How to Crack the Product Manager Interview by Gayle McDowell

all right well thank you all so much for coming so I'm the author of cracking the PM interview which I know I saw at least one the copy floating around but tell you bit of more about my background I come from a computer science background did bachelors masters and then or is that Google for a while did a ton of interviewing there I was on the hiring committee and then kind of broke off onto my own thing started career cup which is Q&A forum I guess you could say around technical interviews wrote crack in the coding interview crack and PM interview as well as a third bell cracking tech career and the other certainly other things I do which I mentioned because they're gonna come up a little bit later on and some of the things I talk about so just give some initial context I work with companies going who are trying to reform their hiring process structure things so rolling out interview training creating a structured hiring process across engineering and product management all that and then the other thing that I'll mention because it has a lot of stories that'll come in is I often get hired by startups to do what I call acquisition coaching so when startups go through acquisition or aqua hire interviews they interviewed the engineers and the PM's get interviewed just like typical candidates would you're just flying off the streets and so I'll tell you about a few of the things I have seen there some stories from that because it's given me a very interesting sort of look at data where I get to interview the same person repeatedly I get to actually talk to their manager to see how my perception maps to what they're actually doing things like that so some of the stories all mentioned are going to be in that contact so just giving that initial kind of heads up that for the due slides are online people always ask us the slides are in line and get go to Gale comm slash p.m. prep slides or if that's too long to remember at shoot me an email email Gale at Gale comm with the subject PM prep that is one word must be one word and that'll give you a media auto response with the slides a handout that I'll talk I think I show later on and bunch of other different materials and then people are doing so anyway but pictures that pictures are fine I know people use pictures to record content on the slides so that is totally fine okay what's that some quick definitions so p.m. can refer to a lot of different things it's abbreviation so that can mean product management it can be an associate product manager which I guess so technically be a PM and or approach sometimes people also use PM to refer to project management or program management I'm going to be talking about product management and associate product management so not project manager or program manager although there is some overlap between these things the associate product manager role is a product management role but it's typically for new for new grads or people early in their career typically not always but typically and it's certainly entry level PM role though and it's often has a rotational component but certainly a training kind of program so the PM the product manager is managing the product not the people it's like many of you all know but if you don't it's management product is not necessarily but typically I'd say it is not a management people management role and your job is to figure out things like who are the users where does a feature is how are we going to launch when are we going to launch all these kinds of things you have some authority you're some leadership of the developers but not necessarily actually authority over them so that's all very very relevant stuff okay that said let's talk about what is the perfect PM who do you want to be to be OPM so perfect PM has these kind of attributes they have technical skills they have product skills so they can think about who is the user what features do we need these sort of things they have the kind of business skills so these are the kind of things you might pick up in an MBA the you understand things about marketing and all you know advertise and whatever it is you have you know the ability to lead and execute on stuff and then you also have what I call industry skills what I mean by that is if you are a product manager for a financial software company industry skills would mean financial skills something that and so the industry skills are obviously gonna vary depending on what the actual product yes but that's sort of what the typical PM looks like and the thing is that it is essentially impossible to enter product management with these skills you just if you have industry skills because you are doing finance you probably don't have technical skills you know typically so it's really hard to have all of these different skills so perfect Pam is a myth a question for you all when you think about landing a drama product management is how do you come as close to the perfect p.m. as possible so you want to think about okay so of those you know five big buckets what of these things do you have and what do you need to acquire and then from the purpose of interviews there's this other thing what am I going to make what am I gonna assume about you so this is a this last thing is something that a lot of people forget they kind of assume I guess that there's this magic transferability where if you have some attribute I'm going to know that you have this attribute and that's in you know realistically that's not actually what happens people make assumptions based on your background so I'm gonna start preference this by saying I'm a very blunt person I'll tell it like it is and I'm not gonna sugarcoat the reality of what the world is like and this is not saying this is these are good things about the world it's just saying there are these stereotypes that happen and when you're thinking about being a candidate you can't just pretend or you probably don't want to pretend like these stereotypes don't exist and so I'm not just talking about you know racism and sexism these kind of things which are real which are happening but I'm also talking about other stereotypes from your background so noting that's okay so ah okay there's a specific story so I was doing in an acquisition context I was helping somebody prepare who he is his background was you know I walked him through initially his kind of initial what I call pitch so his two-minute kind of walk through his resume and it's basically well I was an artist and then I went back to school and got a degree in HCI so human-computer interaction and then I went to it was there would be a UI designer with design design design and then I saw this company and if you look at the company's product it was beautiful very very beautiful product I'm not sure what the use case wasn't this hat it was a beautiful product that he grew to a whopping two employees so you hear that and you don't think you know what this is someone I want analyzing data I want him to in quantitative analysis he can make real hard business decisions do you think okay we have a great UI design role open for you why don't you come interview with now but the thing is he wanted to do product management he didn't want to do design you wanna do Park management but everything about his background screamed design and that doesn't mean he can't do these other things but when you have a does a background that just screams design people are gonna make assumptions based on that so what he wanted to think about there is okay look there's no way when he thinks about this pitch this overall view of his background that anyone's gonna walk away thinking this guy sucks at design right they're gonna hear art design and design design design he wants to think about how do I sell myself as like I can do business I can do numbers I can be a p.m. I can think really about the product beyond you know the prettiness of it I can lead developers and so we need to kind of reshape his background and reshape how he did things to focus on that and so he changed his pitch into being a like well I you know you talked he gave this overall view but he brought in numbers and business decisions as much as he possibly can and the design piece was compared to where he started with was almost an afterthought and you walk away from this new pitch being like this is awesome here we have a PM who can not only do all the PM stuff and the leadership and stuff but he really really understands design - what an awesome well-rounded candidate and so that's the way you want to think about it with your with your pitch is you want to think about what kind of sumption are people going to make based on that so if if you have been if you're entering product management Brown are you trying to enter the career the field from a perspective of customer support we can think at a high level of skills and attributes of you know this thing you've probably heard about with it which is you know smart and can get things done so if I see someone who's a customer support has a customer support background what am I gonna assume based on them any one customer Amethi fantastic I love that in a p.m. what else am I gonna sue yeah probably not very technical customer support people tend not to know how to code right it doesn't mean it's true yes I'm just gonna make that assumption right um what else might I assume yeah great communication skills that's fantastic but maybe they aren't really executors right so that doesn't mean these things aren't true but if you're coming kind of customer support you want to make sure that you're really selling the like I can do strategy I can do these things I'm gonna assume that you have communication skills that you have customer empathy it doesn't mean you want to hide those things but you don't need to oversell those things there's limited time and you want to really focus on selling the communicate the you know the the technical skills if you have any things like that what about marketing my if I'm interviewing up someone who's coming from marketing background into product management what am I gonna assume yeah not technical at all marketing knowledge which is I mean very very very clickable to being a product manager may be a good with numbers depends on it depends on what kind of what side of marketing some marketing yes some marketing no yeah maybe style over substance maybe they even oversell some things which can't be really dangerous when you have a product manager who over sells stuff right and so you know you want to think about these kind of things do you my slides want to work again what about development developer who wants to transition into product management broadly not so good marketing which is gonna be a problem that is a actually important skill for a developer over for a product manager average communicator yeah you know the in fact I would actually argue that developers are stereotyped I actually think it's an unfair somewhat but developers are often stereotyped as being poor communicators certainly technical right that means if you're a developer applying for product management you don't need to sell that cool algorithm you built right it looks like look we are gonna get that you could come from a coding background if you're a marketer if you're a customer support and you've done some coding you mentioned the word algorithm fantastic right like now you're like whoa you're actually talking to I did not think that so you want to think about how do you where are you coming from and how are you going to sell that actually you have a little bit of background and that's tough I think the Google slides is just not working properly okay so there so then so you want to think about not just how you present yourself but also getting these other skills so you know for a if you don't have technical skills get some technical skills it doesn't take you know you don't have to spend years and years going back to school to get a computer science degree you can do the 10-week a 10-hour you know boot like course on code Academy that's something right no you're not gonna be great developer you're not be able to launch your an app but that is something and for a lot of hiring managers it's hard for them to wrap their head around you are a product manager you say that you really want to enter product management you say that your passion about technology why haven't you taken a few hours to learn how to code how do you justify that and now I know realistically people are busy they don't prioritize you they don't get around to doing a blah blah blah but protector of a hiring manager they often get stuck on this one thing you don't have a code get those a little bit of technical skills product skills you want to inquire product skills well obviously you know products cool and there you know you can start blogging and start taking new new products that are launched and start dissecting those and talk about products issues and proposing new things and that'll help refine your product thank you and you also actually show it industry skills are something that a lot of people if you're entering product management and you're not are trying to enter product management and you're not coming at it from a development permit as a developer you may will be coming from another industry iBanking something like that find a field that you know find a company that will value those finance skills that's a good way in because now you have something else no you don't have the development skills so you can get a little bit of that you don't have the product experience but you're coming at it from a perspective front with a skill that's valuable which is industry skills for business skills there is of course the MBA and I'm gonna if I'm saying you I have an MBA myself ah and I'm also gonna give the advice that look if you want to get an MBA for the sole purpose of breaking to product management that's a really expensive way of going about it that's two years you're giving up that's not just tuition which at a top MBA program is going to be like 50k a year but it's also that opportunity cost you're giving up a 100k salary that's a it's expensive I what else could you have done with two years of your if you're saying I'm gonna spend two and fifty thousand dollars and two years of my time to break into product management what else could you do you could start a company with that right so maybe an MBA isn't the best path to go about if it's solely from the perspective of getting into getting and getting the product management if you want to for other things building better network establishing credibility learning etc that's a little different thing just don't from this solely do be a PM it's a lot it's a lot to do that's it if you do have an MBA or you want to do for other reasons you know it does help you it particularly if you go to a top and be a program I said I'm you know a pretty blunt person and you want to think realistically about where are you in your career prestige wise and what MBA program are you going to if you are going from a your Google engineer and you know or some other top company and you're going to a pretty low ranked MBA program it's not going to help you you're not going to get the network that you need you're not going to get the right things you're taking such a step down you want to go to a really really good MBA program if you go at all so you really want to be honest and one of the major reasons to get an MBA is to establish credibility and build a network and that is hugely tied to the prestige of the school just realistically if you want to go to learn there are many ways many way more efficient ways to learn than formal education you can learn online there's so many tools to learn online you don't frankly I don't think you go really to almost any school to learn you go to show that you've learned because you can learn any other any number of other ways but if you don't those an MBA be aware that you know Silicon Valley has it's a little bit of MBA bias I actually think it's still overall actually people are on average positive about MBAs but there are plenty of people who are negative so it's like it balances out to positive but there's still a lot of negativity you're gonna be really really careful you don't come off as arrogant or anything like that you can take advantage of good MBA programs have a lot of networking opportunities recruiters come there but it's recruiters from the you know big companies that come there to put to recruit product managers if you want to go to a startup you're on your own they don't they don't come in large numbers to MBA program so you're really really on your own and what I'll say is also a lot of the startups what I've seen from my friends from my peers at Wharton oh the startups which did really target Wharton grads are often particularly the very small ones who did that or often not the ones and actually the best positions they are the ones who thought an MBA is gonna save everything and who probably needed to prioritize engineers instead tackled MBAs and did not work out well generally soon so you really you really need put on yourself to tackle those recruiting opportunities ah okay so that's I want to talk about the interview process so first up is talking bit about behavioral questions so I talked a little about the pitch one thing you want to do is you want to be ready to give a quick walk through your resume this is true by the way for any role any interview you've ever done be ready to do this so major mistake I see people do is they just talk way too long here talking like two minutes max generally and you know there's I'd say most peoples are as long as they're the right length are basically okay everyone's why I see exceptional ones most people just kind of miss and they're fine you basically just told me the whole story resume so you can you know do the okay fine pitch by just walking you know from point A to point B Point C going forward chronological order not reverse reverse is very very confusing and it means that the last thing you talk about is the stuff from like the very beginning your career go forward chronological order I talked about hit on quick shows that of success what I mean by show of success I don't actually mean an accomplishment I mean something slightly different a show of success can include accomplishments it can include launching a feature stuff like that but it's broadly things that demonstrate that you've been successful so something like oh I would spent X years at Amazon and then I left to join a startup after my old now you recruited me out to join him that is on accomplishment getting recruited out is not something that you accomplished but when I hear that I know you must been doing very well for you know your old manager to really recruit you out to join that now if it's your old friend from college it doesn't say anything right but it is a demonstration that you are successful enough at Amazon to have somebody recruit you out so think about quick ways you can show success and then there and lastly you think about your hobbies so any hobby you might as well mention it don't for the most part unless you think like your hobby might reflect poorly on you which I suppose could happen but it's rare and it'll almost never hurt you but think about if you can actually make it a positive so any technical hobby is going to be a positive so taking sarah class on machine learning building app on the side someday interviewed was his hobby was well so first he started off with his hobby is like he has a chicken coop and I'm like alright cool mention that uh I mean is that it's kind of crazy its kind of quirky fun whatever like sure I mention it but as it turns out he was like only by like the third mock interview did he mention that one of the things he's done with a chicken coop though he was seemingly non-technical was he built some sort of like I guess mechanical arm to I guess trap the chickens inside it inside their coop at night and playing that I don't know that was basic idea he built built an arm that can go up and down and like when it's dark well that's actually pretty darn cool for a product manager right all of a sudden he just showed like that despite not being a coder he got his hands dirty he learned how to do something he learned how to physically build something that is really relevant for a product manager I don't care there's chickens but that's really velvet somebody else I know loves to run totally relevant unless you're maybe running you're you're unless you're maybe interviewing for a company that is doing something very tied to running maybe it Fitbit it would be relevant I don't know but the running piece didn't matter but as it turns out he had signed up for a 100-mile ultramarathon which is actually running 100 miles not like biking 100 miles which is what's he write but actually running a hundred miles straight so like four marathons back-to-back uh during the actual race after all that training he ended up having to quit around mile sixty which is still running sixty miles which is insane because at mile thirty he hurt his ankle so this guy did it this insane amount of training to get there then ran 30 miles which is insane hurt his ankle and rather than giving up he like kept going for another 30 miles until finally he realized it's probably not medically advisable to actually keep going ah so in addition to perhaps a lack of sense about his own health what he did was he showed he works incredibly hard he doesn't give up when you know it's very easy to say let this be an excuse to give up persistence that you know that pushing past really hot her topsail them not giving up sure I'd like to have that in somebody or higher I want to have someone who's persistent doesn't give them things stuff like that so think about your hobbies often these things that seem totally irrelevant have some little piece that they are relevant so bring those in they're really great pictures bring all that stuff in and they have a message to have a like I'm a product manager who loves to get my hands dirty who is who is very persistent who is passionate about bringing people's stories alive so if you can have some sort of message there it's hard for a lot of people but those can make really really strong pitches sometimes those messages come out kind of through the way you tell the story and other times I've seen people start off when I say tell me a bit about yourself say you know I'm an offended product manager for X years or maybe in your break into product management and what I love about product management is using it to bring people stories alive sometimes it's a very explicit message you can do it either way and you want to think about your pitch as I meant talked about earlier what am I gonna assume about you and how do you correct that just show that you have a more well-rounded background so bring those stories alive means not a I worked at Amazon for three years and I worked on this team and I launched this and then after that I went to Microsoft and I did this and then I did this and I did this but a you know I joined Amazon because I was super excited about Kindle I love to read I love to learn it's bringing that kind of color into your stories that's not just a dry just not essentially the walkthrough of your resume right if if you're giving a pitch that I could basically give given your background give it looking at your resume it's fine it's just not gonna help you if you can do these great pitches that's awesome okay so and the next piece of this is being ready to give great stories so typical interview questions behavior questions some about a time when you did such a such when you showed initiative when you took a risk when you failed some things like that so you want to be ready to talk about that stuff alright so first thing is just ways to be ready to talk about that stuff so what I found to be really useful for people is create this little grid and across the columns is every job or a major chunk of your resume so that can be a certainly any job if you worked on multiple teams each team could be different chunk if on the side you run a circus group that's another chunk of your resume and and then down the rows are big-picture questions leadership challenges things like that fill that in try to fill in every cell with a story there's you know you're not be able to fill it in with all different stories that's fine there's gonna be some overlap lots of stories fit into both leadership and you know mistake something like that but try to get as many there as possible if you can boil that down into a single keyword after you're done the kind of flushing out that'll make you a lot more ready to be able to find a story to match whatever the interviewer is talking about the other way that I found to be super super useful people to find stories is to actually start from lists of strengths and weaknesses there's you can find one in my book there are many online as well but pull up some list of strengths and weaknesses and just go through that list what are your Schenk's weaknesses that's a question you want to be ready for anyway I don't like it as an interview or the question but it is ask so you want to be ready for it regardless but what this does is mean that when I ask a question about time at a time when you showed initiative you're you have stories that really bring out particular messages that can be super super useful for people to find stories especially because the way that a lot of people think about their stories are like the these huge big picture things something you know the story of this product launching and a lot of good behavioral stories are very very particular interactions it's on you know something that happen on one particular day when someone got mad about the way that you showed it you get gave feedback and it's often hard people to remember these stories just and they're just thinking about stuff that happened so starting from strengths and weaknesses can be really really useful to just jog your memory so you see yeah you know I am kind of risk-taker I do have persistence okay we find a time that I can show that I have that that when I am persistent so what's nice about that is it's it comes when you think about it that way you have a clear message in your story so when you think about an answer you want to think about what is the actual content of the message of the thing you're saying and then how do you say it so sponsors are generally you answer the actual questions so from asking about initiative it should actually be an example of initiative right and that's where a lot of candidates just kind of stop all right they're like how I found a story that matches that thing awesome great and not enough about is this really delivering the message you want to send about yourself so I'll ask someone about an example for when they you know one my generic questions I'll start off with is telling about a technical for this often for developers 10 about a technical challenge sure I am well my more challenging technical projects was I built an FTP server which did XYZ cool what's the challenge right and it's the stories just kind of fall flat the better stories are you know and what was really challenging what was this particular thing and here are the ways I went about so you want your stories to not just literally answer the question but also deliver that positive message that's why those strengths coming out of the stories based on strengths can be really useful because the message is really really clear to you that's why you pick that story and then the third thing is be well-structured even if you fail these first two things at least you can have a good structure so this two structure is that I like a lot and they actually go kind of hand-in-hand the first one is what I call nugget first and this means that the answer to the question I ask is the very first sentence tell them at a time when you showed initiative sure let me tell you about the class I started in college now I know when you're talking about how your university had this problem its curriculum and you went to talk to this professor and all this other stuff the challenge is going to be around a class I can fill I can prioritize the information you're giving me because I know what you're getting at and moreover you will focus on the right details because you already have it in your mind that the point is this class you started and this is by the way a general good communication advice this works for a ton of things not just interviews start off with the actually quick keywords of the of the story about to tell the other one is what is often called SAR or Starr very similar things but situation action result and often you'll preface that with that nugget anyway so this is what it sounds like you say the situation you say the actions you took I've done the result of those things the other piece you want to think about though is that message so that that that goes hand in hand with that so big mistakes I've seen with behavioral things sakes I see over and over and over again is too little action the point of a story when I ask you about a conflict with a teammate the point of the story is not what was the conflict it's how did you address it what were the actions that you took to handle that problem the point is this action thing not the situation the bulk of the time talked about that that you discuss is the action itself so focus on the action the other mistake is no message so you an example of this is I ask somebody tell me about a time about a high-pressure situation at work and they tell me sure so we had a supplier who was who was you know they're supplying some product and they were falling behind dead load behind their deadline and that ended up having this consequence on us where we couldn't meet our deliverables as well either you know and then to go into detail that here was the product and why and blah blah blah all the stuff that doesn't really matter and then they tell me so I got a list of all our customers I and I emailed all of them I told them the situation and the end we lost you know one customer but retained the others what have you learned about this right so they emailed people they know how to use email cool um they maybe had a list all right all right you've learned nothing about this person a stronger answer is something like so you know first thing I did was I knew we had a couple of really important customers who aren't just important but highly vocal and I knew that though those were our key influences the market I knew I really need to target them first so with one of our customers I knew that they really liked they liked to know that their first they want to know that they are a priority so I called them in a lean on I called them first but I let them know that I called them first I make sure that they knew they were the first ones I called next person I knew that they want to have all of the facts I know that they get frustrated if they think that I'm holding things back so I went overboard to make sure I gave them all sorts of detail product in the what's going on even details that they actually didn't really need to know just so they knew that they had all the information possible when you approach it like that you're hearing gosh this is a person who understands people and they are willing to customize messages depending on who they're talking to those are things I'd like to happen to p.m. so the other thing that what are that messages then the third mistake I see is I see this very very commonly for many many people disproportionately I see it for people who are have been in leadership roles which is most product managers and as well as women so and that is people saying we instead of I so you should say we when it's truly we when it's truly a team but what happens for a lot of people in interviews is they use this global we I see people saying we even when it's really all them I mean I've literally seen people do we say we when it is their own project and literally nobody else could possibly have been involved and it's still well we were falling behind schedule it's I ah so really focus on your wording when you say we should mean we when you say when it's really something you did say I when you're talking about leadership we're talking about your team things like that I'm not hiring your team I'm hiring you so leadership matters interact with your team matters but you should still be articulating what your place was what you did how you influence the team how they reacted based on that but it should you should try to use I now you of course do not want to ever take credit for something someone else has done that's really really bad but when it's yourself when it's your actions you should say hi and a whole lot of people fall back to we and what I found is that this tends to be relatively binary meaning that if when I hear an answer that starts off as we it's usually stays as we the whole time so pay very careful attention to the first few sentences you say an answer if you hear yourself saying we be really careful about the rest of your answer make sure to correct by saying aye okay and then putting all this together make this concrete so this is to take you want to have I'd say at least five major stories that you're really well talk for first talk about think the stories that cover those leadership mistakes that earlier grid and fill in this this little grid here so talk about situation the action the result know what the message is what is this ship saying about you how does this show that you are a better 2 p.m. and then also be ready to talk about what you do differently that's just such a fault common fault wash so be so take your 5 stories that you really want to be solid on and be ready to you'll be able to fill a Knothole credit so there's this last thing about what would you do to do differently so um and you know mistakes failures things like that weaknesses be ready for this stuff interviewers this is some of your favorite questions be very very ready for it and the most important thing here is don't sugarcoat the bad stuff when I asked you about failures when an interviewer asked about failures mistakes things like that one of the major things that they're looking for is will you really admit to bad stuff that isn't you and I do a lot of interviewer training and that's when they may ask people what their favorite questions are there's always somebody who says mistakes or failures I ask them why what are they looking for and it's the big thing is I want to know that the person will admit to failures a second thing is if you've really failed there's an assumption that if you've really been in important positions making important decisions you can't be perfect so you must have really failed if you haven't really failed you haven't really had impact in the past I think that's somewhat fair when you have a very experienced person someone unfair for someone less experienced but that is a common assumption and then they also want to see how do you respond to that bad stuff it's not just really admit to but how did you actually respond to in that situation so these are story you know a lot of canidates think about these as how do I not screw myself up by asking these questions and that's really the wrong perspective these stories can make you look much much better if you tackle them the right way so what you want to do is you want to be real you want to be kind of emotionally vulnerable I'll talk about that a little bit you want it to be something that was compelling that was significant and that changed you in some way almost always the I'd say I was always to song I'd say 95 cent the time candidates stories are too weak there's five cent of time when that failure is like maybe that's maybe that's too much but 95 cent the time it's okay you need to amp it up a little bit and this is where I'm gonna get into gendered advice here I'm pretty blunt person and typically men will do better by being more by making a point of being more emotionally vulnerable these are things that where you failed where you screwed up you let the team down you had to fire people something bad happened and you don't want to go in acting all like this did not emotionally touch me at all you actually want to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable on average right these are just averages it depends on you as a person but typically men want to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable that means things like softening your voice admitting that things hurt you admitting that was hard for women it depends on your personality these are just generalizations but for women if you come in being super emotional that can backfire so you have to look at your personality how do you come across if you come across more emotional in the first place amping up the emotional vulnerability is probably not gonna help you a whole lot you want to be just clear more specific about what happened and not yes I'd be more emotional then probably want to amp up emotional emotional side again this is based on your personality but also a bit on stereotypes that people have so be aware of those things the best stories connect whether you're a man a woman the best stories connect with people they they show that they show that this was you know hard that it changed you in some way okay next topic part of design so putting away all the soft ish kind of putting my away stop prides myself so this is kind of the crux of p.m. questions of the prototypical p.m. questions these can be a lot of different things there's a whole set of questions which is how would you design blank for the length disability blind deaf etc so be you know there's a huge number of people who ask questions like that there's you know how would you sign your favorite app that's a ton of questions like that and then there is a pic this particular product how would you design this or how would you improve this thing or sometimes you know in that first question how would you design a better blink so with these questions what interviewers are looking for is communication that's always a piece of any interview question communication but user empathy to some extent creativity and but that's kind of balanced by good instinct so it's kind of this bounded creativity good ideas essentially so it comes down to and then general product insight so standard kind of way of thinking of these questions define who the user is so when you're designing a Google Product ID a whatever it is define who that user is asked a bunch of questions here so how would you design a pen where do you start uh children hello it's a really important question I've seen people I've asked this question and I've said ok I'll let you let us assume I'm the agent so what age are we can assume 3 right that's perfectly reasonable I've seen somebody who said ok age 2 to 10 now two-year-old is like this yeah a 10 year old is like writing essays right like that was a crazy big range now as it I will say as an interviewer I actually personally would advise against a question like that because I think it's kind of has a bias towards parents but unfortunately this stuff happens a lot for you know for candidates you know be really aware of who those users are okay three-year-olds now we're do we go what do they use the pen Tori yeah I mean this this kind of matter so there's that there are even for three-year-old there's there are different use cases are you trying to teach them how to hold a pen correctly that's a very different kind of thing is this supposed to be fun this is first to be teaching them you know about colors there's lots of different things people could be using the pen for and as you ramp up the ages that is even more true a pen you know and a year old could have many different uses go into adults write it I asked you design a calculator well who's using that we're at work at home when you're designing a product for children the children are are that's one user when I say that part of the users children but so are parents so is their little brother who is 18 months and got ahold of it is now sucking on the pen another you know at least stakeholder that you want to be aware of you want to be aware of their walls right things like that and so you want to really really be careful about the user the one major thing interviewers have basically this checkbox where they're like have this has this person properly defined the user make very very sure that you have really really properly defined it user go a little bit overboard here make sure that you've got down these are and then discuss their use cases and you know problems goals so that's gonna be things like the walls be aware of this kind of issue be aware of you know toxic next something uh unexpected use cases like throwing the pan across the room stepping on it stuff like that a pen that's super fragile for three-year-old is not a very good kind it's not one that's gonna last very long and then you go about designing it and then you do this overall wrap up and don't forget that user don't forget the user right be really really clear about this there's one thing you want to do in anything that even has a whiff of product design product to it something where you're thinking about how to do something define that user make sure that's really really clear so then there's another thing another top hobby type of questions and these are fundamentally product design questions but it's does not you know what's your favorite product of this type so mobile app physical product etc and also product from that company so particular if you're interviewing for company like Google a big company have a product have a sub product there that you can talk about it and then how would you improve that never ever ever ever ever walk into a p.m. interview without having questions ready answers ready for all of those types big big mistake is you're such a common question so what you should know about your product each of those categories why do you love it it should be something that you use it shouldn't be oh my grandma uses this cool thing now you can maybe get by with up if you have kids a product for your children only to the extent that you're really interacting with it a lot maybe but it should ideally be something that you use that you love not just other people think it's cool and you think it's well done and define who the users are you should be one of the users of course but there might be other use cases why do other people use it you should be able to talk about who the competition is what are the alternative products or solutions to that and what kind of issues are there and always be ready to talk about why would why do you improve it know what well how would you prove it remember that point of this whole thing is you want to show that you are a good candidate and a lot of these stories litter a lot of these answers literally answer the question these answers are not unreasonable they're actually perfectly reasonably valid answers they do nothing to help you and in fact I'd say that's a huge huge portion of that so example this what's your favorite product someone goes with for this answer many many times uber left one of the other why do you love convenient sure cheaper the other taxis go what else easy-to-use yeah those are all valid answers I mean that's that's what I'm talking to you know my my mom and I'm trying to sell her on hey you should totally you know download uber or lyft what what what why should I do that oh it's super convenient you can just you know fill up your phone you can click a button and order it's really convenient allah to use them taxi so something that these are absolutely valid answers right but when you hear that you're not like wow that's some really interesting insight i think you make a good PA all right like anybody will give an answer terrible PM is someone who doesn't you should never ever be a PM will give that same answer you want to make yourself look like a good candidate you want to give answers that aren't just true but actually show insight and that is the tricky piece of these questions so let's have a swim take it well let me give an example of insight so um a somebody I interviewed is was talking about snapchat and this was three years ago so snap snap wasn't it was not new but newer and it is now and they gave an answer which was it was something about how snapchat they talked about you know communication in the real world is inherently ephemeral I say something to you unless it's in this context it's not recorded I can do whatever I can make a funny face I can say something stupid I can say something offensive nobody knows right and that makes people so much freer as soon as you turn on video camera and start recording everything a little bit more careful about what you do I mean in online communication is inherently recorded and it changes the way people act and text messaging and all these other things will never quite resemble that because you know you're being watched and you know that anything you do can come back to bite you snapchat they argued went a lot closer to resembling real-world communication because it allowed people to say sync that were temporary and they talked a little about how the specific implantation of that but their core part was look this is resembling real-world communication much much more than other online communication that kind of answer showed insight it showed an understanding of how can indication effects people have a recording effect facts Ebola that showed inside the this is a fun thing I get some cool funny pictures to my friends valid reason to like it but it doesn't show me anything about you so some want to take a world at their favorite website Pinterest great why do you love it okay okay so loud yeah okay so allows you to kind of explore things create your own walls and some like that I'm perfectly valid answer and that's not be hardened you that's the answer I'm gonna give to my mom right actually should really start use it my mom's acting credibly technical but it's like the classic example no cheers so she's like a PhD in medical engineering she's actually really really technical uh she's like that father he's still learning about emails it's all recorded right so yeah so this guy answers like that's you know it's a valid answer it was really really hard to get that insight to show something that's like this is a really unique perspective that really shows that p.m. scale so someone take it take another world you can take pinterest or different thing yeah that's a good start let's talk about more about how does pink what is it interested in their design that helps you get inspired image-heavy so that's starting a little more right like they really focused on putting the images first and foremost there and from its hiding the text because the way we get inspired is really two images text doesn't actually really help us a whole lot to get inspired by a lot of prickly you can argue Pinterest is heavily around creation of things and you really need visual images to inspire creating stuff as opposed to focusing on knowledge where it's gonna be much more text-based so you want to try to really think about how can you show things like don't just literally say why you love something but really bring out product insight which is it is hard to do this but it's that those are the answers that really really shine now if you can't do this you can still fall back if you don't feel like you have a really solid answer it shows insight or even if you do you can still fall back on you know here are the use cases that you know Pinterest tackles and hear that you know here's how they go about doing that in a very effective way and that'll still do a pretty good job one thing we aware if when you think about these when you think about what product you want to talk about is not all products are created equal some products are really really hard to do so and a lot of times the social products are very hard it's very hard to talk about why reddit is you know is your favorite website because there isn't as clear well here's my use case and here's how red it goes about salt in my use case because the use case is like having fun unless you can get an answer that really talks about why it helps you have fun but it's hard if there's not as clear use cases uber there's a very clear use case and problem and you can talk about how it solves that problem Pinterest is social but it still is start to have some use cases some clear this is a problem and this is how you Pinterest solves it so be aware that when you think about what product you want to talk about here you may not truly want to take your favorite a lot it you want to take something which has where you can really talk about use cases and how it solves those problems because that's how you can then start talking about how could it be better how could it be better at solving that so I could talk about Pinterest one of the things I've loved to do I love to create weather you can look at my Facebook thing for this but like I've gotten to woodworking and I've gotten into you you know making kind of crazy fancy cakes and end result printers is awesome it's all about creation but one of the things that's bad at is you know it's really good at inspiring but it's not as good at is okay but how do I get there how do I do that thing right and there's some linkage to you know what site it came from but it's very weak that sites often you know that links dead it doesn't give that instructions I would love to be able to when I'm really looking at let me actually do this to actually filter by things that have clear steps right think about Google Images has you can filter for you know things that are you know have certain creative commons licenses something like that I would love build a filter on Pinterest for here's how I actually do that thing there's so many images anyway let me filter on that day so I can actually not just be inspired but also go about executing on that and but a lot of the social products are not I'm not that easy to do that do that way so just just be aware of that okay next I'm like estimation questions this one will be a little bit faster so these are the kind of the things that you hear about as brain teasers they are not brain teasers if you've heard websites like Business Insider say that you Google banned these questions that is totally untrue and Google has not banned these questions someone was either misquoted or misspoke I don't know which one and said that Google banned brain teasers like these these are not considered brain teasers also brain teasers were banned too many many years ago but these are not considered brain teasers either called estimation Fermi estimation questions they're really problem-solving not brain teasers at what people are looking for is basic measure of intelligence smarts the you know if the way people essentially interview for intelligence developers in developers is to album questions if you can't do that 4 p.m. they fall back on these so they're looking at smarts they are looking at the a lot of people feel that well the ability to Ballpark a number is fundamentally an important skill for a product manager because you want to know does it matter to do this feature how many users should we expect how many people even need to filter based on you know this this attribute so they peel out people feel that ballparking is a fundamentally important attribute they also want to know that you're okay working with number that you're not scared of numbers so that's what people are looking at they are not unless you have a really really bad interviewer exceptionally bad interviewer they're not looking at the final answer they probably don't even know what the actual final answer is it's a way to tackle these questions is to really really believe me here these are problem solving they're not about the number you get their problem solving so you first I want to ask bunch of questions to resolve any ambiguity structure your approach have a structure break down those components and then Stan you check so let's take a question like how many airplanes fly over the US every day what do you want to know all planes great question all planes yeah yeah both good questions how do you find an airplane like our helicopter support included here do I literally mean airplanes or rare Condon talking about aircraft um can we talk about paper airplanes right probably not but drones all right are there middle ground things do these matter I use this really weird phrase over the u.s. so is that like literally like cross-country flights is that airplanes that take off and land somewhere in the US even if it's you know up a coast or you know San Francisco to San Diego is my bat do does an international flight taking off from China landing in San Francisco is that over the US or not so you wanted to find these you want to be really really careful make a point of defining this that is one of the things interviewers actually looking for us can you define problem properly and not make bad assumptions then you come up with a structure it's often useful if possible to kind of have an idea of multiple structures in your head so you could tackle how many airplanes you know fire of the US every day by starting from a perspective of people how many people need to fly and how often do they need to fly and also are the things other than people that need to fly or you can start from perspective of airports so two different approaches both could work I don't know which one's gonna be easier I don't know which one's gonna be better it doesn't really matter which one's better anyway but having an idea of two different approaches in your mind it can be helpful and then you start to break down these components so suppose I'm doing how many books are sold every year in the US and you've done some definition on what that means well how people are in the US you should hopefully have a basic idea of the US population if you don't that's something which that's I think fair game to ask that you know if you're particularly if you're not from the US that's even more forgivable to not have a basic idea but use a big-picture round number don't use whatever the answer is 312 million like that use 300 million items this we're talking real real ballparks here so 300 million people okay so you typically break that down typically segment that somehow for books sold in the u.s. what I would do is I would probably segment based on education level or maybe income but probably education level so I probably say okay let's take college grads let's take people who and let's say people who didn't go to college and maybe we're going to figure out how we want deal people who've dropped out maybe of college grads maybe we even want a further segment by income maybe should have segment by income in the first place I don't know but you so I want that population and then you're gonna take some basic idea some point you're gonna have to basically come up with numbers so how many books per month does a typical grad from you know a good university working a good job read I don't know right at some point you're saying here's what me and my friends are like but be careful that you really do understand this is you and your friends this is not all people I had a guy in the interview who assumed that the typical American reads based on his friends reads probably about four to six books a month I think a lot more American I knew another person Hill was asked how many piano tuners there are in the in the US and what made it worse was this person was this is a new grad from Duke and do kind of has a stereotype anyway of being like a lot of rich kids and she assumed that one hour every six Americans has a grand piano like wow pretty sure that's not the case so you want to be really really careful like people are not overly picky about what numbers you assume as long as you don't demonstrate a complete inability to understand that you are not the typical person you you okay so you assume people like you read you know four books a month and it's actually - okay that's that's very very for lickable when you're assuming like it's six and it's like not even one that's a little bit more problematic because then I'm gonna wonder do you do you have an inability as a product manager to put yourself in someone else's shoes and realize that you are not a typical person for the most part you can just pick reasonable things make assumptions back some do basic job of backing them up you know I think it's probably about you know I'm a pretty active reader I read about four books a month but I know that I'm a new uniform I friends I spent the typical American is more around for more like one or pretty typical college grad working a you know highly paid job work you reads more like what do basic job backing up but it's not that big of a deal and then you go along and make this thing the total you can practice this but the total amount of time should be like a couple minutes to solve this not twenty minutes is there not extensive things a couple minutes just do this and then sanity check this is important piece that a lot of people forget so if you come up with you know Gmail you're at your calculate how much money Gmail makes and you come up with you know tene billion dollars maybe you don't have a good feel for how much money that is but what's 15 billion dollars divided by 300 million someone do that for I don't know I think it's like I don't know $15 per person something something that's a lot there's no way that the Gmail is making $15 per person per across all Americans which are not Aldi mail users right there's just no way so do basic Java sanity check checking it and that's where that if you have an idea from step two what those other approaches are that's where that's often really useful so do a basic job of Santa Jenna so I went through all these ah okay so major mistake people make is getting lost in minor details so going off to go calculate something that just doesn't matter it's really useful if you voice that things like for how many books are sold a year and you just introduce the you know hey should we be concerned about books that are sold multiple times but then you probably don't need a kit like that is probably not a huge factor that should we were concerned about how many books a library uses but buys every year I don't think so and the reason why it back them up the guy that's coming through an author but I can't imagine as an author that that you know constitutes of there are number sales so for the overall book sales market it's probably not a big part talking sales but the fact that you bring it up that you are even aware of these little edge cases show something positive ah so remember think about this other source of data like there's other sources of book sales but you can still dismiss them you don't have to calculate everything and then those crazy assumptions the when every six Americans has a grand piano the house right one out of every you know people somebody else assume that like the average American takes like six business flights a month and I'm like oh my I don't think the average American takes six there's like a year I mean the average American is not not like making $200,000 a year right it just doesn't work and so you know most people are okay sumption x' and then there's these people who take crazy assumptions so just try to check yourself down okay last thing I think is these kind of case and miscellaneous questions these are all over the map PM you can ask a lot of different questions so and these are some basic types of questions you can be asked you can ask to be asked on problem solving things so you launch this feature and this was a result what would you do you launched this new signup flow and you know revenue drop what would you do it's so being able to tackle things like that should we do X or Y what would be the better strategy how would you market this product to this user base how would you price this product Amazon particularly asks a lot of pricing questions and how would you launch this things and then there's these weird brainstorming things how would you you know name as many things as possible you can do with a paperclip sometimes futuristic questions where do you see this thing being in five years or 10 years or 15 years there's a huge huge huge pocket you know maybe have questions so and when all fails you can often fall back to some of these major things defining what the problem is doesn't work for all of those things that doesn't work for you know a define as many find as many things as possible you just paperclip but this kind of structure often works find a structure and then solve that what you might be able to do even with something like how many you know name as many things as possible you can do with paperclip which is a stupid question but well you might want to do with something at least like okay let's think about standard uses for a paperclip first and then let's think about things you can do by modifying the shape of the paperclip but still keeping it basically intact let's think about things you can do by if we can use many paper clips what can you do with that and then let's think about what you can do is the raw materials and paper clips so it's melting it down that's a structure I mean it's not the only structure you can use but it's a structure and you can start tackling it that way and even if you don't come up with the most things you probably pop with some different ideas and at least I'm gonna say that's a very structured methodical way of thinking about it I like structured methodical people I'd like to hire them and so at least you can do that so try to find a structure and then try to drive discussions you try to be the one it doesn't mean you'll listen to the interviewer absolutely listen to the interviewer but you want to be the one who's doing the bulk of the talking you want to kind of derive that discussion empathize with the user if it all possible there's any opportunity to show user net kind of user empathy show that that's really important and then try to show insight try to find stuff that says gosh that's a smart comment to make so there are some frameworks you can read if you'd like frameworks you can read about these frameworks it's kind of stuff you learn an MBA program this is what it's really really not the point right so it's you know so the other thing the customer purchased making decision process and the marketing mix SWOT analysis five C's poor to cite sources you can read those for some people that might be useful it doesn't hurt you to do it but interviewers aren't almost never looking for you to take one of these frameworks and apply them to a problem because you're not expected to have an MBA unless you are interviewed for MBA it's difficult but where those can be useful is just to get an idea for what frameworks might look like for a problem hypothetically and also to have you think about aspects you might not have thought about so when you're launching a product do you think about placement that's part of the one of the four piece as I recall you know do you think about the you know aspects of the five C's remember the many mark but um customer things like that you thinking about some of these things that you may not find out so you can look at these just don't try to you know fit a square peg into a round holes they say don't try to just blindly find it pick one these frameworks cuz it's almost never one of these frameworks and then no metrics so big picture metrics user acquisition stuff activity so what kind of things are people doing and you know all the money stuff how much does it cost to acquire your customer how much is the company's revenue was a profit where their margins things like that that those are really useful things to do not just in thinking about a hypothetical product or how you how would you launch something how would you price something but also when you're going into interview with with ASUS if ik company being aware of those metrics for the company in many many many cases you not actually able to get these medics that's fine do what if you can you mutt for bigger companies you might be able to get some of these things you might be able to get in some cases even if you can't get metrics for that company get metrics or something similar so you have a company which is supporting itself to ads okay you can't get its you know the information about it but can you get a feel for how much ads make and when when they make more money when they make less money and the other things you can think about is what is the company's strengths and weaknesses and goals and things that they maybe don't prioritize it much so certain you know companies care a lot about certain things so some companies are very very focused on revenue some companies are very focused on you know a lot of startups are very focused on growing the user base and when you're walking to that interview and you're thinking about improvements to the to the product you ideally want to be aligned on approve of the product what they're caring about is growing the user base and maybe they don't care about the revenue piece it's hard to tell because that startup that hasn't done anything with profits and it's just been really growing users then there might be increasingly something the background companies saying we really gotta figure out this profit thing if you see a company that's been you know growing users pretty nicely and keeps experiment with different monetization strategies that's a good signal that they haven't figured out this money piece yet and maybe you want to walk in with some basic ideas of things they've tried what works what hasn't and maybe some things they might try be generally aware of these kinds of metrics understand in these interviews that you know if you've ever done consulting interviews with the top consulting firms those interviews are like you know you get some case and you're like oh well you know I really like some information about the customer acquisition products and they're like well what do you know we have the slide showing exactly this information p.m. interviews are not like that p.m. in reviews are much more based on your gut instincts so you know you don't have this data because that's what the life of product manager is you're not able to spend three million dollars researching something to come up with a new idea to chip shape the strategy something it's well here's what I think here's what I believe in here's why I believe it so when you're thinking about design of the product improvements things like that you want to walk in with you know you want to walk in being willing to use your gut instincts and back things up and change direction when you get pushback no I don't say push back when you've worn your data to the contrary and forget everything else you know who you are and what people gonna assume about you so know what of those big picture things do you have good coverage on and what maybe do you have good coverage on but maybe isn't as obvious and then try to make up the gaps to accept that you can't everyone should learn the program if they haven't done that yet at least a little bit so remember to focus on the user if it's at all relevant who the user is make it clear that you are the person who care without the user and then find a store if at all possible find a structure for your approach then even if everything else fails even fewer ideas suck whatever at least you will have demonstrated that you are a structured methodical thinker and hopefully the structure will actually get better content as well but at least you will demonstrate it that you do communicate in a structured fashion so um with that happy to open up to some questions yeah oh yes I wouldn't so the questions that you know do you have to solve the Fermi estimation questions in two minutes I wouldn't say two minutes I'd say five ish it is a good kind of general ballpark it's gonna depend on the question some other things but yeah in the scope of around five minutes maybe less yeah so p.m. p.m. at a big company versus a start-up so p.m. rolls just they're just all over the map anyway um you can have a PM role you know at Microsoft or Amazon which across the company is doing wildly different things you'll have a p.m. at Microsoft just thinking of cific friends I've had there where one is doing really like customer evangelist stuff they're like very close to doing marketing they were talking a ton with customers and doing like high level messaging and then you have another another PM who is like doing low level very very technical very very very technical you know writing out spec so they can be a huge huge huge range big picture I'd say p.m. at big companies have a lot more resources so they get focused much they are in some ways they're more focused on true PM stuff which I actually it's really problematic to say but they're gonna be right much more like here's this thing I'm tackling this one problem and here's my spec for a PM at a startup is doing more of the wear multiple hats which is kind of core to p.m. anyway so I want to say that's not core PM stuff but they might be jumping into code when when it's needed they might be jumping in to do a lot more marketing work they might be going out and talking with customers so they just might do a lot more things but it can vary a ton across companies and the stage of a company and things like that yeah so um question and interviewing for APM roles how'd you become a great how you doing really great can y'all just an okay one um I mean it's hard to tell you this there's so much to say there and I guess one thing I would think about is finding a role that really leverages what you like finding the right role finding well that really leverages your strengths so you know some people are you know if you are super technical find a role that is really technical those are really really valuable skills if you are really good at finance or you're really passionate music find that role that really leverages that you know developers in a lot of ways can be slotted into many different roles in many different products and be based it'd be kind of equally good I wouldn't say multiple place in the stack but being equally good and part of the does this special part is that the product manager role is more tied to what the product is find a role that really fits your background if possible and then you know a lot of others have a talk about with really being clear about your messaging what your strengths are having stories ready to go be you know sometimes people and ironic come from me but some people put way too much focus on interview prep and like spend months and months and months doing interview prep without a lot of thought of like how do I actually make myself fundamentally a better candidate so I would put out Kercheval a little bit less interview prep a little bit more make yourself a great candidate so that's the learning to code that's the you know for product managers reading books about product design reading blogs about product signs starting to do that now make yourself truly a better candidate and not just somebody who appears better in interviews yeah so what I recommend for someone who did product manage in the public sector and wants transition to the private sector so public sector is vague my initial thing is public product management in public sector you've probably been working with a lot of bureaucracy but you have maybe not been working on super technical things the product management role itself I wonder if product management in the public sector means something very very different and so as an interviewer I'm gonna be a little bit like okay what you're really doing as opposed if you're a product manager at Google where I kind of know so I would just be very prepared to really be able to articulate what you did what that product manager role was and establish credibility because people are going to make negative assumptions about people who worked in public sector

Channel: Product School

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Keywords: Product, Product Manager, Product Management, Product School, Tech, Startups, Managers, How to get a job, product manager salary, product manager resume, product manager jobs, what is product management, what is a product manager, product management training, how to become a product manager, cracking the product manager interview, product management jobs, How to Crack the Product Manager Interview, product manager interview, career, business, technology, problems, experience, tech career

Id: VzB2_mhUevM

Length: 75min 22sec (4522 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 07 2017