The Backgrounder - [Product Manager Interview]

Article Highlights

• Sharing your personal narrative (About You) helps the interviewer see you as a real person, not just a resume.
• When sharing your career highlights, provide specific examples of both tangible and qualitative achievements.

The Backgrounder is effectively your press kit. It captures your About You, career highlights and most recent achievements. You’ll need this throughout the interview process and for all interviews. It contains the following pieces:

• About You captures your personal and career bio in a few bullets.
• Career Highlights are your three most impactful quantitative and qualitative achievements.

About You

Craft three bullets that provide an overview of your career highlights and you as a person (most companies want to hire real people). You should be able to recite it conversationally.

E.g.

• Husband and #girldad to three amazing girls
• 10 years of exceptional product management success
• An active volunteer in the High Park community

The Q&A:

Interviewer: So, tell me about yourself…

You: Sure, I’m a husband and devoted #girldad to three girls between 4 and 10 years old. Professionally, I have 10 years of exceptional product management experience and launched four products. And, I happen to live and volunteer in High Park which has so much green space and some of the best people in the city.

Hint: Think of it as a Twitter bio

Career Highlights (Quantitative)

During the interview process, you’ll need to sell yourself by way of your career achievements. I suggest thinking of your three most impactful, quantifiable achievements (you should have this on your resume already).

E.g.

• 3X [product] revenue to $10M annually
• Grew [product] from 0 to 3M MAUs
• Gained a 24% market share of the accounting software market

The Q&A:

Interviewer: So, tell me some of the highlights of your work experience

You: I helped launch [product] and tripled revenue to $10M in the first 12 months. At [company] we now have 3M Monthly Active Users. And, at [company] we grew market share from 10% to 24% in just two years.

Hint: Watch how a CEO interviews on a business show like Bloomberg or CNBC. A good example is Sheryl Sandberg.

Career Highlights (Qualitative)

The top companies will consider not just your measurable accomplishments but also the impact you've had on your users, as all numerical success is rooted in addressing user problems. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your customer obsession. Reflect on the three most significant ways you enhanced your users' lives.

E.g.

• [product] helped accountants monitor project costs and grow their practice
• [product] enabled restauranteurs with more visibility and customer insights
• [product] empowered money-savers to automatically track all their spending

The Q&A:

Interviewer: So, tell me about some of the products you built…

You: Sure, when I was at [company] we launched [product] that helped accountants manage their costs by unifying payment processing and book balancing in one product. At [company] we helped restauranteurs with new analytics app so they can understand their customers better. And at [company] we enabled our money-savers to reduce expenses by giving them new spending alerts.

You may have noticed that the quantitative highlights are company-focused results whereas the qualitative highlights are user-centric results.