 We're entering the primary cooling season. It's just a gold rush. If you do it well, you're able to get many offers and get rewarded in terms of high compensation. If you don't do it well, I lost all the job opportunities. Using the right strategies and right tools, just like using the right shovels to help you to really dig out the gold in the sand. In this video, I'm going to talk about top five strategies about how you're able to capture the great offer fast during this primary cooling season and make sure to stay until the end of the video where I share with you the tips that most people do not talk about in their job interviews. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a director product and teacher in force. I've helped 100 people land their dream PM job offer in bank companies, the unicorn startup, and continue to get promoted as a product leader. If the interesting product management course goes to PM Excerptor Diode to learn more. In this channel, we'll talk about free product management training and tech trends. Like and subscribe to our video every Tuesday. First of all, let's understand when is the primary cooling season. Since very often it's actually starting from the mid of August all the way until September and October. And September is a primary interview time. And October is when offers going to come out and a few offers left over until November and Thanksgiving and Christmas is going to be very, very slow. Then the many articles talk about thanks to AI. There's so many tech companies big or small start hiring more people again. If you look up the layoff and unemployment chart right here and actually right now where the lowest number of layoffs and unemployment is only 3%. So right now it's the best time for you to really take action to achieve your next career success. There are many different ways to tell what kind of companies are already hiring. For example, as we predicted Google's AI strategy in this video right here, and Google already started to hire people to work on BARD and start to design the go-to-market strategy for BARD based on the job descriptions right here. And we also talked to recruiters was in Meta and the recruiters told us they already started hiring for primary important positions in Meta and we even have alumni within Meta start hiring us that Meta start hiring again. This is actually very exciting news for all of us. If you want to learn the detail breakdown regarding what type of companies are hiring, make sure to check out this video where I talk about in-depth the tech layoffs is over and how to find out the right opportunities today and lots of other strategy, which is that number two, be strategic about the competition pool. So right now, so many companies hiring, but it's very important to understand also so many candidates looking for job at the same time. And if you are MBA graduate or fresh graduate, it's very important for you to target those specific companies. They prefer MBA candidate, for example, Amazon or some companies only go to certain schools on campus recruiting. And those are going to eliminate all your competition very quickly. What this means is let's say some company preferred to hire from certain schools or certain type of degrees and you're not competing with everyone out there. You're only competing with those specific school students. For example, when I was looking for my very first job when Apple, Google or recruiting, but they only recruited MIT and I at the time went to Boston University to do my PhD. So I actually sneaked into the MIT career fair and actually talked to Apple recruiter saying that I am the best engineering PhD from Boston University. I am as good as MIT PhDs. You should give me an interview opportunities here is why. So literally, I pitched myself to the recruiters at MIT on campus recruiting opportunities. All I need to do is compete with MIT PhDs, which making the pools much smaller and which in fact, I land on campus interview opportunities at MIT, even if I went to Boston University as a time. Just because I strategically use the competition pool to narrow down and talk to recruiters directly. If you are experienced part of managers, of course, you cannot go to on campus recruiting. However, you must use a referral methodology to cut off all your competition. Whenever there's a referral, your resume will guarantee you reviewed by hiring managers or recruiters. And usually once it reviewed 50% of chance you will be invited for interview. This is going to increase your success rate from 1% getting a resume review all the way to 50% getting an interview. So comment below what kind of level of positions your interviewing for and more than happy to give you more tips around how to narrow down those competition in the comment. Secret number three is really understand the speed of recruiting and interviews process. At this moment, the company is hiring people really, really fast, which also means that you should learn many interviews very quickly if you use the right resumes and right networking strategy. For example, one of the students already learned eight interviews within a week. However, he made fatal mistakes because the company moved very fast when he was invited for interview. He waited for one week to schedule his interview, but most companies already schedule interviews for other candidates who already moved to next round interview. And some companies already feel certain type of positions just because our students were waiting to make sure he's 100% ready for those interview opportunities. And this happens in small startups all the way to big companies like Meta, Apple, Google, because last year we have students actually passed many rounds of interview at Meta and Google receivable confirmation from the interviewer and recruiter saying that, hey, we are ready to schedule next round interview, but because of holiday seasons, recruiters went on vacation and all the way until Thanksgiving, the interviews don't are scheduled. And finally, the recruiter said, oh, sorry, we already filled this position with other candidates, even if you pass the interview, we cannot offer you the job offer. So therefore, you must be fast in scheduling interview and passing interviews. On top of that, regarding speed, you must apply for jobs as soon as it's opened. For example, data has shown that if you're able to apply for jobs as soon as open in the first week or so, the likelihood for you to land an interview is significantly higher. So therefore, apply for those fresh opening jobs much earlier as much as you can. But only if your resume is ready and your portfolio is ready, I cover more regarding the differences between resume and portfolio in this video right here. You can check it out. If you like all the tips I provide today, make sure to like this video and continue strategy number four. You should actually double down your interview preparation time and effort. I already talked about nowadays companies hiring partner managers very fast. However, if you are not ready and you give an opportunity, you're going to burn those opportunities. So therefore, it's very important you study really fast and get ready really fast in a week or two and they immediately go out for interviews and also improve your resume very quickly as well. Here's a guideline in terms of how to study very fast. Number one, you must dedicate specific time on your calendar, let's say every day from 5pm all the way until 10pm and for seven times per week or any time during the weekend so that you have dedicated time to continue study and improve yourself. For our students, we always require them during the primary recruiting season spending 20 hours on studying and job hunting. And if someone was laid off or someone hasn't started their school, somehow have a lot of time, you should spend more than 40 hours per week to study and applying for jobs and preparing for interviews. So that's a standard for people to catch up in the primary recruiting session. If you're spending less time, you need to improve your efficiency. Another fast learning trick is to write down your interview answers on a piece of paper and I actually wrote down 18 pages of sample interview answers for myself when I interviewed for director positions in April 2020 and I land four offers through those are director product offer because I was over prepared. I know exactly what questions may end and then I ask you and even if they ask me questions outside of those 18 pages sample answers, I was already very familiar with all the modifications of those answers. Another important tip for everybody who is interested in jumping into a new industry or open up new domains such as lots of people want to become an AI product manager. In this case, you must immediately take some classes about AI or the basic knowledge regarding natural language processing, machine learning and I myself specialize in machine vision and the different type of AI algorithms out there. So really understand what type of AI company you want to join but at least you need to study the foundations of different kind of AI knowledge and take some classes and those classes are the best investment ever made in the past that helps me to grow my career much faster. For example, I literally spend $300 in learning English pronunciation class with a live tutor and help me to improve myself and also spend another $8,000 and learning public speaking skills and another $22,000 learning program management skills and all those learning opportunities are very crucial for anybody who wants to really master new knowledge. So therefore I highly encourage you guys to check out this video right here. We are top of different kind of sample AI classes you guys can choose and most of those classes are only few hundred dollars. So check out this video right here. Right now if you are actively preparing for upcoming interviews, make sure to use the latest interview questions database to get ready and go to this website where I share with you top 50 interview questions for product managers use those for your live interviews right away. I'm also going to put the link in the description so that you're ready for your primary interview recruiting session coming up. Now number five is the last tip that most people do not talk about, which is share your learning during the interview. Because in order to stand out from the competition, you might show others that you're already putting lots of effort to improve yourself. For example, I already talked to many hiring managers, many of them told me that Nancy, I would be very happy to promote somebody and pay close attention to somebody who's very interested in investing themselves because the new skills they gain is going to help me launch my product better and grow my business much better. And they from the employees actually told them that hey they took like AI classes or public speaking classes and then different management classes out there and they continue to improve themselves. And actually those people are more likely to be selected for a job offer because they've shown that once you join those companies and you are going to continue to grow and with a company together. However, lots of candidates do not like to talk about oh I take lots of classes about AI or I took some coaching training to improve myself because sometimes I just want to pretend they're the smartest person in the room who doesn't need to take a class to improve themselves. I think this very wrong mindset around it and actually having the girls mindset is what employer is looking for who love to grow with a company together. If you're already prepared for upcoming interviews but your biggest challenge is not able to pass even the first round interview which is a behavioral interview question round. It's likely you're using the wrong framework to tell your past stories. I invent my own framework called Grail Framework and everybody should go watch the detailed description of Grail Framework right here where I show you why most people answer questions incorrectly that make them lose offer. And going to see you in my next video right here. This is Dr. Nia Sidi from PM Accelerator. I'll see you soon.