Cracking the PM Interview

Summary

The speaker provides advice for preparing for and succeeding in product management interviews. He discusses the product manager's role, necessary PM skills like customer focus and technical abilities, and how to showcase your strengths. He analyzes common challenging interview questions on product design, estimation, case studies, and coding. He stresses structuring your thinking, understanding the user, making reasonable assumptions, and practicing behavioral interview questions. Overall he conveys that interviewers want to assess your problem-solving abilities, leadership potential, and passion for understanding and building great products.

Takeaways

• 😊 Product managers are responsible for managing the product, not people. Key PM skills: customer focus, product design, technical skills, and business expertise.
• 👩‍💻 Technical skills are often expected for PMs. Consider learning some coding basics even if non-technical.
• 🎯 In interviews, focus your stories on the actions you took to resolve situations. Don't spend too long on backstory.
• 📈 Estimation questions test problem structuring and solving skills - not accuracy. Break problems down step-by-step.
• 🤔 Case questions vary widely. Understand the problem, find a structure, make reasonable assumptions and decisions.
• 😮 When stuck coding: check for unused info, draw examples, simplify, ask for hints. Struggling is expected.
• 🙂 For behavioral questions, prepare a grid linking projects to possible questions. Master 5 key stories.
• 👥 Service backgrounds can transition well into PM with focus on communicating and understanding users.
• 🎒 Ideal PM background combines tech skills (CS major) with something else (psych, marketing).
• 🤝 Utilize PMs at your company to learn the role. Shadow, assist on specs, talk to customers.

Q & A

What are the different names used for product managers at various tech companies?

Product managers are called different things at different companies - associate product managers at Google, Yahoo and Facebook, program managers at Microsoft, and product marketing managers for associate product manager roles at Microsoft.

What skills should an MBA focus on developing to become a strong product manager candidate?

MBAs should focus on developing industry expertise, strong technical skills, good product design abilities, and expertise in areas like project management where they may be weaker. Humility and not appearing arrogant is also key.

How should one structure answers to behavioral interview questions?

Use the 'nugget first' structure where you state the key point first, or the situation-action-result structure where you briefly describe the situation, spend most time on the actions you took, and then the results.

What frameworks are useful for product manager case study questions?

MBA frameworks can provide some guidance on areas to consider, but interviewers are not specifically testing knowledge of these frameworks. The focus is more on structuring the problem, using reasonable assumptions, and solving it based on product instincts.

What metrics are valuable for product managers to be familiar with?

Important metrics include user acquisition metrics (growth rate, active users), engagement metrics (popular features), and money metrics (cost to acquire users, revenue, revenue growth rate).

What should one do when they get stuck on a coding interview question?

Relax, use any unused information provided, draw examples, try simplifying or brute force solutions, explain your thinking to the interviewer to solve the problem jointly.

What educational backgrounds help for product manager roles?

Computer science backgrounds are highly valued. Minors or double majors that combine CS with areas like marketing, psychology, economics etc. are also useful.

What if you don't have an impressive accomplishment for behavioral questions?

Focus on emphasizing through your answers the concrete skills and abilities you want to demonstrate - things like empathy, leadership, customer understanding etc.

How can designers become stronger PM candidates?

Designers should showcase quantitative abilities and basic technical competency through coursework or small coding projects.

How do customer and client service backgrounds help for product managers?

They provide great experience in communicating with users, understanding their needs and wants, and addressing their concerns.