Are you preparing for product manager interviews? Is your interview right around the corner, but you feel like you don’t have the hang of it? Or you don’t have clarity on the PM interview? Then, you landed on the right post.
If you haven’t already, please read my previous post on crafting a killer PM profile.
This article is the first within the PM interview series that will be published periodically. In the subsequent articles, you’ll learn about specific step by step frameworks with examples for every type of interview question.
In this post, we’ll cover question types, interview assessment, preparation, and resources. Below is a slide share if you want to skip the details and just glance at a high level.
If you are interested in details, then let’s dive into the different types of questions.
Interview Question Types
Even though each company or industry has various interview question types, there are generic question types across the board. Below is a list of question types with a few examples per question type.
- Analytical
- Estimation: How many dentists in NYC? What’s the market size of water bottles?
- Success metrics: How to measure success metrics of Youtube?
- Metrics troubleshooting: Profit went down, what do you do? Number of Uber rides went down, what might be the root cause?
- Trade-offs: Would you launch food reviews or food pictures feature for a restaurant app?
- Design
- New product: Design alarm clock for blind. How would you design a washing machine?
- Improve product: Improve Google docs.
- Product for specific technology: Engineering has invented teleportation technology, what product would you build with that technology?
- Product preferences: How would you improve your favorite product?
- Strategy
- Market entry/exit: What new product line would you introduce in Amazon. Which product would you kill within Microsoft?
- Merger or acquisition: Should Facebook acquire Uber?
- Pricing: How do you price space travel?
- Go to market: Come up with a launch strategy for a recipe app.
- Technical
- System design: Design Youtube system architecture.
- Explain a technology: Explain ML to a 5 year old.
- Tech troubleshooting: API latency has increased, what do you do?
- Algorithms: Design a sorting algorithm.
- Behavioral
- Your story: Tell me about yourself.
- Tell me a time: Tell me a time when you had to resolve conflicts. What’s your biggest failure?
- Entry, exit, and future: Why PM? What’s your 3 year plan? How would you ramp up after joining?
Interview Assessment
Interview assessment varies widely based on company, but you can use the criteria below as a general guideline for interview preparation.
| Question Type | Assessment Criteria | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Analytical | – Clarification – More than one approach to the problem – Breakdown into smaller components – Sanity check the solution | E.g. For an estimation, question does the candidate ask clarifying questions? Are there more than one formula to estimate (bottom-up or top-down)? Has the formula been broken down into smaller components? Once the final answer has been provided, does the candidate cross check the answer? |
| Design | – Clarification – High level goal – User segments – Empathy – Creativity | E.g. For a new product design, does the candidate come up with a high level goal like engagement, revenue etc? Are the right user segment(s) prioritized? Is there deep user empathy? Are the solutions creative and well prioritized with trade-offs? |
| Strategy | – Clarification – Structure – Logical steps – Conclusive recommendation | E.g. For a market entry question, does the candidate provide a clear structure? Is there a logical connection from one step to the next such as company strengths, competition, user trends, emerging tech? Is there a conclusive recommendation from the logical steps? |
| Technical | – Clarification – Scoping – Communication – Loopholes – Trade-offs | E.g. For a system design question, does the candidate scope the problem down to a few features? Is there a structure with clear technical communication? Can the candidate spot loop holes in design at scale? Is there a recommendation based on tech trade-offs? |
| Behavioral | – Story-telling – Clear contributions – High stakes – Conclusive results | E.g. For a tell me a time…kinda questions, the interviewer is trying to assess: Can you do a great job once hired in the new environment? Is there great story telling? Are the stories outstanding? Are the results clear and is the candidate great at communication? |
Preparation
Here is a generic preparation guide for you. This is illustrative and not prescriptive. You’d need to adapt based on the target company interview preparation.
- Step 1: Interview process
- The first step is to understand the target company interview process and criteria for hiring a product manager.
- This includes understanding the weightage of question types, assessment criteria, and length of the process.
- Step 2: Evaluation
- Once you know the target company process, you’d need to evaluate yourself against the question types, and identify your strongest and weakest question types.
- You should also evaluate the company from business, technology, customer perspective and leverage that information during your interview preparation.
- Step 3: Prep start
- Spend 1-2 weeks practicing interview questions for 2 hours daily.
- Start with your weakest areas and move to the strongest.
- For example, if you are weak in design, start with design the first week, then practice both design and analytical together next week.
- Step 4: Mocks
- After 2 weeks of prep, start mock interview practice with peers for a month.
- Try to cover at least 20 mocks.
- Step 5: Before interview
- A day before the interview stop all mock interviews.
- Follow trending news, rest, and relax.
- Attend the interview with full energy and enthusiasm.
Resources
Here are a few resources for you that might help during your interview preparation. Please suggest any other resources that I have missed in comments below.
- Study material: These are good reads for PM interview preparation
- Product
- Book: Cracking the PM interview by Gayle Laakmann and Jackie Bravaro.
- Book: Decode and Conquer by Lewis Lin.
- Technical
- Grokking the system design interview: Go through TinyURL and Instagram system designs which are offered for free by educative.io.
- Gaurav Sen – YouTube channel: provides in depth videos of system design
- Strategic analysis
- Stratechery: Great blog to follow latest business trends and analysis
- Product
- Interview questions: A few resources where you can find interview questions
- Exponent
- Product management exercises
- Book: The product manager interview – Lewis Lin
- Mock interviews: Few places to find peers for mock interview
Conclusion
I hope you can create a preparation plan going through the target company criteria, question types, preparation guide, and resources in order to ace your PM interview. This was the first post in the ace the PM interview series. In my next post ,we’ll go over an estimation question in depth, where I’ll walkthrough an example question, step by step framework, example answer, and assessment. Please leave comments if you have any questions or suggestions.
