Networking Events: Make Every Interaction Count

If every second counts in racing, then every interaction counts in networking. How many times have we gone to a networking event with hundreds of people and left without making a meaningful connection? We enter the space and rush to the bar to grab a drink just for it to be our security blanket throughout the evening. Or we find a group of people that make us feel comfortable. So, even though there might be a weak connection, we are reluctant to leave and find new people. Both behaviors lead to us staying within our comfort zones and block us from meeting new people and making strong connections.

Every time I enter a social environment and interact with new people, I seek to make a strong connection. What makes a strong connection, you might ask? Whenever you enter a room, you should be giving knowledge, sharing knowledge, or connecting people. If I have done one of those things with everyone I come into contact with, then I feel like I have made every interaction count, and attending the event was worth it. Here are 5 questions that could make even a split-second interaction count:

1. ”Tell me something about [insert career field/company/role] that I don’t know but might be interesting to me." I love to share unwritten rules and tribal knowledge. You never know what is common knowledge to you but a hidden gem for someone else.

2. “What is one small thing someone could do for you today that would put you a step closer to a goal?" You never know if you are the person that can do that small thing. If not, there is a chance that you might know someone who could.

3. “Out of everyone here, what specialized knowledge, talent, or gift unique to you can you confidently share with someone else?" You never know what special gifts or talents someone has until you ask.

4. “What personal or career goals are you actively pursuing this year?" This is an open-ended way to learn what is important to that person. The goal is to find common ground to meet on or a reason to connect them with someone in your circle.

Real world example: I had a conversation with someone in January about their 2023 goals. We both shared a goal of buying investment property this year. Since that conversation we’ve kept in touch monthly to analyze each others deals and make recommendations for purchase.

5. “What keeps you busy when you’re not at work?" This is the professional way of asking "what are your hobbies" or "what do you do for fun." Work life harmony is important so also look for ways to connect around leisure activities.

Real world example: I recently attended a networking event where I connected with someone because of our shared love for photography. That conversation led to an introduction to one of their colleagues at the event. Two weeks later someone in my circle needed a favor and I was able to put them in connect with the two individuals from the networking event to help them.

Inside Job: A Guide to Amazon Interview Prep

The key to acing an interview is preparation and performance. Preparation is knowing thyself by reviewing work experiences, organizing the best examples to share, and practicing communication skills for the interview. Performance is how you communicate your work experiences and respond to questions and scenarios. After participating in over 165 interviews, I have observed how both preparation and performance make the difference between a “hire” and a “no hire” decision. This post can be used by 1) hiring managers to communicate expectations to candidates before an interview or share development opportunities with a candidate after a not inclined loop; 2) candidates who are preparing for an internal interview. 

Preparation

The best way to get ready is to stay ready. Early in my career I learned to keep a document with my project accomplishments and how I responded to challenges. I turned those bullets points into STAR interview formatted examples that I called hero stories. 

Hero Stories
I define hero stories as examples of when I came in and saved the day, enhanced the situation, and had a significant impact on my project and stakeholders. This could be any situation where my absence would have led to a diminished result. I target hero stories because they highlight my strengths, accomplishments, and bar raising capabilities. If you don’t already have a list of hero stories, this is the first step to preparing for an interview. 

As I organized my hero stories, I quickly realized that every story had an example of a time that I worked with a difficult peer/leader/customer, failed or succeeded in some way, dove into the details to solve a problem, made technical tradeoffs, and other common scenarios that are discussed in interviews. Although my hero stories contained many of these elements, I still needed to evaluate them to determine which behaviors were standout and which were standard.

Standout vs. Standard
It is important to understand that there is a different between standout and standard behavior. For a particular level and role some behaviors can be seen as standout, such as leading a design initiative to fix a defect that negatively impacts the program. This behavior could be interpreted as standout for a finance manager but standard behavior for a design engineer. However, depending on the impact of the action the behavior could even be standout for a design engineer. Conservatively, if the behavior closely aligns with the responsibilities of the position, then it will be difficult to make the case that the behavior is standout. 

After outlining hero stories that are standout for the level and role, the next step is to align the stories with (LPs). Consider using a table that shows hero stories next to LPs and target a few interchangeable stories that could be used for multiple LPs.  

Translate the LPs
I often hear talk about “studying the leadership principles” in preparation for an interview. Reading the description on Amazon’s website and memorizing the summary is one way to approach the LPs, but the approach I took involved translating the LPs into key behaviors. Once the behaviors are understood, it should be simple to align your hero stories and strategize what to talk about in the interview. I’ve developed a table of how I personality translated the LPs.

Performance

Preparing standout hero stories that align to the LPs is only half the battle. You still need to effectively communicate those stories to the interviewer. No matter how good the hero stories are, if you can’t communicate them well then you won’t be successful. Imaging how difficult it would be to connect with a character in a movie if the actor struggled to deliver their lines. No matter how well the screenplay is written, if the actor doesn’t know and deliver their lines effectively, the audience will not enjoy the movie. The same can be said about a candidate struggling to use the STAR method in an interview. It will be difficult for them to demonstrate a functional fit for the role and strong behaviors that align with the LPs. Strong performance (i.e., communicating work experiences) in the interview is the only way to get hired.

Practice Makes Better
Practice is key to a strong performance. Whether you’re a concert pianist or a football quarterback, repetition is the technique used to prepare for the performance. For a candidate, this means not only reading and studying the hero stories until they are memorized, but also reciting them aloud. This will help build muscle memorize to communicate your thoughts with confidence and fluidity.  It is okay to have your notes handy during the interview, similar to a pianist’s score or a quarterback’s playbook, but it is important that you don’t use them as a crutch or fully depend on them to communicate. Recite your hero stories aloud until you truly know them and can alter your delivery on the fly without losing the essence of the story.

Lights, Camera, Action!
The STAR method provides structure to your hero stories and define the situation/task, action, and result. Context around the situation/task is important, but just like any summer blockbuster, the action is what captivates the audience. A common mistake is to take a lot of time on the situation/task but speed through the actions that you took. This leaves the interviewer questioning the role and impact that you had in the story. Remember, you are the hero in the story so the focus should be on what you did to save the day. When you get to the action, take time to decompose what exactly you did, how you did it, why you did it, alternatives you considered, and stakeholders you worked with. Connect the dots of yours actions so the interviewer sees a clear picture of your thought process, strong ownership, and drive to achieving results. The goal is to infer that without your actions, the story would have ended in failure. 

The End
Strong action makes for an exciting movie, but the in the end the storyline must come full circle to why it all matters. The best hero stories end with a positive result that impacts a large audience. The result should be quantified using metrics but anecdotes can be used to qualify the efforts. End the hero story with what was achieved through your actions, how it impacted others, and lessons learned throughout the process. The goal is for the interviewer to walk away with data that supports that you can exceed expectations and raise the bar for the role.

Conclusion
Preparation and performance make the difference between a “hire” and a “no hire” decision. Strong preparation with a poor performance will yield the same results as poor preparation and a strong performance. You need both strong preparation and strong performance to achieve greatness. The strategies shared in this doc have helped myself and numerous others ace interviews. Next time you’re preparing for an interview, consider how preparation and performance will increase your chances of success. 

Process to Promo

The promotion process is different in every organization but is especially peculiar at tech companies. We live and breathe the role guidelines. They are used to making hiring decisions, review performance, and evaluate promotions. This is the first place to start on your process to promo. During my journey, I observed three key steps that helped me to move towards the next level. 

Convince Thy Self

The first step in the process to promo is having self-awareness and being honest with yourself about your performance. Convince Thy Self that are you ready to be promoted by reflecting on data and identifying areas that need to be developed.

When I started in my role as an Infrastructure TPM, I created a quip entitled “Career Management” to keep track of my projects and accomplishments. My goal was to keep a running list of highlights so I could easily update my resume at the end of the year and have stories prewritten in the STAR interview format. That document evolved into a list of bullet points that I could share with my manager during the mid-year and end of year review periods. As I reflected on the impact that I had on my projects, team, and organization, I realized that I should include promotion to Sr. TPM in my near-term goals. I revisited the role guidelines to understand the criteria for promotion and expectations for the next level. Specifically, I looked at the requirements for the next level and made a table (see table 1) to assess my performance to requirements.

Table 1: Performance vs. Requirements

Out of the seven requirements (only one is shown Table 1), I quickly noticed that I had deficiencies in some areas and didn’t have enough solid examples to convince myself that I was ready for a promotion. This exercise was enlightening, as I realized that I was performing a large amount of tactical work (i.e., standard tasks with low complexity and impact) but not much strategic work (i.e., high complexity and impact work). Although performing standard work keep the business moving, in most cases standard work is not significant enough to make the promo doc. It is easy to get caught up running multiple projects, but always keep in mind the impact you’re making and how it raises the bar (reference Table 2).  

Table 2: Impact Guide

I started brainstorming how I could find more high impact projects that would align with the requirements for moving to the next level. The key is to find holes in our process/product that impacts (i.e., poses a risk) across regions and organizations. What worked for me was working backwards from the result and then figuring out how to make it happen. For example, I wrote “Identified gaps in Design change request process and authored one pager to drive clearer ownership” and then developed small steps to achieve this goal. This started with deep diving the design lifecycle, having discussions with subject matter expects, and value stream mapping the current design process to identify gaps and add steps to bridge them.

Improving my performance to meet and exceed the requirements to move to the next level helped me to convince myself that I was ready to be promoted. This gave me the confidence to have a conversation with my manager about promotion. 

Convince Thy Manager

The performance vs. requirements table is a good way to provide your manager with a visual of how you consistently meet and exceed requirements to move to the next level. The goal is to make it completely obvious that you should be considered for a promotion. Have a discussion with your manager during your 1:1 to align on your performance and identify growth ideas if some examples don’t meet the bar. Another way to convince your manager of your readiness is providing a list of potential supporters of your promotion.

Convince Others

There are a few steps after you’ve convinced your manager that you are ready for promotion. Depending on if you’re technical or non-technical, a technical assessment might be required. Regardless of the type of individual contributor promotion, you’ll likely need feedback providers to write reasons to support and reasons not to support your promotion. It is helpful to give your manager a potential list of feedback providers so they can reach out to them on your behalf.

The feedback provider is responsible for writing balanced and robust feedback that references specific situations and leadership principles. This is a nontrivial task that is time consuming and requires thought. Writing meaningful feedback becomes increasingly challenging if the feedback provider doesn’t recall recent examples. There are situations where the feedback provide hasn’t worked with the candidate in months or even a year. To reduce the load on the feedback provider and make them more likely to agree to provide feedback, it is a best practice to provide your manager with a few bullet points with examples of your bar raising interactions with the feedback provider (see Table 3).

Table 3: Notes for Feedback Providers

Get Promo’d

Every promotion is different but these three key steps will get you moving in the right direction. Self-awareness will guide you in determining when you are ready for promotion. The key here is to be intentional about your efforts and document your progress as you move towards the next level.

Pass the PMP Exam in 4 Weeks

Today I would like to share with you exactly what I did to score above target and pass the pmp exam on my first attempt. Let’s engineer dreams! 

• Apply! The first step to passing the PMP is to make an account with PMI and start your PMP application. This is an easy process but the most tedious part is documenting all of the required project experience. Below is a worksheet that I used to organize my projects.

Project Worksheet

• Commit to a study schedule. I dedicated 4-6 hours a day to studying. You’re probably telling yourself that you don’t have that much free time. I initially said the same thing but this is how I did it. I woke up at 5am and read until 6am. I listened to practice questions on YouTube while I ironed my clothes for work and cooked breakfast. I continued to listen to questions in the car during my commute. The first thing I did when getting to my desk was a quick 15 minute brain dump (more on this later on). During my lunch break I did another brain dump then read the pmbok for 45 minutes. At 5pm before leaving work i completed my 3rd brain dump of the day.  On the drive back from work I listened to more practice questions. Once arriving back home I ate dinner and relaxed a bit before reading for another hour. I ended my day of studying by completing a practice quiz on whichever topic I read about that day. I followed this study routine Monday through Friday. 

Study Schedule

• Read the PMBOK Guide. This might seem like a no brainer but there is no better way to learn the material than by actually reading the guide. For me, this proved my effective than taking a prep course.

• Perfect your brain dump. One of the quickest ways to learn the concepts of the PMBOK is to memorize the the Project Management Process Group and Knowledge Area Mapping table. I wrote down this table 3 times per day. For the first week, I merely copied down the whole table because I didn’t have it memorized. After that first week I starting brain dumping as much of the table as I could remember. Each time, I tried to remember another row of the table and even expanded the brain dump to include all the earned value formulas. Once I was able to brain dump the full table, my next objective was speed. When I first started timing myself the brain dump took roughly 15 minutes. However, after increasing the number of brain dumps to a minimum of 3 times per day I was able to shave my time down to 10 minutes. The time savings were crucial on test day because I needed every second of the 4 hour test duration to answer questions and effectively double check my work.

• Practice answering questions. This is by far the most important part of my study plan. Merely just reading the PMBOK and listening to questions wasn’t enough to perform well on the test. The confidence needed to pass the exam is gained by taking practice quizzes and full exams. I purchased a 6 month subscription to the Rita Mulcahy’s PMP Exam Simulator and took at least one quiz a day and completed a full 4 hour practice exam every Saturday morning.