When trying to detect if someone is bullshitting me or not, one of my favorite tactics is how general someone is as compared to how specific they could be. It is so common, so easy to detect, and such a strong signal.
Let’s look at it from the eyes of a potential client, considering hiring two people.
Potential Candidate 1: I run lots of Google AdWords campaigns, and they usually perform great.
Now compare him to:
Potential Candidate 2: I run lots of Google AdWords campaigns, and they usually perform great. In particular, for my last three B2C clients, I’ve given them an average increase of 65% to their ROAS. To achieve that, I used a bunch of different methods, and my favorite method was using a managed placements focused strategy for the display campaigns.
Which candidate would get the job? The one with the more specific answer. Why? Not because his answer is good—it may or may not be. Maybe his analysis and conclusion are totally wrong. But by being specific, it shows he’s mastering the details, thinking about them, and dealing intimately with the footnotes. Ceteris paribus, the master of the small picture is more likely to understand the big picture than the “big picture thinker” who doesn’t really dive into the details. (The ceteris paribus is an important qualification there because sometimes very experienced or very smart people can understand situations based on only the most general details, but that skill usually comes with lots of experience.)
Note that the second one is better for another reason as well: he knows the details off the top of his head. That shows even more mastery than understanding the details but needing to look up the particular specifics.
Now, this doesn’t only apply to getting a job—it can apply in any situation. Your client or boss can fire you at any point. So, you need to constantly show your mastery of the details.
This also doesn’t only apply to discussions and conversions—it applies to all communication. This includes written communication such as Google Docs, as well as details such as tickets and bug reports.
Your client or boss, for example, wants to trust you to ask some other developers to finish a task. That usually takes the form of a ticket. And which ticket would be better? “X is broken, please fix” or “X is broken. Here’s a screenshot. Here is exactly what I did that led to this breaking. Here is what I expected to happen when I did it. Here is what browser and operating system I was using.” I won’t answer the question because you know it by now. Well, hopefully, you do.
Also, note that for lots of communication there are formal requirements. Many companies will have their own standards and requirements for how to write tickets and if they don’t, there are tons of articles about it online, I’m sure. But they all follow the same pattern: just formal rules that really just encourage you to be as specific as possible.
There is a more general version of this issue tracking point as well. It’s also useful to remember a really common case where it is twice as important to be specific, when making lists, such as action items and to-dos. The rule of thumb is, when creating a list, break up every general item into sub-items of increasing granularity. The more specific it is, the more useful it is to others. It also makes things less likely to be forgotten, lost, or misunderstood.
Finally, I have a very subjective reason for encouraging you to always be specific: it’s just better writing. Always, that’s a rule of writing that’s as strong as the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. But don’t take my word for it. The most articulate and powerful argument for why specific writing is always better—including examples and analyses so deeply compelling I can’t even come close to summarizing them as well as he does—is George Orwell’s must-read timeless essay, Politics and the English Language. That might be my favorite piece of writing of all time, so my apologies for over-hyping it. Actually, I’m going to follow my own advice and withdraw that apology!
