Reminder: Diagram Your Prompt

Clarifying Questions

This week, during a product sense mock, I froze (a little). And so, I prioritized timing (a weakness I need to tackle) over perfection. When I was giving a client feedback on the very same prompt, I caught my own mistake. I forgot to diagram the prompt.

I should have kept the focus on the two simple, but important words in the prompt. In this case: enjoy and art.

Had I taken a split second and walked myself through the proper motions, I would have knocked it out of the park. Instead, I clearly picked a throwaway clarifying question. You can hear it fall flat. It is an excellent example of why you should avoid filler questions/assumptions whenever possible. Maybe hearing me do it will help you prevent it in the future.

Small Thing, Major Impact

In my case, given that I typically nail clarifying questions, it was better for me to grab something and move on in the grand scheme of things. Still, it could have killed me in a real interview, as the interviewer would have instantly lowered the expectation bar and thus brought my grade below a 5 with a real human. (I need to figure out how to get that nuance in my grading prompt.)

Flashback to Grade School

We used to diagram sentences in grade school to identify nouns and verbs, etc. In this case, pull out the key words and ask, “Why are they important?” and “What are the subtle nuances I need to identify to be successful?”