I'm landing 1st interviews but not 2nd. How do I stand out to employers in remote interviews?

If you're landing 1st round interviews, that means your LinkedIn profile/resume looks good and covers the experience/skills/work experience needed for your targeted roles. That's great, especially when hiring environments are tight like they are now. If you're consistently not moving forward in the process, I'd do an honest self-assessment in 3 main areas:

1. How am I coming off to interviewers? If you look good on paper (which you presumably do if you get past resume screens to a first call), are you listening, engaged and, when it's your time to answer or ask questions, is your communication sharp? Experienced interviews can pick up when you're not really listening and just waiting for your turn to talk. Don't fake enthusiasm, but a flat affect or coming off bored is the kiss of death in an early interview. Finally, if you end up rambling or stumbling over your words, that's a non-starter for PMM, which is a position built on communication and influence. You'll probably hate doing this, but record a practice interview on Zoom with a friend and watch it back. I bet you'll pick up on things to fix.

2. Am I landing a tight, coherent "story" of my career so far? This is where I see a lot of candidates fall down, especially if you're past the "just starting out" point in your career. You're a marketer, market yourself and what you've accomplished in the form of an interesting story. Don't just rattle off your resume - couch things in a "this happened, and therefore I decided to do X, which led to Y which brings us here to Z where I feel like I'm we'll positioned for this role". Storytelling is still job one for PMMs, and if you can't tell a story about yourself, how can you expect people to believe that you can tell a story about a product?

3. Am I doing enough preparation on the company, their products/services and the overall market they're in? This is another easy trap. Don't just glance at the website and watch an overview video - sign up for a product trial and dig into their product, scour G2, Trust Radius and Reddit for sentiment about the product, check in on competitors, read the 10-Q if it's a public company and maybe an analyst report or two. I don't expect candidates to know everything about a company or a space when interviewing, but showing you've done preparation is a strong signal for both work ethic and curiosity, two essential PMM traits.

Good Luck!

If you’re not making it past the recruiter screen, this usually means you need to work on your storytelling and communication. Which, fortunately, can be vastly improved with some basic prep. Here’s a wonderful framework: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-pass-any-first-round-interview

Practice is also extremely helpful. Find a job search buddy, and do some mock interviews together focused on specific roles you’re considering. Doing a dry run will help you figure out your story, and identify blind spots before the stakes are high.

The best interviewing advice I ever received was when I was in Sales: always close your interviewer. Your final question should pivot away from asking about the company or opportunity, and instead start shifting to the next steps. Something like, "Based on our conversation today, is there any additional information I can provide about my experience that would move me on to the next step?" This gives the interviewer a chance to provide feedback on what they like about your experience, or even give feedback on what you might be missing in your resume that is causing them to hesitate. If it's the latter, it gives you one last chance to position yourself favorably and share that one last anecdote that could get them excited about your candidacy, and at least move you on to the next round to learn more.

 It's a legit question though I need more context to give you specific feedback. When you say 1st interviews, I assume you mean with the recruiter rather than the hiring manager. Sounds like your resume is good enough to entice them, but there's something going on in your interview answers that's not connecting the dots.

How do you respond to questions - do you convince them that you have done the work you claim, do you provide enough depth and detail, do you show results and outcomes, do you persuade them that your past experience translates to future results? Without knowing any of that, I can't really provide you a good answer.

Please respond below or if you want to do it privately, feel free to ping me directly on LinkedIn, maybe we can dig into this.