Lisa Huang was interviewing someone for a senior AI PM role. They had zero AI experience. She was ready to pass.

Then in the first interview they said: "I saw you're building financial tools for small businesses. I went and watched 3 hours of TikTok videos from coaches who work with small businesses. Here's what they said about what those businesses actually need financially."

Nobody else had done that. Not one candidate out of the entire pipeline.

Here's why this works and most interview prep doesn't. Every other candidate prepared by studying the company's product pages, reading the job description, and rehearsing STAR stories. Standard playbook. Completely undifferentiated.

This person went directly to the end user. They skipped the company's framing entirely and went to find out what small businesses actually say they need when they're talking to each other, not to vendors.

That's product sense demonstrated, not described. No mock interview drill produces that. No framework produces that. The candidate essentially did a lightweight user research sprint before the first call.

Lisa hired them. And the lesson she drew from it applies way beyond interviews: do the work before you're asked to.

I keep seeing this pattern. The candidates who land AI roles without AI experience on their resume all share one trait. They've already built something or already done the research that proves they think like an AI PM. They don't talk about wanting to learn. They show up having already learned.

Here's how to do so yourself:

1. Work products: news.aakashg.com/p/work…

2. AI PM job search: news.aakashg.com/p/beco…

3. My cohort for coaching: landpmjob.com

4. Watch Lisa's episode:

The job market for AI roles is brutal right now. Lisa confirmed it on this episode. Junior roles are harder to get. Director layers are compressing. PM-to-engineer ratios are shrinking.

But the bar for standing out is honestly not that high. Most people are still just talking about AI. The ones who are doing the work before anyone asks them to are getting hired.