# Prompt 3. Research the person, not just the company

**Use it when:** you know who is on the panel, and before you fill in
`sheets/...` for that round. Twenty minutes, not an afternoon.

**What it is for:** knowing who you are talking to. Not to flatter them, not to
mirror them, and not to be strange about it. A company does not interview you.
Three people with different jobs do, and the same true story needs a different
register for each of them.

---

## The boundary, first

Use **what a person has published professionally**: their role, what they
specialise in, talks, posts, articles, public repositories, the company's own
pages.

Do not use anything else. Not personal accounts, not family, not photographs,
not anything they did not publish in a professional context. If you would not
say in the room how you found something, do not go looking for it.

The test is simple: **everything you learn should be something you could mention
out loud without the temperature in the room changing.**

---

## The prompt

```
I have an interview with the people below. Help me prepare for THEM, not for
the company in general.

THE ROLE
<paste the posting>

THE PEOPLE
<for each: name as given to me, job title, and any public professional links>

SOURCES YOU MAY USE
Professional and public only: their stated role, talks, articles, posts about
their work, public repositories, and the company's own pages. Nothing personal.
If you cannot find something professional and public, write "nothing found" and
stop. Do not guess, and do not fill the gap from people with similar titles.

FOR EACH PERSON, GIVE ME ONE ROW:

  role in this interview | what they are probably responsible for |
  what they seem to care about (with the source) | what they are NOT likely to
  be assessing

THEN:

1. For each person, which ONE true story from my experience should I lead with,
   and in which register? An engineering lead and a product manager need the
   same story told differently: one wants the mechanism, the other wants the
   consequence.
2. For each story, state the PRINCIPLE first and then the example. If the
   example does not land, I need a second example for the same principle.
3. Name one topic that belongs in a different conversation with a different
   person, so I do not spend this round on it.
4. Give me one question I could ask whose answer might make me want the role
   LESS. Not a question that makes me look keen. A question that could change
   my mind.
5. Flag anything you found that I should NOT mention, and say why.

RULES
- Cite where each claim about a person came from. No source, no claim.
- Do not infer someone's opinions from their job title.
- Do not write me a script. Give me the shape, I will say it in my own words.
```

---

## When to stop

**Stop when new information stops changing a story, a question, or a boundary.**

If the last ten minutes of reading did not change what you will say, what you
will ask, or what you will avoid, then it was not research. It was nerves
looking for something to do.

## Two things this will not do for you

**It cannot tell you whether they liked you.** Warmth measures how polite
somebody is, and polite people are polite to candidates they are about to
reject. A concrete next step is evidence. A nice tone is not.

**It cannot turn rapport into agreement.** A pleasant conversation where you
were talked out of your own threshold is not a good interview. It is a good
conversation and a worse position.