
Ask HN: How can I know what's wrong with my interviews? - throwaway9823
Hi, I&#x27;m a product manager and about a year ago I moved to Berlin from my home country, which is not trivial to emigrate from.<p>Before moving, I worked at one of the biggest public internet companies in the world for a couple of years. Let’s call that company “Z”. Z has google-like interviewing processes, where software engineers have multiple onsite interviews with a lot of computer science theory questions. Also, very popular next steps in career for Z employees are companies from “big five”. This should mean, Z is a nice place to work at.<p>I was moving to Berlin together with my SO and I didn&#x27;t have much time interviewing, so I took the very first offer for a senior product manager position from a company with similar product I worked on at Z. I thought, I&#x27;d be able to easily change it, if I didn&#x27;t like it.<p>Turned out the company was mediocre. Product managers here were just product owners, responsible for prioritizing backlogs without really doing any product work.<p>The job was boring. After a year of trying to change things here and take more responsibility, I gave up and decided to move forward.<p>I started applying for a job in companies, which looked like companies of the same level as Z or at least close enough. Within the last few months I applied to about ten of them. Most of the companies invited me to an interview, but then rejected me after it.<p>As a person, who takes interviewing seriously, I always prepare a lot, trying to learn about the company as much as I can. I try find out their strategy, their competitors and possible ways of improving their product. This is very exhausting and I’m already tired of interviewing.<p>Now I feel like I’m stuck in the current company and my self-esteem has never been any lower.<p>The main problems are that I have no idea why those companies reject me, I don’t have any feedback on my mistakes and I don’t know how can I improve to finally get hired.<p>Is there anything I can do in this situation?
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brudgers
I think researching the companies where you're interviewing is a good idea.
Going into an interview with a list of ways to improve the product might not
be because:

1\. In most cases the detailed knowledge of the product and the customer base
and the logistics and the costs are not available and an interviewee simply
cannot have expertise.

2\. In those cases where the product really is so bad that an interviewee
could come up with feasible well structured changes, it's not unlikely that
those changes will come across as "you people don't know what you are doing".

3\. In cases where the people know what they are doing, an interviewee pushing
changes can still come across as in item 2.

4\. While every company isn't a 'We are all A players' type company, few
companies want to hire someone whose world view is my coworkers are all
mediocre and my current employer sucks...because that attitude tends to be
portable across employers.

So my random internet advice is that next interview, mostly listen and let
people talk about themselves and the company and to not offer unsolicited
advice and to not slide into the role of 'the expert in the room.' Go into the
interview and learn.

As a last thought, ten applications is not very many. It may simply be a case
where the statistics are stacked against you.

Good luck.

