Rachel Tobac
speaker
124 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard Apr 2024
Rachel Tobac’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Something to understand is as an attacker, this is not easy to do. I've never been a PM. So to apply for a PM role takes a lot of background research. I mean, I led a UX research team at a tech company. So I do have a sense of what a PM, a product manager does, but I am in no way prepared for a PM interview. So I have to study for three full weeks for this role. I'm watching YouTube videos.
I'm doing interview prep quizzes online. I'm taking free online courses like, so you want to be a PM, like the whole nine yards. So I'm building a full persona, a resume, a Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.
All of these stock accounts have photos, thousands of friends, reviews of my work from networking groups on LinkedIn, people I've never met that like you give them a review and they give you a review. All of this stuff is so gameable.
Unfortunately, yes. We do change the names of many sock accounts, but then you have to populate a lot of new information. It ultimately takes me about three weeks to build a believable social media account and enough examples of previous PM work to get anywhere near convincible during the interview process.
No, I just had to apply.
Well, during this period of time, the tech hiring process wasn't as bad as it is in this current year. So I apply for the role. I get a phone screen. I am sweating bullets because if I don't get through this phone screen, I will not move on to a full interview process. I'm going to have to do a bunch of work to change my sock accounts on social media to match a new persona.
It's going to be a lot more work for me. Luckily, it took like 45 minutes. I passed. I get moved on to the next round. The next round has six different interviewers.
No, virtual, thank goodness.
No, not during the phone screen.
Yeah, I was terrified that they're going to be like, this person's a weirdo, like, let's not move them forward. So I waited until the actual official interviewers arrived. And it's going to be a packed day of interviews. I have six interviews back to back all day. These interviews are conducted over Zoom. I get all dressed up in my interview clothes that I haven't worn in years.
I'm prepped with all my anecdotes, my strengths and weaknesses, my KPIs and success stories. And a lot of these examples I'm using are heavily focused on UX research because if you remember, that's something I used to do. And many PMs do have advanced UX research skills. So I'm just like hoping that they don't think that's weird.
So I get to the first interviewer and the interviewer is like, okay, asking me all these questions. I seem a little nervous, but they're like, oh, you know, don't worry about it. It's going to be fine. We go through all the PM related questions.
I know, but I have to pass.
So I'm going through this process.
No, see, the funny thing is when you're hacking people, a lot of times it makes sense for your pretext to match how you're actually going to feel when you're hacking. And a lot of times you are nervous when you're calling support because you can't gain access to your bank account. You are uncomfortable during an interview. These are normal human emotions.
And so it's okay to not be way too overconfident. Sometimes that can even read as strange. So yeah, I mean, I'm sweating bullets. It's clear I'm nervous. We finally get to the end and the interviewer says, so do you have any questions for me about the role? I have never been sweatier in my life. This is it. If they get suspicious during this moment, all of my work is for nothing. So I say,
I am so excited about this company. I hear there's a lot of opportunity for growth. I did a bunch of research. I did find a few news stories that mentioned XYZ potential merger. I know you can't confirm anything, but I just want to understand what an integration process looks like at your company during an M&A.
I know you can't confirm anything again, but I just want to understand how my role could potentially change over time. The interviewer takes a beat and says, you're right, I can't confirm anything. And my heart sinks. I'm like, no, this person's trained. And then they go, but just because I can't confirm doesn't mean I can't talk in generalities, right? And winks, actually winks.
I'm like, oh, this is going to be so good. So there's a lot of hand waving and, you know, I can't confirm, but throughout the rest of these interviews. But
It seems that everyone at this company knows you're not allowed to say information in plain language about M&As, but that doesn't mean that I can't glean pretty serious details about the upcoming acquisition plans that have been clearly discussed internally. By the end of this day, I got M&A info out of three of the six interviewers. So 50%.
Showing 61–80 of 124 · page 4 of 7
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