Hi there Informational Interviewers,

I have a short and sweet lil post for you today. I’m working on two longer essays! One ia about Rory Gilmore and the problem with “giftedness” as a concept. The other one is still being formulated. Stay tuned.

Today, though, I’d like to ask you all a favor. Would you mind taking a moment to share a testimonial through Substack’s “recommend” feature? All you have to do is click here and share a few thoughts about how The Art of the Informational Interview has helped you!

Thank you for reading and for supporting my work! Stay Savvy

Emma

How to approach a take-home assignment

Ah, the take home assignment. Such an unfortunate part of the hiring process. But, sadly, something we all must confront from time to time. So, let’s just start with some housekeeping items:

1. Take home assignments should always be paid

2. They should never take more than a few hours at most

If you are being asked to do a bunch of free work for are company that isn’t even sure they’re going to hire you, you should consider walking away from the role, if you can. This is a red flag.

Now, assuming the assignment is reasonable and paid, let’s talk about how to approach take home assignments. There are two basic principles for succeeding at a take home assignment:

1. Do not over think it!

2. Get someone you trust to review your work

Don’t over think it!

Let’s take the first thing first. It is very (very!) common to overthink a take home assignment. It feels super high stakes. You want it to be perfect. You want the employer to feel that you went above and beyond! But the reality is take home assignments are first and foremost a way of disqualifying people for a job.

Your goal should be to not get disqualified at this stage.

Remember that you are probably not really being judged on the substance of the take home, but on your ability to clearly communicate and present information. The employer likely knows that you cannot come up with a great go-to-market strategy for their enterprise business! They know that you don’t know what the best content strategy for their new healthcare vertical. Most of the time they just want to see if you can write a coherent google doc outlining a strategy for literally anything. Other times the take home is about demonstrating domain expertise, but it’ll probably be obvious if thats the case.

Always get someone to review your work

This second principle is because you’re going to fail at the first principle. You will overthink it. You will write too much. You will get all turned around and caught up in the details. You will forget that the hiring manager is just a person, and that this process is very straightforward, and that you should just make everything as simple as possible.

That’s why you need a buddy to review your work.

Job searching is a team sport. This is not cheating. This is how people get jobs. Your take home buddy will bring you back to reality, make sure your work is legible and simple, and ultimately help you not get disqualified at this stage of the interview process.

And that’s basically it.

What I’m reading (and watching!) this week …

Zach Weinberg on fixing the biotech funding modelOkay, so this may seem a bit random, but I am big fan of the way Zach Weinberg thinks about identifying the right problem to solve and finding product market fit. Basically he used informational interviewing to found a $2 billion business.

The ‘Lazy-Girl Job’ Is In Right Now. Here’s Why. ~ Katie Mogg for the Wall Street Journal These kinds of trend pieces are so silly. But I clicked, so egg on my face. Idk, tho, I guess its just nice to know that people are talking about prioritizing themselves in their relationship to their employment. I’m all for that.

Glossary of industry acronyms from Umbrex I was up for a job at Microsoft when I was just 23. I wish I still had the job description. It was illegible. It had stuff in it like, “as the SMB localisation PM embedded within the GMO you’ll be responsible for liaising with upstream and downstream stakeholders.” I had to sit down with a seasoned consultant woman I knew just to understand what they were even talking about. Anyways, if you want a big excel spreadsheet of different industry acronyms, here you go. Again, though, informational interviewing is the best way to learn this stuff.

Random note for those who made it this far: My reading this week was dominated by indictment stuff. Did you read anything good? I’d love some non-indictment reading materials, if you’ve got a recommendation!