How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?

Preparation. Anyone who has done public speaking knows that it's a lot of work to be a good speaker.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says you have to be 10x more prepared than you need to be. He calls it his Batman utility belt. You anticipate every question you'll get and do your research.

One interviewer asked Neil whether it was worth the $3B mission to Saturn. He brought up that it's $3B over 12 years and that it's how much Americans spend on lip balm. He researched the reporters, anticipated 10 different questions, and prepared to answer a question on cost.

For example, a very common question to rehearse is "tell me about yourself" or "tell me about your biggest or latest major project." A big company might ask your experience with processes - CI/CD, how you work with a team, when you've let the team down. A smaller company might ask about what you think about their product.

Don't memorize a speech or answer though.

A more advanced trick I learned from public speaking class is to get a topic, draft bullet points in my head within 5 minutes, then speak from those points. An example I love is "Do you think a sewer system or waste disposal system is more essential to a city?"

If you answer immediately, you will "ummmm uhhh" a lot. Learn to take a breather and buy time.

The one tip I'd give any interviewee is to take time and *pause*.

Often the interviewer is looking for fairly short and concise answers to their questions so they can direct the flow and conversations to what they need to hear through further questions. Filling all the available air time either forces them to rudely interrupt you (which feels awkward) or wait for you to finish even though they aren't that interested in the content.

As an example, if you are asked a very open ended question like "tell me about about role X and company Y.

Start with a brief overview of the role, the company and responsibilities and then pause. Then if they don't immediately ask a more detailed question about the role suggest something. "Would you like to me get into some details about my most recent project/success/challenge?"

Staying brief helps the interviewer get to what they want to know and eases your own burden of maintaining all of the flow in the conversation.

Regarding verbal crutches, the best advice I've received is to just say nothing instead, and pauses never feel as long to the other parties as they do you. So when you feel yourself saying "umm" or "mmmaa", instead say nothing, take a breath, and move forward.

With English not being your first language, I think you can apply this plan to formulating your responses in general. Just take a moment, plan your reply, and say it. It doesn't feel that long to the other party, I promise.

Regarding flow, when asked specific questions about things, I remember the acronym CAR - Context, Action, Result. I form my answers in this framework to make a plan for how to get to the reply. Give a little context to set the stage/problem, say what you did, then say how it went - good or bad. Be concise. Fewer words get the job done and are easier on you.

Not sure that is what you're looking for regarding practical resources, but I hope it helps. It has helped me a lot, I think.

What I have realised is that there is no trick or shortcut to communicate better.

You have to read more, be more knowledgeable, practice speaking and writing, then you will have more intelligent things to say.

Also the fear of making mistake is what holds back. To let creativity flourish you have to let yourself go, not be afraid of being wrong, not be afraid of opening up or be judged. For that you also need to have sincere good intentions and straightforward life that is not based on lies. Then there is nothing to be afraid of from spilling your thoughts. As you do it more, you learn that opening up produces good results, and people don't judge you as much as you thought they would, this creates feedback loop which extinguishes your anxiety in future. This is why talking to different people that force you to open up and be transparent also helps to unblock that blockage.

I see that a lot of people have basic hangups about opening up deeply. And it does more bad than good. I'd be much more likely to accept the person when he is upfront about his worries, than a mr. perfect who is stonewalling every question and answers them the way he is expected to answer, but not in a deeply truthful way.

Nobody is perfect, we just want to work with real humans, not robots. Opening up about your imperfections provokes empathy. Selling yourself too strongly provokes skepticism.

As for the interview, the reason you seem unconfident is because you are unconfident. That means most likely you are trying to pretend to be someone you are not.

Here is what I recommend for everyone, regardless of role.

1. Make an Excel/Google sheet with 50+ questions you think will come up in an interview.

2. Open Zoom and start recording.

3. Randomize the question list and practice answering each question in 1-2 minutes.

Take a break.

4. Watch the video and critique yourself.

5. Rinse and repeat.

You will get very, very good over time.

The best learnt behavior I have is to slow down. In practice that means using phrases like "Let me think about that for a second", and maybe looking at or writing notes. As an interviewer, if anyone actually took a minute to think about what I had just asked them, I would consider that a huge positive signal.

This is a bit wild, but learning and being fluid in MECE changed my life. Not really, but it really helped me in interviews and all types of conversations. Check out How to be MECE on Youtube. MECE = mutually exhaustive and completely exclusive.

The short version is that when you describe something you want to divide it up into mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive chunks. There are five ways to be MECE - algebraic, process, conceptual, segmenting, and opposite words (in descending priority of insight).

For example, if you are asked a question about how increase revenue for a grocery store, then you break it down into revenue = number of tickets * value per ticket, and then you can attack it that way. This would be the algebraic way to be MECE.

Trick A is that almost all conversations can be broken into MECE, and that gives good practice. E.g. if you are planning a road trip then when you are talking about it you use a process MECE to add structure.

Trick B is that it takes about an hour or two to be fluid in applying MECE to a given domain, just start picking random topics and breaking them down, and the more insightful the better. E.g. how would you describe the items on a menu? Different programming languages? Features you worked on?

If you do that, then it gives a proper narrative, good structure, and you can use the time where you are setting up the structure to think about everything else. By running through all items in the MECE list it shows that you are thorough and you have literally thought of everything (because you've created an exhaustive list).

Take breaks as you talk! Pause in silence. Whether you are giving a technical answer, or answering a behavioral/scenario question, make it a conversation with pauses and opportunities for your interviewer to help steer.

As an interviewer, the worst candidates are the ones who just launch into a stream of words, talking and talking and talking with no break. Just a continuous stream of consciousness or memorized prepared pitch. Especially for the really open ended questions! It should be a conversation, not a one-way word salad.

I've had candidates answer the simple "Tell me about your background" question with a continuous 10-minute stream of words. I've more than once had to physically wave my hands and flag them down to stop. I've had a candidate who misheard part of my question and started answering something I never asked, and the candidate never provided an "in" for me to provide a correction and turn them in the right direction. Just non-stop words with no breaks. So many candidates do this. I don't know--are interview prep guides telling them this is a good strategy? It's not!

Echo the question back to confirm understanding - this buys time for your brain to start filtering ... and makes sure you are answering the right question. Start with high level aspects as a "summary" rather than "drilling down" too deep in any one thing early.

Pause mid-way and confirm "Is this answering your question? Do you need more detail?". "No I was hoping to hear more about databases" "More about database theory, or more practical aspects of running a production database?" "I'm interested in the practical aspects" "Alright the practical aspects - ok sure!" Etc

Practice also makes perfect. General rule.od thumb for presentations etc is prepare for 10x times the length of presentation (so 60 mins = 600 prep). You may want to consider something similar.

Good luck

I can’t speak to this directly, but I’ve heard from a few people in my company that joining their local Toastmasters group really helped them out.

Could anyone speak to that?

One reason we use filler sounds when we’re talking is to not lose the initiative, so to speak. You don’t want someone else to interpret your pause as an opportunity to talk over you.

When you’re answering interview questions, you should make a conscious effort to not use them. Pause for the right thought in silence. If someone steps in, they might give you the information you were struggling for, but regardless a thoughtful pause should come across as more professional than a string of nonsense syllables.

There are two frameworks. I'd suggest you combine both. The first one is STAR: situation, tasks, action, and results. The second one is used by product managers a lot: MECE, or mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. Use the first framework for your narrative with a focus on why, or so-called working backwards. Use the second framework to narrow down what you need to dive deep.

I can't stress enough how important it is to work backwards and explain the why of your work. Too many geeks mistake claims for reasons, and got dragged into irrelevant details to the point that their work appears irrelevant too. On the other hand, the bigger a problem, a more impressive a solution. If you can articulate why you're solving a problem and why you solved it in the way you described, people can probably figure out the how part easily.

Interviewing is a learned skill. I went through a period where I interviewed with every recruiter that reached out, to improve interviewing skills. You should do that. You will get the practice of nailing conversations through that.

I still suck at being verbally coherent, as my brain isn’t quick in the right way, but my guess is that it’s good to have "talking points" that you’re trying to work toward from wherever the question actually started, and an outline to make sure to hit points A, B, C, and D about matter E...

I always went in as a naive kid "they will ask a question and I will say the answer; repeat" because I was brought up to be so passive. And still am so passive. And I naively thought they’d recognize there must be something there if I could get that GPA.

One thing that can be helpful is preparing several stories from your past that show useful aspects of your experience, and your character (conflict resolution, managing schedule problems, etc). Then when a question can be answered with your prepared story, make a small intro explaining why you want to tell this story and then tell it.

Politicians do this: they listen to the question and then reply to the question they wanted you to ask. You need to be a bit smooth about it, but you are certainly allowed to adapt questions to the story you want and need to tell.

Lots of good advice here. One important one is not to be afraid to pause* and think. Someone asks you a question and of course you want to answer right away to be responsive, enthusiastic, and all the other things people correctly tell you to be which are all swirling in your head.

So the interviewer asks you "I see you're a Java programmer: what are the most common library datastructures you use?" You could easily jump into "Yes, I have a lot of java experience, having worked on X and Y, and once I had to implement a custom hashmap because we had some unusual constraints blah blah". Just take a second to make sure you are answering the question actually asked: "Well in my Java code it sometimes feels like the only datastructure is ArrayList! Which is funny because when I write Python code I predominantly use maps".

This is good when you have some pre-planned answers (as has been suggested elsewhere) to make sure you use the right one. Also good when you have to think up the right answer: when you know what you want to say you can concentrate on saying it.

This problem affects those interviewing in their native language as well as those not in their native language, as with you. Everybody is nervous.

* I originally typed "stop and think" but really we're talking just for a second or two at most.

As an interviewer, if your code is great, solves the problem concisely and is easy to understand, you don’t need refined English language skills. Respond honestly to my questions and I don’t care one but if the English isn’t perfect, you can say umm and mmaaa all you want.

I’ve given technical interviews to people in China who barely speak english, just understand a bit, and I can’t speak one word of Mandarin. But we could communicate through a live coderpad and it actually worked.

That is normal. Even one of the best recent Presidents can "struggle" with interviews. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4bDuFJuriw This is the best speaker on the planet. On the planet. His bread and butter is pro-speaking actually. "Struggle" in quotes, because he's not struggling really, it's just how normal human beings speak as they are constructing answers in their brains.

But why on most of his others interviews he was going so smoothly and effortlessly? Because those were scripted and everything was predictable and prepared for in advance by a huge staff in the background. He already has all the answers in the brain and is merely giving a mental reading.

So ground yourself. You're not giving speeches and your interview is NOT going by a script you've been given prior. Relax, answer questions to the best of your ability and KNOW THAT you'll be judged most likely by people with skills inferior to yours.

Looking at other answers asking you to prepare for interview as if you're running for president. Sure thing. Do that. But only if you're actually running for president and there are millions on the table for the taking.

Interviewing 101:

1. Know what you're interviewing for. You should clarify this with the recruiter before accepting an interview.

2. Learn about the company that you're interviewing for. This shows that you have put thought into being a part of the company and that you are diligent about ensuring that you think about the tasks you are undertaking.

3. Learn how to concisely describe what you've done in the past. Nobody needs a complete history. They just want to know that you're competent enough to do the job.

4. Be sure to answer the question asked. I recently interviewed a candidate for a SDET role and asked her about her experience performing simple database queries. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she went on a 5 minute recitation of the steps she went through to do Selenium testing. It's not the information I asked for.

5. Behave as if you are in a position of equality with the interviewer. You lose nothing but your time if you don't get the job. Don't be meek. Show confidence. Any good manager is never going to hire someone they wouldn't want to work for in the future.

6. Practice your answers. We all know that interviewers generally ask the same subset of questions. You should be able to answer them immediately.

7. Tied in with #5, prepare questions that you wish to ask the interviewer. Show them that you are serious about evaluating them for the possibility of joining the company. Show that you believe in yourself.

8. Practice. As a former recruiter, I don't need to do this very much, but if you are new to the game, then it's never a bad thing to get your answers and response time down.

It helps to have a pause before you begin to speak. Think of what you're going to say before you say it. When you're done, you're done. Don't feel pressured to say anything more than what the answer is.

Additionally, it helps to have a framework. The STAR method[1] is pretty appropriate for interview responses and is pushed pretty heavily by FAANG. When I worked at Amazon, I was told that my adherence to the method really helped me stand out (for what its worth).

Finally, its worth reaching out to the employee working/resource groups at the place you're trying to apply for. Let them know you're an English as a Second Language (ESL) candidate and see if there can be any accommodations. My org allows you to interview in your native tongue and provides accommodations.

[1] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-the-star-interview...

As others said, don't forget to breathe, and pause accordingly.

Also, a nice trick is, if you can, to try to outline your point before making it.

Given a tricky question, if you can at least answer the question by a general "well, there is this part of the problem, and then, there is that part", before going into any details, you've probably reinsured the interviewer that you have a clear idea in mind.

If you don't have a clear idea in mind, well, at least you know what to prepare for next time !

Also, it's a bad idea to have "memorized" answers in general - except for some specific questions, like your"personal pitch" ("what brought you here", "tell me about your job history", etc... You can't blame your interviewer for expecting you to be ready for those.)

Good luck in all cases !

1. As others have said, practice is the only real way to get better. If you can carve out the time, interviewing even if you aren't actively looking to change jobs is a good idea.

2. Specifically to your question about proper narrative, people often recommend the STAR (Situation -> Tasks required of you -> Actions that you took -> Results that you achieved) framework for answers. It can definitely sound a little robotic if over applied, but I think it's relatively useful especially for new people. It's also helpful to start by taking a moment to gather your thoughts ("I would love to take a brief moment to think of an example"), and work backwards from the Results you want the interviewer to remember.

Listen to recordings of yourself giving speeches/interviews. After you are done, listen to the whole recording and take notes. That's helped me a lot carry out demos & present. Used to say "Um" a lot, but now I don't.

In addition to other good suggestions here, make sure you get enough sleep. Lack of sleep reduces my speech to idiot level.

The same goes for food, exercise, keeping yourself healthy in general. I find sleep to be the one that has outsize and immediate effects.

Practices. It's a skill, you get better at doing it by doing it.

However don't just drone through interviews. Do deliberate practice. Be mindful and participate fully in the process. After the fact reflect on your performance. What did you do well, what could you improve? The first few times will be super awkward. After 30 interviews you will feel more confident. After a 100 it will feel like second nature. Sounds like a lot of work? of course! that's what it takes to become good.

This might be overkill though so apply judiciously. Still, if you feel the need to improve, going through the process with a handful of companies should improve your skills significantly.

system design and behavior interviews expect you to put up an oscar worthy performance.

There is no way to "design instagram" in a super fluid straight line thought process. Only way to beat this system is to prepare and have notes handy where you can go from point to point.

Eg: you are expected in system design to have these 4 components

1) functional requirement 2) non functional requirement 3) back of envelope calculations 4) components of design.

Similarly for behavior you need STAR format with actual numbers ( improved latency of 20%)

Freestyling in an interview is a recipe for failure.

Ppl complain about leetcode but i find these interviews really embarrassing for all parties to involved to participate in this charade.

"I have noticed that at interviews, I struggle to build a proper narrative and talk coherently."

Is it only at interviews? Than it would be merley the pressure, you cannot stand.

In either case, why not practice talking with logical flow and coherence every time, you have a actual conversation?

I am not a fan of learning verbal conversation by books. I learned english for 10 years in school like this (and had quite good grades). Then I went backpacking into the world - and I allmost could not communicate with native english speakers at all. Very, very frustrating. The only thing that helped, was practice, practice and practice.

I would say record yourself speaking and then listen back to it. It will take a little bit of time to get over the discomfort of it, but you'll be happy you did once you get used to it. Not only will it improve your ability to speak, but it can also have added therapeutic benefits (not real medical advice :). The reason why this can be helpful is because you notice that, though it might feel like you are stammering while speaking, you are actually more eloquent than you realize. The small pauses are actually not that noticeable and you are already more coherent than you realize.

Being coherent, succinct, and articulate is an outcome/reward that you achieve as a result of learning and hard work.

Try improving your learning skills, and focus on your cognitive map you've built so far and identify the gaps/holes.

In general, if you are having a hard time explaining something it simply means you don't fully understand the topic. But that's fine, I often say something along the lines of "I am not doing a great job explaining X as I am still learning the topic and have gaps in my knowledge about it". Self awareness is key here.

There is a lot of advice here, all good, but also I wonder if you yourself were given this feedback by someone else or this is your own somewhat subjective opinion. I am a non-native English speaker myself and 6-8 years ago I've mistaken my slower recall of words and linguistic structure for incoherence and lack of "logical flow", but this is not true at all. Your language will get better and so is your confidence, and a qualified interview should (must?) not confuse the two situations.

One thing I do to give myself time to think is to just rephrase the question as a way to ensure I understood correctly as well as demonstrating that you're listening and participating. I then ask clarifying questions and ask for them to confirm any assumptions I'm making based upon answers given as part of my thought process. It's just thinking out loud and can also help demonstrate _how_ you think about problems. This lays the groundwork for you to construct a cohesive narrative.

One approach I used when I first started interviewing was to apply to a few jobs I wasn't really interested in pursuing to use as an opportunity to practice interviewing.

One of the advices that I often give is to watch YouTube videos of creators explaining the solution or mock interviews before going into an interview.

Just watching the YouTuber explain an algorithm or their approach to problem solving can help you get into the zone of thinking out loud that helps you talk with logical flow & coherence at interviews.

I have found this is the fastest to approach what you are aiming for. The more you practice the better you will be.

Use the simplest sentence to answer, which is not a yes or no. And if you are the one that wants to lead the conversation, follow it up with a question.

But don't force the direction of the conversation, only follow-up with subject related questions.

If the interviewer is bothered because you are leading the conversation that is a job you want to avoid. At least as a person that is doing consulting work, that is what I would suggest.

A technique I was re-taught as an adult is the story pyramid. It’s a great way to create a linear and logical profession of ideas, their supporting details, and the conclusions you want to provide.

https://www.teachervision.com/reading-comprehension/story-py...

I found reading books, like novels, helps to build the necessary skills to chain complex ideas together in "real time".

Also a second-language speaker here.

It's fine to "hmm". Many highly regarded public speakers "hmm" a lot. If the rest of the sentence makes sense, most listeners will ignore the interruption.

The best way to practice is to make conversation with people, but try to use full sentences and complete thoughts, instead of shortened, colloquial expressions.

It was very easy to fall into the trap of colloquialism as a second-language speaker, because it's way easier to learn to "Awesome", "Nice, "oh yeah" your way through conversations with friends, which doesn't your spoken English when you need to actually convey something.

Another tip is preparation. Prepare full sentences that reflect your current state of mind. "Let me think this through for a second." "I'm going to store the data into a 2D array." "I'm going to loop through this array and do xxx with each item."

And also, don't fret too much about it. Interviewers in tech industries are familiar with language barriers. If you feel like you're lost in the middle of a sentence, give a pause and start over. Not a big deal.

Try using the STAR method: situation, task, action, and result

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/how-to-use...

Record yourself, watch the recording, repeat.

It’s tough, and can make you self conscious in the short term, but it is the fastest way to radically improve your communication.

And as others have said, pause. It’s ok to pause. It’s good to pause. It’s ok to collect your thoughts silently.

The only relevant thing that comes immediately to mind is to train yourself to suppress the urge to mmmaaa and hmmm in your talking. A little bit of silence comes across a lot better (as you considering the answer, as opposed to flailing for words).

Have a bunch of stories handy that you can use in a lot of situations. Practice them. Dread the company’s values to know where the questions come from. (Amazon is the extreme example)

One thing that helped me is to start thinking in English. English is not my first language either. I noticed I dont have conversation fillers like "like" anymore for pauses.

No reasonable interviewer is going to hire you or not hire you simply due to your fluency during the interview alone.

With that in mind - relax! Imagine you are explaining things to a friend rather than being examined.

Build you answers up, step by step, starting with the basic. Explain how you are reasoning around a problem as you go.

Do not just describe how things are or what you would do: clarify why one solution is better than another, and what problems you want to avoid.

If your fluency in English is low, practice speaking in general, so that during interviews you don't have to spend time thinking about grammar and phrasing.

Short, simple sentences are much better than mumbling, making sounds, etc.

Take a moment, fully compose what you want to say, then say it. It's totally acceptable to pause the conversation for a moment to "digest".

jobsearch.dev has quite nice advices you have to follow.

Besides that remember always to build your own narrative.

Don't take a job where saying "mmmaa" is considered more of a concern than real issues.

Not down brief notes (keywords) for each of the main ideas you want to cover.

After a sentence, stop and count to 3 before changing topic or repeating yourself. Then if your partner doesn't speak, ask "should I go deeper into that?"