that interesting. Seems that a lot of people start with that, robotically. I can see how it might get old hearing that a lot, but when I look at the suite of tech screen questions we have here, several of them are basic under the hood (tree-building and traversal, string manipulation, etc). However, they all do have something about them that made them interesting to me when I did them to calibrate my interviews. Things can be interesting without being hard or novel, and as Aphyr's entertaining "Hexing the interview" series shows, you can often find something interesting for purely personal reasons that are separate from the question itself. The interesting part might be that a normal data structure isn't enough, or that the difference between the naiive solution and the performant one is substantial. It might just be that we might be doing a task that we normally use a library for (string manipulations) in our normal work, so it's refreshing/challenging/interesting to look at things from a different level of abstraction. > Seems that a lot of people start with that, robotically. Can't tell if you're trying to be an ass or not. People can use whatever they want. The point, as many others point out, is to come up with something you'll use to not say, "ummm..." so 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 spend a lot of time thinking about important conversations beforehand, and the directions they could take. I'll pace around the house for half an hour talking to myself, practicing speaking. This has proven helpful in my job, which involves a lot of meetings and conversations. To the original commenter's point, you don't want to memorize your answers, you just want to explore these conversational avenues and test-drive what you might say, seeing how it sounds, what positions are more defensible, what topics to avoid. This is the skeleton of the conversation you'd like to achieve, the "plan". Of course no plan survives contact with the enemy. When conversation gets spontaneous / goes off the rails, I try to detach and control my emotions. Sit for a few seconds, consider what you're about to say before speaking, and be straightforward and honest. I thought I was the only one who did this (the pacing and practicing conversations). I am surprised at how often it pays off It is all practice. For a 30 minute presentation I might spend 6 hours in practice. Over my lifetime I've spend months of time practicing public speaking. That said, the motivation to practice comes from success. If someone tells you you're good at something you'll do it more and be willing to spend more time doing it. Success comes from practice, so the hardest part is getting that first positive feedback if you're starting from a deficit (language barriers, previous criticism). I recommend getting a tutor for just about anything like this. Pay a stranger, whose opinion you don't care about, to get you past the awkward bits and into a range that's better than average. Also, while some of us come off as comfortable, that doesn't mean we are. You prep for what you're weak at. I spend all my time practicing stupid coding questions since I'm prone to screwing up easy ones (I can get em all, just need more time and less pressure). But I NEVER practice behavioral questions, nor system design. And consistently blow those out of the water. The bar is low in a tech interview, and my personality means that I've had a lot of experience having spontaneous conversation in my life, piecing together coherent narrative on the spot. 4 things help for me: 1. i like myself regardless of if this other person likes me
2. i will be fine, even if i fuck this up
3. every time im asked is an opportunity to practice, tweak something
4. write what you've been up to down it's like rapping tbh. you learn snippets and lines that work and then you mix and match them for the context. you don't want to be deciding word by word but phrase by phrase. The last time I was interviewing I wrote out a narrative about my skills and experience. Basically a short bio, but also what roles I’d had in my current job, what technologies and practices I had used, some highlights of major projected, etc. I didn’t read it word for word but just having it up on my screen during phone interviews helped. Before in person interviews I’d review it a few times. There’s an article about Boris Johnson’s bumbling talking style, and how it’s all a schtick. Before he was even London Mayor, so had fewer repeat listeners, a journalist went to three of his speeches in the same year. In each one, Boris arrived and apparently didn’t know where he was. He then made a brilliant speech with the same “ad-lib” jokes, mixed up his reading notes at the same point. Making public speaking look effortless takes a lot of effort. I’d love a link to this if you have it. I think it might have been this, though it’s only two speeches and 18 months apart here. 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. As a person who fits your description above, I can attest that at least for me: it is 100% preparation. For big presentations, I put in practice time equivalent to 10-20x the time of the talk. For a one hour presentation, I'll practice for 10 hours at least, if not substantially more. For high-stakes conversations with Important People, I think to myself, in advance: what do I want to achieve from this conversation? What do I need to say or ask in order to achieve those things? This is true even if the conversation is "just a chat." The goal might be as simple as: build credibility and familiarity with Important Person. Pro tip: plan up front what you're going to ask/say if there's awkward silence. It happens even to the best conversationalists. Better to be prepared than to be caught flat footed. This is me. I work in IT(Not Coding) but we still get fairly technical questions etc all day. I have no issue going into a tirade about issues I faced recently at work, the way PMs work with the team bla bla bla. I am a naturally good conversationalist. My fiancee on the other hand is the polar opposite to me and has to prepare when speaking in front of people. She is very shy. Some people are lucky, many are not. It's totally normal to prepare for that sort of thing from what I've read. I'm just lucky It may not be preparation for that particular interview or task but there is preparation elsewhere that's paying off here in the interviews. Perhaps even sub conscious preparation. One such preparation happens at school when you prep for debates and speeches. This may not be apparent at that time but I see those who are very coherent in interviews have had some debate prep in their schools or colleges. Just quoting an example. Any public speaking prep actually helps in stitching together multiple ideas as you are talking and as you converse and do it in a coherent way. I really wish many people had these skills. Most of the meetings I sit in, people take 30 mins to convey what should ideally take like 10 mins. 20 mins is just blabber. The other counter intuitive prep that personally helped me was GMAT verbal. What started as pure hatred turned into a treasure trove of brevity and coherence. Especially the reading comprehension aspects. A month or two you spend through that exercise really helps in the long run. You get pretty good at communicating your ideas coherently. There's definitely an art to seeming spontaneous and conversational, but it really comes down to practice. The thing is that some of us get practice from just our upbringing and life experiences, others may not have that. So for those others, it's about identifying where they can bolster things and practice. Preparation not only gives pre-baked answers, it gives you a chance to practice coming up with those answers. And as with all human things, natural aptitude varies. Preparation is all you can control, however. This is actually a symptom of ADHD, something to do with working memory I believe. This plus having a formula for how to answer. I like the star technique. It’s what people want to hear in the right order. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/how-to-use... NDGT had an interview or youtube once about public speaking, I couldn't find the video anymore so paraphrasing. > Not anyone can become great at something, but everyone can become better. So you don't have to learn to speak like all those famous people out there, just practise so that you can be better than you were. Waste disposal. You can always put sewage in the bin, but you can't empty your bins into the sewage. Yes after having living in cities with neither, a waste disposal system is absolutely more important. No sewage system, you will be fine. People will use septic tanks instead. No waste disposal system = trash everywhere. Even if your waterways get polluted by raw sewage, that’s a lot easier to clean up than a waterway polluted by trash. My wife's village has neither. We burn the trash, and have septic tanks. Diapers don't burn though. There's a truck that comes in every now and then to clean it out, but that probably counts as waste disposal. First time I gave a presentation, an experienced speaker congratulated me afterwards. I said that I’d had to rehearse the talk 5 times before I gave it. He said he still rehearsed his 10 times. I taught technical courses. A ground rule I had was 3 hours rehearsal for 1 hour of content. A 1 week class meant 3 weeks of practice. I still think this is what separates the bland teachers from the great ones. 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. That's a good way for a candidate to help the interviewer. Often an overly general question sends the candidate to empty out their mental filing cabinets in hope of finding the magic word the interviewer is waiting for. If a candidate does that, I feel I've screwed up as an interviewer. The best interviews I've conducted turn out to just be conversations where we're talking shop and we get to know each other a little. There's so much coaching on the interviewee side of the equation, yet the only guidance or coaching I've seen given to interviewers is to shield the company from discrimination claims by turning in a consistent set of interview questions to HR. This is great and I lean on it heavily when explaining technical stuff to a non-technical audience or low level stuff to an executive audience. This looks like a decent dive into this tactic sometimes called “headline style”: https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2017/05/03/conscious... This is my biggest struggle as an interviewer - I either rudely interrupt (and cause more stress for the candidate) or waste all our team while they babble on aimlessly about something irrelevant. 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 say it. It doesn't feel that long to the other party, I promise. Regarding flow, when asked specific questions about things, 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. Give a little context to set the stage/problem, say what you did, then say how it went - good or bad. Be concise. Fewer words get the job done and are easier on you. Not sure that is what you're looking for regarding practical resources, but I hope it helps. It has helped me a lot, I think. 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. I don't think these ideas disagree with each other, actually. Good stories have structure, and I'm just giving a name to one such structure. It also doesn't have to be so dogmatically used that one doesn't deviate from the structure. For sure, once you're comfortable presenting, deviate and modify as appropriate. But for someone struggling to organize their thoughts, let alone the words to use, I hoped it would be a helpful way of creating the narrative. > 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! 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. Mostly agree, however, it's NOT necessarily the case that the OP is "trying to be someone they're not". Communication takes practice and experience. Not everyone has enough of that and it's especially hard for folks who are not using their native language. One thing that helps, in many scenarios, is to "take turns" driving the discussion. The OP could be more forward about asking questions and making commentary. It's never all about "logical flow and coherence". It's more about opening up a line of inquiry with the other person and relating to them on a human level. 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. You know, it does kind of suck at times... But you'll also be really surprised at how quickly you improve. I give this advice to dozens of people and maybe 5% actually do it. After spending an hour, they go from mediocre to good! It's amazing how many people show up to interviews having done ZERO prep like this and of course they struggle as a result. You never want to do something for the first time during an interview. It will the first couple of times, after that it just becomes a video! I use this to improve the product. I'll start recording and do a product demo as I would do for a prospect. I'll go over the problems it solves, then will illustrate with features. The goal is to make bugs or UX smells shine. If I find myself saying "and you can easily do X, you just do [7 steps]", cognitive dissonance will kick in and I feel uncomfortable because it's a damn 7 step process that contradicts the "easily" word I used. Dogfooding helps unearth these, but doing a demo makes the ones we gloss over even more blatant. I find myself cursing because the load time for example, while simply irritating during daily use, becomes unbearable when you're recording, and you fix that. That’s brilliant. I’m going to use this for all my product development work moving forward. Thanks for that! The "best answers" are always extremely simple to understand.
But often a lot more work than you want to do. This is a "best answer". 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. > "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!" As someone in a similar role – it's all cheating. They've seen a version of your problem so many times it doesn't feel new to them. While you were talking, the architect was walking down a decision tree of possible problem patterns. Every new clue you provided eliminated part of the tree until the only thing that was left were 4 options that you can eliminate or confirm by asking followup questions or doing followup investigation. Once identified, you use the off-the-shelf solution in your brain. Slightly tweaked for the current problem. That's what people buy when they hire for experience. >he'll start answering with something like, "There are four things I would..." I've been know to start off replies like that. It's usually that the question is really long winded, so as they say it the issues start jumping out. Then you just kind of keep track of the count until they're done talking and give some space to answer. The hardest part is remembering all the points. If I was smarter I'd jot down a word or two to jog my memory. Generally these are situations where I know a system really well and the other person does not. So they are saying something like, "why don't we try X", and I either already tried X and just need to list off all the ways in which it failed, or I thought about trying X before, but didn't because of all the ways I thought about it failing. Other times all the issues just seem really obvious, to the point that I can't believe they are talking without hearing the pitfalls. I may have been the one to post that the other day, I know I left that video in a comment. Another Jobs story on this topic... I saw an article recently with someone talking about how to debate/argue with Jobs. Sadly I can't remember who it was, some other CEO I think. He would go into meet with Jobs and bring up and issue and Jobs would do what you mentioned and give 5 reasons why his idea sucked. Because Jobs' mind worked so much faster than his (his words), he just had to take it and leave. He'd spend the next week thinking about it and formulating his reply. He walk in again and Jobs would respond back instantly. The guy would leave and take another week to come up with his reply... it would go back and forth like this. Eventually Jobs would either finally get his point and say, "oh, you're right", or he'd give up and just tell him to do whatever. Yeah, when you're nervous you kinda feel like you need to have an answer immediately and deliver it quickly, but you'd be surprised not only how long you're allowed to pause, but how slow you're allowed to talk. This is a bit wild, but learning and being fluid in MECE changed my life. Not really, but it really helped me in interviews and all types of conversations. Check out How to be MECE on Youtube. MECE = mutually exhaustive and completely exclusive. The short version is that when you describe something you want to divide it up into mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive chunks. There are five ways to be MECE - algebraic, process, conceptual, segmenting, and opposite words (in descending priority of insight). For example, if you are asked a question about how increase revenue for a grocery store, then you break it down into revenue = number of tickets * value per ticket, and then you can attack it that way. This would be the algebraic way to be MECE. Trick A is that almost all conversations can be broken into MECE, and that gives good practice. E.g. if you are planning a road trip then when you are talking about it you use a process MECE to add structure. Trick B is that it takes about an hour or two to be fluid in applying MECE to a given domain, just start picking random topics and breaking them down, and the more insightful the better. E.g. how would you describe the items on a menu? Different programming languages? Features you worked on? If you do that, then it gives a proper narrative, good structure, and you can use the time where you are setting up the structure to think about everything else. By running through all items in the MECE list it shows that you are thorough and you have literally thought of everything (because you've created an exhaustive list). Mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive. That’s just pedantic — great write up! Turns out, we were both wrong, it is "collectively" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle That's what I get for looking at the first google result: https://www.google.com/search?q=mece+acronym > fluid Fluent? Fluid as in able to easily apply MECE to conversations. I guess being fluid with the application of MECE will lead to more fluent conversations. They both have the same latin root. edit - updated the GP to make it clear that I was talking about being fluid in applying MECE to a given domain, which could be written or oral. OK, cool, thanks—I wasn't asking to nitpick, but because I really wasn't sure whether it was a mistake, or a neologistic/jargon usage I was unfamiliar with. Even if you were nitpicking then that's OK. On Hacker News we critique the words and not the person, right? 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 prepared pitch. Especially for the really open ended questions! It should be a conversation, not a one-way word salad. I've had candidates answer the simple "Tell me about your background" question with a continuous 10-minute stream of words. I've more than once had to physically wave my hands and flag them down to stop. I've had a candidate who misheard part of my question and started answering something I never asked, and the candidate never provided an "in" for me to provide a correction and turn them in the right direction. Just non-stop words with no breaks. So many candidates do this. I don't know--are interview prep guides telling them this is a good strategy? It's not! This is good advice. You should almost always be talking more slowly and taking more breaks than you want to, if you're nervous. Pause between sentences, and even just try to pronounce words more slowly. You'll seem less nervous, and you'll be less nervous, and as a result of this you will think more clearly as well as have more time to consider what you're saying. 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. 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 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. I can speak to that directly and Toastmasters helped me a lot. In my club for every speech there was an Ah-counter who counted all the interjections and unnecessary words. In my opinion this feedback, weekly over a long period of time, is the only way to improve on this subconscious utterances. Besides prepared speeches everyone did short two minute impromptu speeches at every meeting. We always got feedback, verbally in front of the others as well as in writing and secretly. Even the short speeches were strictly timed and Ah-counted. It's all very simple but done every week for a few months improvement is inevitable. Membership fees were next to nothing and there was no long term commitment. You could just pay in cash at the meetings. Toastmasters is also a non-profit, so little money but well spent. The meetings back then were always open to anyone and you could just hop-by without registration or being a member. As a non-member you could even participate in most of the activities but you wouldn't be given speaking slots. Downsides? You will have to invest a significant amount of time and energy. This, or even a community college "speech" class, can do wonders. You basically just do speeches and get feedback. This is a good point. I forgot about the fact that I took a “speech” class as a freshman in high school, then again as a freshman at a community college. It helped! One reason we use filler sounds when we’re talking is to not lose the initiative, so to speak. You don’t want someone else to interpret your pause as an opportunity to talk over you. When you’re answering interview questions, you should make a conscious effort to not use them. Pause for the right thought in silence. If someone steps in, they might give you the information you were struggling for, but regardless a thoughtful pause should come across as more professional than a string of nonsense syllables. There are two frameworks. I'd suggest you combine both. The first one is STAR: situation, tasks, action, and results. The second one is used by product managers a lot: MECE, or mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. Use the first framework for your narrative with a focus on why, or so-called working backwards. Use the second framework to narrow down what you need to dive deep. I can't stress enough how important it is to work backwards and explain the why of your work. Too many geeks mistake claims for reasons, and got dragged into irrelevant details to the point that their work appears irrelevant too. On the other hand, the bigger a problem, a more impressive a solution. If you can articulate why you're solving a problem and why you solved it in the way you described, people can probably figure out the how part easily. Interviewing is a learned skill. I went through a period where I interviewed with every recruiter that reached out, to improve interviewing skills. You should do that. You will get the practice of nailing conversations through that. You also need to be sitting down and practicing before/after though. Just exposing oneself to recruiters will not be sufficient. You need to practice and reflect - and then practice with real people. I think it’s similar to playing a sport. Yes, just playing will get you better eventually but if you practice certain drills - you will get better much faster and it can stop oneself from developing bad habits. I think it’s like doing LC interviews - would you just do them all live or would you study subjects and practice problems instead? Practicing problems and studying subjects is way more effective than getting slotted a random problem and doing it live every time where you’re unlikely to learn what you’re doing wrong/right in the moment. I still suck at being verbally coherent, as my brain isn’t quick in the right way, but my guess is that it’s good to have "talking points" that you’re trying to work toward from wherever the question actually started, and an outline to make sure to hit points A, B, C, and D about matter E... I always went in as a naive kid "they will ask a question and I will say the answer; repeat" because I was brought up to be so passive. And still am so passive. And I naively thought they’d recognize there must be something there if I could get that GPA. 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. Lots of good advice here. One important one is not to be afraid to pause* and think. Someone asks you a question and of course you want to answer right away to be responsive, enthusiastic, and all the other things people correctly tell you to be which are all swirling in your head. So the interviewer asks you "I see you're a Java programmer: what are the most common library datastructures you use?" You could easily jump into "Yes, I have a lot of java experience, having worked on X and Y, and once I had to implement a custom hashmap because we had some unusual constraints blah blah". Just take a second to make sure you are answering the question actually asked: "Well in my Java code it sometimes feels like the only datastructure is ArrayList! Which is funny because when I write Python code I predominantly use maps". This is good when you have some pre-planned answers (as has been suggested elsewhere) to make sure you use the right one. Also good when you have to think up the right answer: when you know what you want to say you can concentrate on saying it. This problem affects those interviewing in their native language as well as those not in their native language, as with you. Everybody is nervous. * I originally typed "stop and think" but really we're talking just for a second or two at most. As an interviewer, if your code is great, solves the problem concisely and is easy to understand, you don’t need refined English language skills. Respond honestly to my questions and I don’t care one but if the English isn’t perfect, you can say umm and mmaaa all you want. I’ve given technical interviews to people in China who barely speak english, just understand a bit, and I can’t speak one word of Mandarin. But we could communicate through a live coderpad and it actually worked. The more senior (in responsibility) the developer, the more they’re expected to communicate their work. That said, in my experience, many ESL are a lot more overly-critical of their English speaking ability than they need to be. That is normal. Even one of the best recent Presidents can "struggle" with interviews. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4bDuFJuriw This is the best speaker on the planet. On the planet. His bread and butter is pro-speaking actually. "Struggle" in quotes, because he's not struggling really, it's just how normal human beings speak as they are constructing answers in their brains. But why on most of his others interviews he was going so smoothly and effortlessly? Because those were scripted and everything was predictable and prepared for in advance by a huge staff in the background. He already has all the answers in the brain and is merely giving a mental reading. So ground yourself. You're not giving speeches and your interview is NOT going by a script you've been given prior. Relax, answer questions to the best of your ability and KNOW THAT you'll be judged most likely by people with skills inferior to yours. Looking at other answers asking you to prepare for interview as if you're running for president. Sure thing. Do that. But only if you're actually running for president and there are millions on the table for the taking. Interviewing 101: 1. Know what you're interviewing for. You should clarify this with the recruiter before accepting an interview. 2. Learn about the company that you're interviewing for. This shows that you have put thought into being a part of the company and that you are diligent about ensuring that you think about the tasks you are undertaking. 3. Learn how to concisely describe what you've done in the past. Nobody needs a complete history. They just want to know that you're competent enough to do the job. 4. Be sure to answer the question asked. I recently interviewed a candidate for a SDET role and asked her about her experience performing simple database queries. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she went on a 5 minute recitation of the steps she went through to do Selenium testing. It's not the information I asked for. 5. Behave as if you are in a position of equality with the interviewer. You lose nothing but your time if you don't get the job. Don't be meek. Show confidence. Any good manager is never going to hire someone they wouldn't want to work for in the future. 6. Practice your answers. We all know that interviewers generally ask the same subset of questions. You should be able to answer them immediately. 7. Tied in with #5, prepare questions that you wish to ask the interviewer. Show them that you are serious about evaluating them for the possibility of joining the company. Show that you believe in yourself. 8. Practice. As a former recruiter, I don't need to do this very much, but if you are new to the game, then it's never a bad thing to get your answers and response time down. It helps to have a pause before you begin to speak. Think of what you're going to say before you say it. When you're done, you're done. Don't feel pressured to say anything more than what the answer is. Additionally, it helps to have a framework. The STAR method[1] is pretty appropriate for interview responses and is pushed pretty heavily by FAANG. When I worked at Amazon, I was told that my adherence to the method really helped me stand out (for what its worth). Finally, its worth reaching out to the employee working/resource groups at the place you're trying to apply for. Let them know you're an English as a Second Language (ESL) candidate and see if there can be any accommodations. My org allows you to interview in your native tongue and provides accommodations. [1] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-the-star-interview... As others said, don't forget to breathe, and pause accordingly. Also, a nice trick is, if you can, to try to outline your point before making it. Given a tricky question, if you can at least answer the question by a general "well, there is this part of the problem, and then, there is that part", before going into any details, you've probably reinsured the interviewer that you have a clear idea in mind. If you don't have a clear idea in mind, well, at least you know what to prepare for next time ! Also, it's a bad idea to have "memorized" answers in general - except for some specific questions, like your"personal pitch" ("what brought you here", "tell me about your job history", etc... You can't blame your interviewer for expecting you to be ready for those.) Good luck in all cases ! 1. As others have said, practice is the only real way to get better. If you can carve out the time, interviewing even if you aren't actively looking to change jobs is a good idea. 2. Specifically to your question about proper narrative, people often recommend the STAR (Situation -> Tasks required of you -> Actions that you took -> Results that you achieved) framework for answers. It can definitely sound a little robotic if over applied, but I think it's relatively useful especially for new people. It's also helpful to start by taking a moment to gather your thoughts ("I would love to take a brief moment to think of an example"), and work backwards from the Results you want the interviewer to remember. +1 for the STAR method, I find it helps with off-the-cuff answers too as it keeps me focused. Listen to recordings of yourself giving speeches/interviews. After you are done, listen to the whole recording and take notes. That's helped me a lot carry out demos & present. Used to say "Um" a lot, but now I don't. In addition to other good suggestions here, make sure you get enough sleep. Lack of sleep reduces my speech to idiot level. The same goes for food, exercise, keeping yourself healthy in general. I find sleep to be the one that has outsize and immediate effects. 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. system design and behavior interviews expect you to put up an oscar worthy performance. There is no way to "design instagram" in a super fluid straight line thought process. Only way to beat this system is to prepare and have notes handy where you can go from point to point. Eg: you are expected in system design to have these 4 components 1) functional requirement 2) non functional requirement 3) back of envelope calculations 4) components of design. Similarly for behavior you need STAR format with actual numbers ( improved latency of 20%) Freestyling in an interview is a recipe for failure. Ppl complain about leetcode but i find these interviews really embarrassing for all parties to involved to participate in this charade. "I have noticed that at interviews, I struggle to build a proper narrative and talk coherently." Is it only at interviews? Than it would be merley the pressure, you cannot stand. In either case, why not practice talking with logical flow and coherence every time, you have a actual conversation? I am not a fan of learning verbal conversation by books. I learned english for 10 years in school like this (and had quite good grades). Then I went backpacking into the world - and I allmost could not communicate with native english speakers at all. Very, very frustrating. The only thing that helped, was practice, practice and practice. I would say record yourself speaking and then listen back to it. It will take a little bit of time to get over the discomfort of it, but you'll be happy you did once you get used to it. Not only will it improve your ability to speak, but it can also have added therapeutic benefits (not real medical advice :). The reason why this can be helpful is because you notice that, though it might feel like you are stammering while speaking, you are actually more eloquent than you realize. The small pauses are actually not that noticeable and you are already more coherent than you realize. Being coherent, succinct, and articulate is an outcome/reward that you achieve as a result of learning and hard work. Try improving your learning skills, and focus on your cognitive map you've built so far and identify the gaps/holes. In general, if you are having a hard time explaining something it simply means you don't fully understand the topic. But that's fine, I often say something along the lines of "I am not doing a great job explaining X as I am still learning the topic and have gaps in my knowledge about it". Self awareness is key here. There is a lot of advice here, all good, but also I wonder if you yourself were given this feedback by someone else or this is your own somewhat subjective opinion. I am a non-native English speaker myself and 6-8 years ago I've mistaken my slower recall of words and linguistic structure for incoherence and lack of "logical flow", but this is not true at all. Your language will get better and so is your confidence, and a qualified interview should (must?) not confuse the two situations. One thing I do to give myself time to think is to just rephrase the question as a way to ensure I understood correctly as well as demonstrating that you're listening and participating. I then ask clarifying questions and ask for them to confirm any assumptions I'm making based upon answers given as part of my thought process. It's just thinking out loud and can also help demonstrate _how_ you think about problems. This lays the groundwork for you to construct a cohesive narrative. One approach I used when I first started interviewing was to apply to a few jobs I wasn't really interested in pursuing to use as an opportunity to practice interviewing. I use external recruiters for practice. They don't mind. They're either on their way up and are practicing too or good at their job and able to give you serious feedback. Please don't do this. I get it's "good practice", but you are essentially wasting interviewing time -> company money for your little practice. Terrible advice. I think it's fine as long as you make sure the company in question is one of the many that post fake job openings. Then it's simply justice. One of the advices that I often give is to watch YouTube videos of creators explaining the solution or mock interviews before going into an interview. Just watching the YouTuber explain an algorithm or their approach to problem solving can help you get into the zone of thinking out loud that helps you talk with logical flow & coherence at interviews. I have found this is the fastest to approach what you are aiming for.
The more you practice the better you will be. Use the simplest sentence to answer, which is not a yes or no. And if you are the one that wants to lead the conversation, follow it up with a question. But don't force the direction of the conversation, only follow-up with subject related questions. If the interviewer is bothered because you are leading the conversation that is a job you want to avoid. At least as a person that is doing consulting work, that is what I would suggest. A technique I was re-taught as an adult is the story pyramid. It’s a great way to create a linear and logical profession of ideas, their supporting details, and the conclusions you want to provide. https://www.teachervision.com/reading-comprehension/story-py... I found reading books, like novels, helps to build the necessary skills to chain complex ideas together in "real time". Upvoted for creativity in offering a fun recreational option. Do folks have others to suggest? Also a second-language speaker here. It's fine to "hmm". Many highly regarded public speakers "hmm" a lot. If the rest of the sentence makes sense, most listeners will ignore the interruption. The best way to practice is to make conversation with people, but try to use full sentences and complete thoughts, instead of shortened, colloquial expressions. It was very easy to fall into the trap of colloquialism as a second-language speaker, because it's way easier to learn to "Awesome", "Nice, "oh yeah" your way through conversations with friends, which doesn't your spoken English when you need to actually convey something. Another tip is preparation. Prepare full sentences that reflect your current state of mind. "Let me think this through for a second." "I'm going to store the data into a 2D array." "I'm going to loop through this array and do xxx with each item." And also, don't fret too much about it. Interviewers in tech industries are familiar with language barriers. If you feel like you're lost in the middle of a sentence, give a pause and start over. Not a big deal. Try using the STAR method: situation, task, action, and result https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/how-to-use... 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. The only relevant thing that comes immediately to mind is to train yourself to suppress the urge to mmmaaa and hmmm in your talking. A little bit of silence comes across a lot better (as you considering the answer, as opposed to flailing for words). Have a bunch of stories handy that you can use in a lot of situations. Practice them. Dread the company’s values to know where the questions come from. (Amazon is the extreme example) One thing that helped me is to start thinking in English. English is not my first language either. I noticed I dont have conversation fillers like "like" anymore for pauses. No reasonable interviewer is going to hire you or not hire you simply due to your fluency during the interview alone. With that in mind - relax! Imagine you are explaining things to a friend rather than being examined. Build you answers up, step by step, starting with the basic. Explain how you are reasoning around a problem as you go. Do not just describe how things are or what you would do: clarify why one solution is better than another, and what problems you want to avoid. If your fluency in English is low, practice speaking in general, so that during interviews you don't have to spend time thinking about grammar and phrasing. Short, simple sentences are much better than mumbling, making sounds, etc. > No reasonable interviewer is going to hire you or not hire you simply due to your fluency during the interview alone. > With that in mind - relax! Imagine you are explaining things to a friend rather than being examined. +1 to this. This is why I recommend that people take the time to go through the interview process every 6 months or so, even if (or especially if) they aren't actively looking to switch jobs. Being relaxed is a huge part of performance. Interviewing when you're not looking to switch means less pressure, which can lead to better performance in those interviews, in turn which can build confidence in one's interview abilities down the road. Take a moment, fully compose what you want to say, then say it. It's totally acceptable to pause the conversation for a moment to "digest". jobsearch.dev has quite nice advices you have to follow. Besides that remember always to build your own narrative. Don't take a job where saying "mmmaa" is considered more of a concern than real issues. Not down brief notes (keywords) for each of the main ideas you want to cover. After a sentence, stop and count to 3 before changing topic or repeating yourself. Then if your partner doesn't speak, ask "should I go deeper into that?"