Acing the Product Management Interview

2/16/2017 update: I'm hiring a Technical Program Manager for my team at Twitch. Other Twitch roles are posted here. I appreciate any referrals and I'm happy to do informationals if you meet the core requirements.

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Congratulations, you’ve landed an interview to be a software product manager (PM). It's time to prepare. Product managers stand at the intersection of design, technology, and business. These are 3 large surface areas. The interviewers may consist of user experience (UX)/user interface (UI) designers, software engineers, marketers, PMs, or executives. They bring their unique perspectives and could go deep in their area of expertise, so do your homework. In this article, I highlight the common PM interview questions and the context for questions. This article assumes you have some PM experience or done some PM related work. If you find that you lack stuff to talk about in any of these questions, you should find ways at your current job to develop it. If this is helpful (let me know via follows, likes, and shares), I’ll look at creating one for those new to PM.

The Basics

Be honest. This goes without saying but I still run across candidates that stretch the truth more than they should. It’s easy to see through with a just a few probing question. It’s fine to say, “no I have not personally done A/B testing, but I’m eager to try because...” than to wing it and have me ask, “in what situations would A/B testing not be feasible?”

Describe the context. If you’re asked about your experience, take couple of seconds to set up the situation and context. What was the key question, why was it important, and how did you solve it?

Give concrete examples. The more concrete examples about your experience, the more impactful you’re going to appear. If you can, bring your products or apps to demo. Start with the elevator pitch and describe the customer, the value proposition, and how the app uniquely delivers that value. Then walkthrough the primary user scenario making sure to highlight key differentiators. Prepare to talk about your specific contribution, key learnings from customers, and business impact.

Pump yourself up. Interviews are a slog. You need to pump yourself up so that the energy can carry you and help you be at your best. You’re expected to be a leader who can energize everyone around you. I find having a pre-interview routine helpful - eg. hitting the gym or listening to your music will invigorate you so that the energy rubs off on the interviewer.

Ramp Up

• What’s your product management experience? Take this question at face value. Because product management is hard to define, this question gauges what you’ve done, for how long, and if your PM experience is directly transferable.
• Tell me about a product that you’ve taken from conception all the way to market. With this question, the actual product is less important than your process and contribution. Keep your answer simple and succinct. Choose a product that you had the most impact on even if you didn’t take it through the entire lifecycle. Make sure you talk about product validation - how did you find out whether your concept or product has legs? Don't assume that you're out if you haven't taken a product through a complete lifecycle; I like to know where I can help you grow.
• Why are you looking for a new PM role now? This is probably the first hard-ish question often asked by HR, hiring managers, or senior management. We know that every job has positives and negatives. People look for a new job when negatives outweigh the positives. What we want to see is thoughtfulness in every step of your career, that you’ve put in the time needed to make an impact, and that you’re proactive rather than reactive. We’re are looking for spark, passion, and drive. We’re also watching for signs that you might not be cut out to be a product manager - it’s a hard job, it’s not for everyone, and that’s okay.

Design

Most designer and design leads won’t expect you to be a master in user experience. Though, we are expecting you to be a great collaborator and that you're familiar with the fundamentals of user-centered design. You should bring an insatiable appetite for great design and would prefer to test assumptions around UX.

• Tell me about your product design process and experience? Take this question at face value. It helps to assess whether you have user-centered design experience and you practiced it in a consistent way. Give examples about your process and what you’ve learned.
• Have you worked with UX/UI Designers and how so? Designers are key contributors and stakeholders to any successful user-facing product. This question measures the interactions you’ve had with designers and lets us know if you can collaborate with them in a meaningful way. Things we watch out for are working with designers on an ad-hoc or as-needed basis. To be fair, we know that many companies have centralized or pooled designer resources. Even so, you should go out of your way to get as much time with them as possible.
• A product is ready to ship, but the UX Designer doesn’t approve of shipping because of an UX issue, what do you do? Yup, a delicate but common situation. That’s why we ask this question. You might think you can get by with “of course I would not ship.” Nice try. This is a situational question, so get into it and engage the interviewer. Ask questions, explain your reasoning and the desired outcome.
• How do you know when a design is “done”? I learned this question from Kristen Miller @kristenliz. I think it’s also a great question for PMs especially in an agile environment.
• Analyze the UX/UI of our product, how would you improve it? Interviewers may want to see you in action, so they’ll ask you to analyze something that you’ve built or one of their products. So get ready and research the company’s products beforehand. The key is to see if you can approach design analysis in a thoughtful and methodical way. If you’re given something to analyze that you’ve never seen before, ask for a few minutes to interact with it. Ask if there's a particular area of focus for feedback. If not, ask about the target audience and then plan your analysis around 3 areas: on-boarding (ie. first time use), navigation, and task completion. Empathize with the target user and talk through your thoughts as you work your way through the 3 areas. Try to avoid feedback on things that are a matter of preference. Instead look for unintentional affordances and non-affordances, and how you’d improve it.
• What are pitfalls of being too reliant on hard data in product design? This is a question I learned from one of the best UX designers I worked with at Amazon. As PMs, we should use data to inform, but over reliance on it will make it a hammer in your hand then everything starts to look like a nail. Use data to make decisions, but know that there are limits to data and that great designs need creativity.

Technology

You'll likely meet engineering leads or engineers in your interview. And they could go deep depending on your technical background. Some may give you a brain teaser or test how you think on your feet - this is kind of passé now, but you could still run into them.

• How did you work with your engineers in your current or previous role? This is just a question to see whether you’ve had opportunities to work with engineering and how close. The more interactions you've had, the more likely you’re able to empathize and learn from them. Engineers want to be involved in the entire design and development process, not just handed user stories or specs. You’re playing the support role and you're expected to nail down the scope and dependencies so that engineers have everything they need to be productive. If there's a program manager or scrum master, you'll assist them to support engineering. You probably won't know the culture and dynamics of the company, so you should go in with the servant leadership mindset.
• What software development methods have you used? The popular methodologies today are agile based: scrum, kanban, lean startup, extreme programming etc. Don’t worry if the process that you’re using is different than the company’s. Remember that it’s much more important to “be agile” than to “do agile”. The team will want to know if you understand the principles of agile development and have practiced it before.
• What’s a cool innovative technology or product that you’ve seen recently and why? As a PM, you’re entrusted to be close to the customers and attuned to the market. Do you practice what you preach and completely immerse yourself in the industry? Do you have passion and curiosity for the latest technology and the possibilities? Why should we follow you? There are 2 parts to this question: first is picking the right technology or product to talk about and second is explaining why it’s cool. Don’t pick a cliché (or even your own product) because it’ll come off as lacking originality; find something interesting and unique. Then explain why - imagine you’re the PM for that product or technology and talk about the customer and how the product or technology delivers value. Bonus if you can describe the underlying strategy or motivation for the company to build the product or technology.
• What do you want to build here and why? Again there are 2 parts here. First is to see if you’ve done research about the company to understand its customers, mission, and culture. Second is to use that information and come up with something that can serve the customer and company’s interests. If you're asked this question by engineering, pick something creative and technically exciting.
• Tell me about that time when you’ve hit a sticking point with your engineering team. What was it and how did you work through it? This is a question to see how you’ve worked out issues with engineers. Things we’re looking for are: did you listen and try to identify the root of the issue? How did you resolve it? While the problem and solution is interesting, it’s the “how” that matters. Did you involve the right people? Were you open minded or did you hold your ground?

Business

If you don’t have a business or marketing background, these questions could be the most challenging. They can be fit, behavioral, or case questions common to management consulting. Remember that business is often ambiguous and fraught with risk and uncertainty. The questions below assess how you handle ambiguity, solve problems, and deliver results.

• What do you think about the industry I’m in? Where do you think it’s going? This a question to see if you did your homework about the company. What’s the competitive landscape and revenue model? What’s the value chain? Can you form an opinion on where the industry is going? Is it ripe for disruption? Can the company position itself for success and what does that mean for the product? If you’re in the same industry as the company, you should prepare to talk about it intelligently and confidently. If you’re not from the same industry, you should find key indicators and then connect the dots for the interviewer.
• We’re thinking about expanding into XYZ business, should we? If I had one question to ask a Product Manager candidate, this would be it. It's harder than a feature or product-level discussion, it’s about validating a new business. I want to know if you can think big picture beyond your product - do you have leadership potential. You should be able to outline an analysis framework (eg. check out the lean canvas) and walk me through the major parts in the analysis. This is a case question, so take few minutes to ask questions and make assumptions. I’m less concerned about the “right” answer, rather I’m looking for your ability to set up a framework to figure things out. Remember to arrive at a recommendation to pursue or not.
• Tell me about a time you’ve used massive amounts of data to drive a decision. As the saying goes, “In God we trust, all others bring data”. Yes you can over rely on data (see the related design question above), but we're talking business here. You have to be able to wallow in massive amounts of data, filter out the noise, and draw out actionable insights. When you use data, you're minimizing risk. You’re also trying to steer clear of opinion or emotion-based decision making.
• How would you price a product of ours? Pricing and licensing is hard and it’s a question that most people would prefer not to own. I would argue that it’s an opportunity for PMs to step up. PMs should take ownership because we’re closest to the customer, the product, and the cost structure. You shouldn't solve this alone - you should be talking to your customers, sales & marketing, and leadership (especially IT for hosted services). In most cases, I'm not expecting you to solve this question during the interview. I'm looking for experience, method, and the types of data that you need. For more tips on pricing, check out my post on a services firm going into selling products.
• Your sales and marketing team came to you with a feature request, build it and a deal gets done, what do you do? The temptation is to say no, and good PMs have to say no, a lot. But that would make this question too easy. The key here is whether you can ask all the right questions to get at the “why”. You have to consider all aspects of this request determine its return on investment (ROI). Don’t hesitate to ask for more info. For example, is the company struggling to meet its monthly or quarterly revenue targets? How big is this pending deal? How many customers are asking for this and how much revenue are those customers bringing in? Would this feature cannibalize another product, if so how much? What’s the current state of the product backlog? When does the customer need this? You have to consider all angles to determine an ROI (it's more than just the numbers). Then if you’re going to say no, we will want to know how you’d say no.
• Tell me about a business or product metric that you were responsible for and how you went about attaining it. This is a question to determine whether you’ve owned any metrics and how you executed against it. The red flags are if you didn’t own any, or you owned too many. You need to position yourself as someone who knows and owns the one true metric that mattered. Then talk about what you did that had the greatest direct impact on the metric, not at the periphery.

So obviously the questions you get will depend on the company, the people that you meet, and its culture. Hopefully this article gives you a good cross-section of the types of questions to prepare for. This will in turn help people like me to better assess you and the value that you bring. Good luck and feel free to share your questions and experiences.

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Great PMs practice, hone, and never stop learning. Never miss a post by subscribing here. Or follow me here and on twitter @vpproduct

Check out my post on Transitioning into Software Product Management