If any of the software is new to you, this is an opportunity to express youre receptive to learning and using them. 90 minutes). A full-day interview [4-5 hours]: The day is made up of two parts: A project (done at home before arriving, in the office, or live), sharing what they came up with, with a group of potential colleagues, Three to six 1:1 interviews with potential colleagues, each testing for a key PM skill. The problem must have more than one solution. Before Mikes Bikes, I held various product roles at Gusto and Yahoo. But what about the rest of us? At the same time, 43% of companies are planning on hiring more product managers.. Due to the popularity and the complexity of the role, hiring product . My own preference for the case prompt is having the candidate list some apps that they are either using regularly or have recently started using, and then I pick one of them as the example to investigate in the case study. Each interviewer blind votes Strong No, No, Yes, or Strong Yes. This insight paints a picture for them of the features youd prioritize and your strategic approach that will ultimately benefit the target market and business goals. Hi [candidate], excited to speak with you today. If the candidate hasnt brought it up by themselves, I then ask about how they would validate the highest priority idea. 32 Product Management Interview Questions & How to Answer - Amplitude Focus on getting to know the person as a human, the role, and a couple skills or attributes that you believe to be most important to this role (more on this below). If its not an easy yes, its an easy no: If you find yourself agonizing between scoring a candidate as a 2 or 3, go with 2. Would it have been as impactful without you, and why? Here are hot-off-the-presses stats his team pulled for me, based on over 75,000 recent applications acrosshigh-growth tech companies. It's an open question, meaning you can add some passion to your answer. And dont forget to keep your questions consistent, with predefined good and bad answers, to avoid bias. Firstly, dont just pick the first app that the candidate mentions, but ask them for a few more examples. Moreover, even this question itself already gives me some signal whether the candidate thinks like a great product manager. 10 Common Interview Questions for Product Managers - Forage Product sense: How would you improve feature x in our product? Now its time to prepare for the next step: the product manager interview questions! Product Management is different at every company, and every person approaches their craft differently. The Product Manager Interview: 167 Actual Questions and Answers: Decode and Conquer Answers to Product Management Interviews. Use these prompts to put together a thoughtful response: Below are 40 more questions to review and practice responses! What do you think a day to day would be like for a Product Manager? On the feature idea side, I try to push the candidate (if necessary) to come up with at least 34 ideas. There is no substitute for interview preparation, but that doesnt mean it has to be a time-consuming process. What kind of people do you have a hard time working with? The worst responses are the ones that jump straight to feature ideas, often just focusing on their own use case of the product. Before we jump in, a little bit about myself: Lets say you were a Product Manager at Airbnb, and an executive came to you with an idea to allow guests to book cars through the Airbnb platform, as an add-on to Homes (places to stay) and Experiences (curated travel experiences). Here we have listed 20 questions to ask at the end of the Product Management interview. Those familiar with Faizan Buzdar, who was until recently the VP of product management at Box, likely associate the entrepreneur with Convo, the digital workspace platform popular among newsrooms . How many people are currently online in Europe? essential Technical Product Manager interview questions here. Score the candidates from 1 to 3 on each of the key attributes: Add any concerns that youd like other panelists to dig into: Investing in this process is a non-trivial amount of work, but it will lead to compounding benefits as your company and team grow: Finally, I hope this playbook will be a useful tool, but its certainly not one-size-fits-all: test it, tweak it, and make it your own. This isnt Jeopardy: do not judge the candidate on coming up with specific details. You drove a product innovation. While the problem is a thinking exercise, the writing and choice of presentation is a communication exercise. Roll wants to recreate dolly shots and more using generative AI Give them a chance to hypothetically improve the assignment: As we discussed earlier, assignments are unpaid work. Why do you want to work at [our company]? On the best end, candidates come up with a variety of different ideas that range from incremental to substantial and that all could work in theory. With this question the interviewer gets to hear about the candidates past experience in a chosen high quality example it better be a good example! Questions and Tips For Interviewing Product Managers As the leader of a 50+ person Product organization, one of my biggest responsibilities is attracting, hiring, coaching, motivating, and . They then share what they came up with when they come in (or Zoom in) for the full-day interview. The worst response to these questions is if candidates cant up with any apps that they use. Either the candidate truly doesnt use technology much (in which case, why are you a tech product manager?) Walk me through it from beginning to end. What made it so important or impactful? Time is our most valuable asset, yet the most mismanaged. So here weve laid out every single type of question you could possibly be asking in a Product Management interview. Tell me about your role on your team, who else you work with, and how you work with them. Product managers dont write codes or produce pixel perfect designs their job is predominantly to ensure that the team is moving in the same direction that is aligned with the strategic direction. A Product Manager (PM) has to be resilient, strategic and insightful. How do you see your career developing in the next 5 years? Product manager Interview Questions | Glassdoor Its purpose is to determine if there is a market for your idea and if it effectively solves a problem for your customers. There are a variety of questions you can expect to be asked in a Product Management interview. Tell us about a time you used data to influence an important stakeholder. What would you do to get a team to stick to a schedule? Personalising your answers with specific goals or hobbies can help you stand out from other candidates. This is a good way to gauge the candidates genuine interest in your company. Put together a compelling offer, share it with them, To benchmark a typical hiring funnel, I asked. A side benefit of asking candidates for the apps they use is that I might learn about interesting products I didnt know about before, which as a curious product person myself I always appreciate. If youre struggling with getting a practice response started, ask yourself this: What is the problem were trying to solve and how are we going to get there? The problem must be realistic, as discussed before. Courses Product Management Software Engineering System Design Engineering Management Technical Program Management UX / Product Design Data Science You can discover so much from this question, such as. Our charter is to make biking the default way to commute in every major city, and take polluting cars off the road. Many dont, even though the second half is more important! Xiaodi, 1stDibs asks the candidate to describe her ideal environment to thrive in and what she needs to succeed to evaluate the candidates introspectiveness and to match the candidates ideal environment against 1stDibss. The worst responses to this questions are the ones that are missing obvious competitors. Technical knowledge questions. Other interesting questions that came up include: I didnt cover questions about cultural fit explicitly in this article. Tell me about a challenging issue or challenge you took on. Tell me about a time you used data to make a decision. The focus of this post is firmly on the interview components of the hiring process. Even at a junior level, a Product Manager is a leader. Here are some examples: We aren't looking for amazing answers here, but we are looking for the candidate to pass a minimum quality level. Technical Product Manager Interview Questions: Lets be real! I've been involved in interview panels for a lot of PMs, and have set up hiring processes for product managers in two different startups. So its important to get a diverse set of interviewers on your panel. Whats the most important or impactful product you shipped? The best responses to this question are the ones that tie the success metrics back to the product metrics and goals identified in the very beginning, and that attempt to measure behavior change. Theyll be more similar to behavioral questions, and theyre just trying to see how you interact and communicate with the people on your teams. About 40% to 50% of candidates should make it through this step. Interviewing a product management candidate (and hiring product managers in general) is definitely more art than science. Interviewing Product Managers? Here's How To Set a GOOD - LinkedIn General product management questions. This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. No spam. Once they are done, they share what theyve come up with. Once they are done, they share what theyve come up with. Before diving into the actual product sense part of the interview, a case prompt has to be set up. Its the only time youll get to see the candidate tackle a chunky new problem, be able to watch them in action, and have a discussion about it. Good responses talk about impact vs. effort, or do an ICE / RICE assessment. R0 is all about clearly articulating what your company has to offer, and understanding why the candidate is considering you. Interviewing Product Managers: A Playbook For PM Leaders Other ways product leaders ask this question: I recently interviewed a candidate for a Senior Product Manager role that needs a lot of user discovery for a whitespace product. While we make X product for the general public, we also have a B2B division. Between these two, it's easier to teach people how to execute, and harder to teach people how to creatively solve problems. Bonus points for the company if theyve outlined this publicly on their blog or website. On the worst end, the candidate struggles to come up with ideas, provides ideas that are all a variation on a theme, or ideas that are just not great (for example, very complex and expensive solutions for a problem that is unlikely to have a big impact). includes what to look for in the answers, red flags, and a ton more great interview questions to inspire you. It's essential that you're able to demonstrate your previous experience or Product Management education. Do you have methods to plan your time intentionally? When I interview product candidates, I want to know how they think. Ace the PM Interview + Top Questions (2023 Guide) - Exponent You may end up finding good PMs, but it will lead to misaligned expectations for them and company, and costly hiring mistakes. There are different telltale signs for this: the candidate might tell you about some new products they have recently discovered. On the flip side, in the best case the candidate has already started answering this question in their previous response, and they are further expanding on their idea when answering this question, and also call out any assumptions that they are making. The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions Answering this product manager interview question requires research and preparation. Or the steps youd take to conduct user research in face-to-face interviews with the target audience. What to Look for When Hiring Product Managers | Built In Questions about product are possibly the most common in PM interviews, which shouldnt come as a surprise! Disclaimer: People have strong opinions about how to interview, but very few people have enough data (or have looked at their data) to know if their interview assumptions are actually predictive of performance. Heres where it sits: Product case study (this can be in panel presentation form, or a 1-on-1 session). Interviewing Product Management Candidates: What to Look For Thanks so much for going through that with me. The worst responses are the ones that either have no good idea for post-launch evaluation, or mention metrics that arent really measurable, or that mention only feature-level adoption metrics. Make an offer: Put together a compelling offer, share it with them, and try like hell to get them to accept. So even entry-level PM roles will come with questions about leadership. As the leader of a product management team, you'll facilitate collaboration with cross-functional teams to ensure that a product meets both business goals and the customer's needs. Describe your best practices to set up the team for success! As, (ex-Uber, Microsoft, Skype engineer) confessed in, , we EMs have no clue how to do these. I generally start with these two will and skill questions, then walk through other standardized questions that cover key role competencies that we havent covered yet. Why is this the case and what would you do within the product to change that? Here are hot-off-the-presses stats his team pulled for me, based on over 75,000 recent applications acrosshigh-growth tech companies. If you walk in with a CEO of the Product mentality, and theyre looking for someone more humble and collaborative, you run the risk of being turned away. What is your experience with juggling both markets? They then share what they came up with when they come in (or Zoom in) for the full-day interview. How have you overcome them? Now, on to this weeks post, I can understand why so many people are befuddled by interviewing product managersthe role is so endlessly undefined, how can non-PMs possibly know what to interview for? Got a PM interview? Tell me about a time you had to influence someone. There are various ways to do this. This is the initial phone or video call with the PM Lead, PM, or PMM before the candidate reaches round 2. What are the competitive dynamics, and how should we position the product against competitors? General interview questions for product managers. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer an approach that starts by articulating a positions mission, outcomes, and competencies. Interviewing for Product Management Jobs - LinkedIn If the candidate fails to motivate me with passion, or simply forgets to answer the second part of the question, Im likely going to pass on the candidate. Read more to see if a career in product management may be right for you. Many PMs will spike in some areas and be average in others. Why are you interested in the job/company/industry to understand a candidates interests and ambitions. In hiring, I look for candidates with both will and skill. For each Product Manager level at XO Group, we evaluate. How would you face the challenge of managing a team that works across timezones? ), and their interview timelines. After leaving individual feedback according to specific assessment frameworks, all 4 interviewers meet . In addition to the six skill areas above, several also called out: In addition to competencies, I also evaluate if the candidate would be motivated by the positions mission, users, team, structure, and growth opportunity. A hiring manager looks for prospective product managers that know how to solve problems. Unless youre applying to be a Technical Product Manager, or youre a few rounds in for a specific PM role which requires a higher tech skill set, technical questions will be surface-level. A product manager has their own workload, but theyre responsible for the overall product progress. Hiring managers want to know product metrics youve had an active part in nurturing. Pick a project youre proud of that took 3-9 months. The worst responses to this question are ones which are either lack a good summary or are obviously wrong. Very, very, rarely will you be asked any overly technical questions in a Product Manager interview. It's multi-functional, giving the user options in the kitchen. Has she done the research to take the application seriously? Its essential to the health of the business and its overall impact on a customers experience. However, there are some harder skills in the discovery part of the product lifecycle, which this interview is meant to test. but never once mentioned bringing users into the product discovery, development, and release process. Product Manager Interview Questions (With Example Answers) , but assuming youre interviewing an IC PM (i.e. Glassdoor has put the product manager job in their top 10 of the best jobs list in the U.S. and the U.K. for 2022. Product strategy knowledge questions. Most importantly, you arent looking at how close they got to the right answer. Call out any roadmapping software, user research tools, and team communication apps youve had great success with. Product managers deal with ambiguous and novel challenges. Can you see how and why the candidate will want to thrive in this role? Lins book will not only provide you with good pointers for interview preparation but also help you in day-to-day life as a PM. Younger PMs can be asked micro questions, and product leaders need to be asked a mix of micro and macro questions. Tell me about a time when you had to build or motivate a team. Propose these improvements and see how the candidate takes them. is the person motivated and excited? But ultimately, your response helps them decide if you have the interpersonal and product management skills to succeed in the role. Head of Product at RevenueCat; previously at 8fit, Yammer, BCG. Choose relevant examples to illustrate your process and draw from the role requirements under the job listing. This is where youll walk through a high-level summary of what youll be accountable for. The last question I ask is what success criteria they would look at if they launched the feature. (Note that theres been much HR discussion about optimizing for one vs. the other, though that discussion isnt in this article.) How to Interview a Product Manager | by Tom Comerford | Trust the Product For example, you cant A/B test the adoption of a new feature: if the feature isnt present in the control group, adoption in the control group is guaranteed to be 0. Hiring managers want Product Managers (PMs) who are adaptable, quick on their feet, highly motivated, and capable of working with cross-functional teams. Evaluators especially look for collaboration skills and use of user data and insights to work through conflicts.