Cracking the Product Manager's Interview (P2)

This is the second post from part 1.

Let's talk about the questions and how to best responses.

PRODUCT DESIGN QUESTIONS

Product design questions are the most critical part of the interview as they deal with the PM's core work: the design, architecture and improvement of products. Companies use product questions to test an interviewee’s core product, user understanding and design skills. To get these questions right, understand deeply what the user and business product goals are. Approach these problems in a structured way.

Here is a framework to approach these problems in a structured way, that begins with the target user requirements.

1. Clarify the problem. Ask questions to understand the organizational and user goals behind the problem. Products may have primary and secondary goals. Candidates who jump into a solution for a problem without clarity on the goal will design a radically different product from what users want.
2. Provide a structure. Provide a clear structure upfront on how you will approach the problem. At every step, you can explicitly mention which part of the structure you are at so that the interviewer can follow your approach.?
3. Identify users and customers. Customers are those who pay for products, and users are those who use the product. Their needs may diverge. An excellent way to identify users is to think of different ways a product is used and who interacts with it.?
4. Report customer needs. List goals and use cases for each type of user.?
5. Prioritize significant user issues. For each use case, evaluate to what extent the current product meets user goals. Identify key user issues with the current product will provide a clear idea of areas to focus on in product design.?
6. Design features and evaluate tradeoffs. Brainstorm a few feature ideas for key user issues. A good feature idea will solve multiple customer issues at once. Select ideas that align with the company's risk appetite. Some organizations love big, bold ideas, while others are more interested in minor, iterative improvements. Explicitly tie each feature idea to a customer use case so that the interviewer knows that your ideas are customer focussed. Discuss the tradeoffs involved for each feature. Use the whiteboard for this step.?
7. Summarize your recommendation. Provide a summary of your final solution so that the interviewer clearly understands your final proposal. Discuss how the solution can be implemented and what resources would be required. Finally, explain the metrics you will measure to validate your solution.?

FAVORITE PRODUCT QUESTION

Prepare for this inevitable interview question with the selection of a few products that you love. Make sure they have features you can discuss at the interview. Use the framework below to structure your answer:

1. What user problems does it solve? Focus on one or two key user goals.
2. How does the product accomplish its goals? Explain what makes the product uniquely good at what it accomplishes.
3. How does it compare to alternatives? Focus on the reason why users don't prefer the alternatives.
4. How would you improve it? Take a critical approach to product shortcomings and explain how you can make it better as a PM.

Practice repeatedly and make sure you understand key metrics like users, conversions, referral rates and engagement for your product. Interviewers want PM candidates who have a well-thought-out opinion about products. Be opinionated.

BEHAVIOURAL QUESTIONS

For Behavioural Questions, prepare five great stories from your work experience that correlate with important question categories like leadership, teamwork, successes and failures. Interviewers use behavioral questions to test if a candidate's experience matches what the resume says and test if the candidate's communication is structured.

MASTER 5 GREAT STORIES

You can easily ace behavioral questions with some preparation. Create a grid with common behavioral questions as columns. These can include leadership, teamwork, successes, challenges and failures. Add significant work experience and projects as rows. Finally, fill each cell with one or more stories.

Select five great stories that best represent why you are an excellent PM candidate. Each story must have a substantial Situation, Action and Result. You must have at least one story for each behavioral question type. Practice these stories with friends to polish the narration.

USE THE NUGGET-SITUATION-ACTION FRAMEWORK

Use this framework to structure your response to behavioral questions.

1. Nugget. Begin with a clear thesis about your story. An opener statement helps the interviewer focus on the core idea and organize information around that context.
2. Situation. Provide adequate background information for the interviewer to understand what you did and why it mattered in that context.
3. Action. Describe the actions that you took. Make sure to focus on your actions and not what the team did.
4. Result. Explain how your action helped your team or company. Quantify the impact.

ESTIMATION QUESTIONS

Interviewers care more about your problem-solution approach than a numerically accurate answer. Use this 8 step process to answer estimation questions.

1. CLARIFY THE QUESTION

Repeat the question back to the interviewer and ask about any detail which seems ambiguous.

2. IDENTIFY KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED TO SOLVE THE QUESTION

Find out what data you have and what needs to be computed. You can ask interviewers for critical facts in some cases.

3. MAKE AN EQUATION

Form an equation to solve the problem. Before you choose one approach, brainstorm multiple possible equations and choose the best plan of attack. Communicate your approach to demonstrate your thought process to the interviewer.

4. THINK ABOUT EDGE CASES

Think about possible edge cases and problems in the approach. Be open about challenges to show the interviewer that you are detail-oriented and unafraid to discuss shortcomings of your approach.

5. BREAK IT DOWN

Compute each component of the equation through the construction of sub-equations.

6. STATE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Rely on experience and intuition to make reasonable estimates for key variables. State your assumptions clearly. Pick round numbers.

7. COMPUTE

Do the math. Remember that estimation questions only require a ballpark answer.

8. SANITY CHECK

Before you share the answer with the interviewer, double-check if your answer is reasonable in accordance with commonly known facts.

CASE QUESTIONS

PM interview case questions can lead you astray because they are dangerously similar to consultant case questions. Unlike case interviews where consultants will be asked to solve organization-scale problems based on data, interviewers expect PM candidates to solve product questions through reliance on their product instincts. PM candidates must make sound business decisions in the absence of detailed data. Use management frameworks like the 4P's, SWOT analysis and Porter's five forces to structure your response.

"The best way to learn Product Management is through observation and interaction with seasoned PMs. Look out for products users love and find ways to get in touch with the PMs behind them. Talk to them to understand their process and the frameworks they use to make decisions. Besides the ability to learn more about Product Management, a robust network can open many PM opportunities."

HOW HIRING WORKS

The following is a breakdown of the PM hiring process for the “Big 5” tech companies.

1. AMAZON

Amazon prefers management candidates for its PM roles and often hires right out of business school. Amazon is highly data-driven and expects PMs to have strong data analysis skills.

Make sure you know Amazon's 14 leadership principles well. Interviewers will validate your responses against the principles to see if you are a good fit. Weave the leadership principles into your responses and screen your resume to spotlight details that demonstrate these principles.

Amazon has a bar raiser interview that is a high challenge to ensure that the candidate is better than 50% of current Amazon PMs. The bar raiser interviewer and the hiring manager have veto powers.?

2. MICROSOFT

Microsoft's PM role must have a strong business focus. Microsoft hires candidates with a management background.?

Microsoft's PM interview focuses more on behavioral questions and product design questions. Most Microsoft teams hire independently, and therefore some teams may want excellent technical skills while others focus more on design skills.?

3. APPLE

Apple has both software and hardware Engineering Program Manager (EPM) roles and prefers candidates with engineer backgrounds over management backgrounds. EPMs can range from freshers to those with 15 years of work experience.?

Depending on the team, the candidate may have four to five interviews that last an hour or as many as 12 interviews that last 30 minutes. Apple only hires people who are passionate about its products. Know Apple's products well and expect questions on why you want to work for Apple.

4. GOOGLE

Google prefers to hire candidates with four years of experience or an MBA for PM roles. The company prefers an engineer background over an MBA.?

Google puts a strong emphasis on estimation questions and technical questions, which will include the need to write code on a whiteboard. There are separate interviews to assess your technical, product and analytical skills. To qualify, a candidate needs an average interview score of 3.0 or 4.0 and at least one interviewer who strongly supports your candidature.?

Many Google interviewers may not read your resume thoroughly beforehand. If you want to highlight a key aspect, mention it across interviews to improve the odds that this fact will reach the hiring committee.?

5. FACEBOOK

Facebook has fewer PMs and prefers highly technical or entrepreneurial candidates. Facebook expects PMs to code and often build initial prototypes on their own.?

There are separate interviews for quantitative questions, program questions, design questions and a round dedicated to futuristic thoughts about technological trends. Candidates will be asked to code, so make sure to brush up on your programming.?

6. STARTUPS

Most startups expect their PMs to be hands-on and work closely with engineers. Sometimes PMs may have to write code to fill gaps.?

Most startups prefer to hire seasoned candidates who have previous product management experience. Expect rigorous technical interviews and questions about relevant experience.?