Every clip
Each player starts at the moment the quote begins. They’re cut from long conversations, so the context before and after is usually worth hearing too.
01Laid off? Reset first
I realized that something big has happened. I didn’t deny it. I let the emotions flow and I started a journey of a little bit of self discovery.
If you can start to build some momentum and start to feel useful in some way, it can really boost your confidence even if you’re feeling financial urgency.
Look, layoff didn’t kill me... If I were now the manager, I’d make the same choice about a version of me that people made about me. The point for you though is if you are subject to a layoff... you can recover from it.
02Build your point of view and your story
When you’re looking for a job, you need a spear and not a net. With a net, everything slips through... If I told you, hey Lenny, I’ll take any product job... you are never going to think of me, you’re never going to remember me.
We’re talking about a couple weeks of work here. We’re not talking about a 10-month study... It’s going slow at first to go fast later.
Think of it as multiple shots on goal. Figure out what is your ideal dream job. Position your profile for that. And then that’s your first shot on goal. See how well that’s working... if you conclude it’s not working, pivot.
Distill your skills, distill what gives you energy... go wide and find many different industries that can do it, go talk to friends, people who have these jobs and start to realize what they are and narrow down to one area.
Don’t focus throughout your job search on what you want. Instead, focus on what the company actually wants... Try to turn this whole concept of what do I want, what’s next for me, into what did they need? What problems can I actually solve?
People say, well, you wouldn’t understand, I’m an introvert. And I’m like, so was I... This is a necessary skill. And it’s a learnable skill. You don’t have to be comfortable with it. You don’t have to love it. But you just have to do it.
Practice telling your story. So often people don’t do that, especially when they’re not looking for jobs. And then it’s not until their 10th interview that they know how to tell their story and what they did and what they impacted.
03Make your resume back up the story
People are not reading your resume, they are skimming. You are looking for somebody saying yes after glancing for 10, 15, 20 seconds at your resume. ... When your resume is three pages, ... some great accomplishment might be on page two and somebody just doesn’t notice it.
Say at the top of your resume what you want to do. ... I prefer to say senior product manager seeking director of product management opportunity. ... By not being specialized on anything, you’re actually not the best person for anything.
What work did you do? Sure, but what did it result in? Because results are what we look for in higher level people. We don’t want to hire someone to do work. We’re trying to hire someone to solve a problem.
The second is the context of the impact. 10 million dollars of revenue might be awesome for a startup who had 20 million dollars. You’ve got a 50% increase. If you’re at Google, no one’s going to care at all at Google scale.
People will often, because they’re so afraid of that narrative, not include on their resume companies that they didn’t stay for a year. And in my personal opinion, that’s actually almost more of a red flag, because that did happen.
I actually am the person that’s reviewing resumes. People always are like, there’s a bot that does it. It’s actually me. I spend probably 30 seconds on a resume, maybe no more, because we will get thousands of resumes for an open role.
04Network your way in
I have a role. It’s a big important role on my team. I need to hire somebody for it. And I have two choices: people I know and people I don’t. Now, from a risk viewpoint, who am I going to default to? Knowing someone gives such a huge leg up.
I’ve got probably five of my all-time favorite product leaders in the world that I tap whenever I’m kicking off a search... they’re willing to point me in the right direction of great people, make those introductions. And I’m going to know simply because of how great they are that they would never put me in touch with someone that wasn’t equally as qualified.
A big misconception that people have when they’re really getting into this work of asking for advice or input from other people... is often that it’s really one-sided. Right? I’m asking you for help and you’re getting nothing out of it. The reminder that I would have for all of you is that it feels really good to help someone.
People are terrified to do the listening tour... I asked them to ask a golden question: If you were in my shoes, how would you approach this? I call that the golden question. It really opens the conversation.
Even your ask was just so light... You literally just walked me through the situation, gave me a very detailed update... It was so easy for me to help him. Just getting that update made me want to help him too.
If someone’s job seeking, my advice is five new people every week, at least five new conversations every week. If someone is in a job... and they’re looking to slowly accelerate their career, maybe it’s one new person every week.
What I want you to do is say, Aakash, would you mind actually asking them permission to introduce us? ... I’m going to even give you the template to make your life easy. Here’s my attempt in your voice to ask this other person permission to introduce them to me. Make it easy for everybody.
Follow up with gratitude, like you should send people thank you notes. It shouldn’t be long, it shouldn’t be ridiculous. But like, we met, I got something out of it. Thank you for taking your time. It’s always appreciated.
You have to show the person that you’re going to make really good use of their time. So you have to give really specific context.
05Turn conversations into applications
Cold applying is dead. I really think it’s dead. ... Just try to think a bit from the perspective of the hiring manager. If you have five of those candidates and you have four or five referrals, who are you going to prioritize?
All the time we get like, I actually got a callback from a cold application. ... So it’s always half half. If you’re only doing cold applications, of course, you’re missing out. If you’re only doing networking, you’re probably also missing out.
The most effective referral will be somebody who directly works with the hiring manager. Not just someone who’s going to drop your resume into the ATS referral system, but somebody who will ping the hiring manager on their internal Slack and say, hey, I have a really good fit for this role.
You have to give them exactly what they’re looking for. You go and read the job description. ... Think of the job description as a cheat sheet. They’re giving you an exam. You have the cheat sheet.
If your experience is perfectly aligned, that recruiter, unless you say something really offensive, is going to pass you forward. But it does risk the opportunity for that recruiter to champion for you, because the recruiter is in these debriefs with the hiring managers.
That’s a good question. I don’t really have a number in mind right now. ... I want this move to be a big step forward for my career in terms of responsibility and compensation. I look forward to hearing what you suggest when we get to that stage.
06Interview like you practiced, because you did
It happened to me more than once... This is the universe we live in. I’m not going to be able to change the rules of the game, right? So I need to learn how to play the game. So that’s where I spent my time and things improved.
People do too much preparation in this very solo style thing of, I’m going to take a question and I’m going to write down my answer, which is usually a mistake... Even just getting a friend to do a mock interview with you. Interviews are interactive.
We all learn things all the time, and we don’t apply them systematically... It’s like buying the gym membership, right? You still got to turn up. So the learning is the gym membership. Going to the gym is the upgrade.
Some people tell me, I hear Facebook interviews are really aggressive and argumentative... they interrupt you and ask you to change direction... That’s not them interrupting you. That’s them nudging you. That’s them telling you you’re not giving them the signals that they need.
The number one and two factors in any interview are appearance and enthusiasm... People want to work with people that want to work with them. So if you seem very judgmental of the company and like you have to sell me on it, you’re going to turn them off.
I really like the tip to ask at the end of the interview, what are your hesitations about me? And I did that at Palantir and he answered and I had the opportunity to respond and I think that’s what kept me in the process.
07Negotiate the offer, then close the loop
A lot of product leaders are really good at negotiation but somehow think that they can’t ask for more time. You definitely can ask for more time once they’ve decided to make you the offer... Just keep asking for more time and use that time to get those back channel references.
A lot of times, by the way, a recruiter just gives you an initial offer because they’re expecting you to ask for more. Recruiters almost always hold some room in their offers... If you take the first offer, you’re pretty much a sucker because negotiation is expected.
Strongly, strongly want you to do it either in person or over the phone, live with the hiring manager. Now some companies won’t let you do that, you have to talk to the HR person or whatever, but as much as you can, work with the hiring manager.
87% of the time, Lenny, when you ask for more money you get [it]. Now, that’s a longitudinal statistic, meaning over many years. It’s going to be lower in a moment like this, but you can still ask.
I can think of two examples of job offers that I’ve seen that went away when the person negotiated... But I’ve never seen a big tech company or even a medium tech company pull a job offer. And that’s with a lot of reps. They just don’t do it.
I send subtle indicators to the recruiter that this isn’t going to go on forever. So I’m not going to ask you for 36 things. I’m going to ask you for one thing. And if you can say yes to that one thing, we’re done.