Hello everyone my name is Kenton Kivestu. I'm an ex-BCG consultant and
ex-Googler and the founder of RocketBlocks, an online platform that helps
candidates prepare for interviews. In today's RocketBlocks mini lesson
we're going to be talking about something that is really important as
you're going through the interview preparation process - regardless of
whether you're looking at consulting career path with a company like McKinsey
or you want to be a product manager at a place like Google - it is highly likely
that as you are getting ready for those interviews and trying to land a job at
one of those places that you're doing mock interviews with your peers. And
that's a great thing to do, that makes total sense. But one question that a lot
of folks have as they are starting out that process is: how do I make sure that
I'm a good mock interview partner? If I sit down with a peer and they give me a
mock interview, and then I give them a mock interview in return, how do I do a
good job of that to make sure that I can help them as much as possible? It's a
good thing to do and a good thing to be thinking about so in this video we're
going to cover three specific tips on how to be a great mock interview partner.
So let's go ahead and jump in.
Okay tip #1 is learn two to three cases really well - and it doesn't
matter whether this consultant cases or product-management-oriented cases. The
bottom line is that you really want to get familiar with two to three of these
cases so that you can use those when you deliver a mock interview to someone else
and you're playing the role of the interviewer. Now how do you actually
learn two to three cases well? Well, it's pretty simple. I think the first thing
you want to do is just read through it once, give the whole case a read through,
and just sort of understand and absorb the different information. What's the
overall scenario? What's sort of the the story arc of a particular case, if it's
there?Just understand the details. Then go through it a second time, and really
force yourself to answer the questions and think through it, almost like you were
the the candidate being interviewed. So it gives you a sense of wrestling with
the actual topics in there, seeing what's unclear or what's particularly tricky.
Okay, so that'll help you learn the actual cases. Now, why does this help?
Well, there's really two main reasons why this helps a lot. The first is it helps you
really deliver the case confidently to your partner. And if you've ever been in
a mock interview and someone's just reading off a piece of paper and they're
stumbling over the words or misquoting information and then say, "Oh actually
that's not correct. Hold on a sec." You realize that it ruins the experience
almost immediately. And that's not what actual interviews are like on the job,
at least if the interviewer is doing a good job. So what the first thing of this
enables is it allows you to give the case confidently and really simulate
what that experience might be like in a real interview. Now the second thing that
it helps you do is it helps you calibrate your assessment of how a
candidate is doing. Once you start giving the same case and questions over and
over again, what you'll start to notice is that - as you see different candidates
go through - you'll notice oh so-and-so is doing a really good job on the math
component or so-and-so structured this problem in a really nice way, better than
anyone else I've seen go through this problem. And that helps you give really
good actionable high-quality feedback to the candidates as well. So learning two
or three cases is really a number one thing that you can do to get yourself
off on the right foot. And it the same thing that actual interviewers
at these jobs do. They have a stable of a handful of cases and questions they
like to ask - and they may rotate them in and out occasionally - but the reason they
do that is for the exact same two reasons here: it allows them to deliver
that content confidently and it gives them a really strong way to calibrate
the assessment of the different candidates they're judging.
Okay tip #2 is create a grading rubric for yourself to use. And if you're
thinking, "Oh, I don't even know exactly what dimensions I should be using.
How can I actually create a full grading rubric?" It's okay - we've got samples down
below, and you're more than welcome just to take those and use them as yours. The
key point is that you want to start using a grading rubric - repeatedly - that
you get comfortable with, that you can use as you're watching your peer go
through an interview. And the reason this is important is all of us have probably
been in a position at some point where we've gone through a mock interview with
a peer, finished after 45 minutes, and said, "Okay. Hey, how did I do?" And someone
says, "Oh, you know, I think you did okay." Well, that's not very useful feedback, and
it's almost like a waste of 45 minutes from your perspective, if you didn't get
any useful feedback out of it. So what you want to do is have a grading rubric
that you use every mock interview that you give, and as you're going through
the interview you're going to start paying attention to the specific
dimensions on that grading rubric and how the candidate - how your peer - is doing.
So, in consulting this might be things like structuring, charts and exhibits,
quantitative skills, creativity and brainstorming. And then as you're going
through the interview you're going to be watching and making marks about how that
person is doing on these different dimensions. That way, when you get to the
end, and it's time to deliver feedback, you can say, "Here's my overall impression
of how you did and, specifically, on these different items, here is you know I think
structuring went particularly well, creativity and brainstorming was not quite
as good - you didn't come up with a lot of ideas, etc." You give very clear
actionable feedback. And, as we talked about in the first section, the more
you give a particular case and a particular question the better you're
gonna be at calibrating that specific feedback on those specific skill
dimensions that we were talking about. So it's gonna just help you give really
good, actionable feedback to your partner.
Ok, tip #3 is give honest feedback kindly. Now there are two key
words in that sentence: the first is honest and the second is kindly. Both of
them are important, because if you just give feedback and you're really honest
but you're not very tired then if there's some negative or constructive
feedback in there you run the risk of coming across is pretty mean-spirited.
And on the flip side if you just focus on the kindly part and you gloss over any
negative or constructive feedback you're really gonna do your peer and disservice
as well because those are the areas that they need to know about so that they can
improve. So this is a very tough thing to do because it makes a lot of people
uncomfortable to give negative or constructive feedback. So the number one
sort of advice I have for you here is to paint the context for your partner - your
peer partner - about why you're giving them this feedback. So saying you know
something akin to, "Hey, you know, I've got some feedback for you and I'm trying to be as
honest as possible about parts that went well and not well so that you know where you can
work on to get better and improve performance." And another thing that you
can do that's also helpful is share a little bit of your own struggle going
through the preparation process. Showing that you're all in the same boat together.
And saying something like, "Hey you know, got some feedback for you.
There's some parts here that I also really struggled with as I've been
preparing, you know, on component X and this is what I've done to get better." And
that's how that type of stuff can really just show that you're all sort of on the
same team and is a nice thing to do as well. It is overall a really tough thing
to do - to give good honest feedback and be kind about it. But even just thinking
about it and making sure that you've got the right intentions and trying to
communicate that can make that feedback process a lot better, easier for you to
give that feedback and a lot easier for your peer to receive that feedback and
then be able to act on it and improve his or her performance.
Okay. If you put these three tips to use it's gonna help you be a really good
mock interview partner, and your peers will really thank you for that. But
there's an added benefit for you as well. If you think about these tips you're
basically using the same type of tips that interviewers at companies like
McKinsey and Google and BCG and Amazon are using themselves. And so by adopting
these tips you really put yourself into the shoes of the interviewer, and you
really understand a lot more what it's like to be on the other side of the
table. The better you are at assessing candidates yourself, the better you are
the better you're gonna be at understanding what makes a candidate stand out - what
makes a candidate special - and that's gonna help you in your own interview
preparation process. So that's really a big win for you as well. So thank you so
much for watching. We have tons of great content coming out on the consulting and
product management career paths on a weekly basis. So if you haven't
subscribed yet already please do below. There's a big red button right there. And
have a good day and we'll see you soon!