Interviewing product managers: a playbook for PM leaders - RocketBlocks What is your experience with juggling both markets? Given the importance of user research in our open role, we had to pass on the candidate. Contrast this with the best responses: they highlight curiosity and the drive to understand what makes products work or not. At the same time, 43% of companies are planning on hiring more product managers.. Due to the popularity and the complexity of the role, hiring product . Real interview questions. To run an effective interview, interviewers can't simply ask a question, sit back and expect to learn everything they need to know about the candidate from their responses. Product managers deal with ambiguous and novel challenges. Give them a project at the beginning of the interview day, with a timeboxed amount of time for them to work on it (e.g. Product managers work with various departments like Marketing, Finance, Sales, and Support to collect ideas and opinions to form the product strategy. The candidate may immediately link their list of apps to the problems they are solving for them. Though they should find their way to reasonable solutions, their thought process and high level structure are what we are judging them on. So even entry-level PM roles will come with questions about leadership. Does the candidates framing show excitement, motivation, and understanding of impact, fit, and growth? Master The Product Manager Interview Playlist: Weve collected together our best talks on acing the Product Management interview, from a look behind the scenes of recruitment, to how to break into the industry. This course is the must-know information for the fundamentals of product management interviewing, with lessons on analytics, product design, and how to answer the favorite product question.
JPMorgan developing ChatGPT-like A.I. investment advisor - CNBC Between nervousness and excitement, the best thing you can do for your product manager interview is to show up well-prepared. not a manager), you can whittle it down to these six: Interestingly, product sense isnt ever on PM career ladders, but. These groups are not familiar with the complexities of product features and specifics so making information accessible is critical for collaboration. This further tests the candidates strategic thinking and also the ability to think about a product from the perspective of jobs to be done, not just its features. Hiring the right PMs is critical for the company and a big part of my job. These will give the hiring manager a panoramic view of you and your experiences. MORE ON PRODUCT MANAGEMENT The Forgotten Side of Product Management: the Business It Takes a Product Manager to Hire a Product Manager. What kind of people do you have a hard time working with? Takeaway: You need to talk to an average of 23 PM candidates to hire one great one. There are different telltale signs for this: the candidate might tell you about some new products they have recently discovered. Set a problem you would love to solve. Product strategy knowledge questions. So just be yourself and be honest.
Interviewing Product Managers? Here's How To Set a GOOD - LinkedIn It's an open question, meaning you can add some passion to your answer. So here weve laid out every single type of question you could possibly be asking in a Product Management interview. Though some are hard to anticipate, some types are almost certain to show up. Ive been involved in interview panels for a lot of PMs, and have set up hiring processes for product managers in two different startups. Product Management Interview Product Experts Product Manager Intern Associate Product Manager Technical Product Manager Senior Product Manager Senior Technical Product Manager Lead Product Manager Group Product Manager Director of Product Chief Product Officer B2B Product Manager Data Product Manager Finance Product Manager The Interview Response Technique: SAR method. Those familiar with Faizan Buzdar, who was until recently the VP of product management at Box, likely associate the entrepreneur with Convo, the digital workspace platform popular among newsrooms . How would you go about finding out the number of red cars in China? Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handled it. Read more to see if a career in product management may be right for you. Interpersonal skills questions. Each interviewer blind votes Strong No, No, Yes, or Strong Yes. What main changes would you make to [our product]? The PM interview process is intended to better understand your overall working style. Created by Product School and Gainsight in this book we explore how to get inside your customers mind. Reduce thrash: the consistency created will lead to less turbulent candidate debrief sessions and hiring decisions. Seriously, go check it out. So dont neglect to prepare your answers for the more run-of-the-mill questions. This question is a bit ambiguous on purpose, and also requires the candidate to make some assumptions. Product managers are responsible for: Product strategy and vision. In alignment with the company's values. This is a good way to gauge the candidates genuine interest in your company. Ill ask questions along the way. What are the primary features and use cases? Ive articulated XO Groups key Product Manager competencies in this article defining the modern strategic Product Manager. Other interesting questions that came up include: I didnt cover questions about cultural fit explicitly in this article. The worst responses to this question are ones which are either lack a good summary or are obviously wrong. What is a product you currently use every day, why and how would you improve it? Product Manager Interview Questions. If youre struggling with getting a practice response started, ask yourself this: What is the problem were trying to solve and how are we going to get there? While the problem is a thinking exercise, the writing and choice of presentation is a communication exercise. Reflect. Dont expect perfection: PMs dont actually scope new opportunities in short video calls, so have tolerance for some rough edges to their responses. Are you comfortable with saying no to out-of-scope requests? Product managers are building and improving the future. If the candidate fails to motivate me with passion, or simply forgets to answer the second part of the question, Im likely going to pass on the candidate. First, give the hiring manager context to the metric about why it matters. Have you used them in the past? Before we jump in, a little bit about myself: Lets say you were a Product Manager at Airbnb, and an executive came to you with an idea to allow guests to book cars through the Airbnb platform, as an add-on to Homes (places to stay) and Experiences (curated travel experiences). How do you see your career developing in the next 5 years? Why do you want to work at [our company]? Product strategy | Internet Product | InsurTech | FinTech | Innovation | All things Digital |, This is great Abhishek Madan. Hi [candidate], excited to speak with you today. At first, you wing it; by the third time, everyone has their own, completely different setup.. Focus on their expectations for the role, basic skill questions, personality fit (e.g.
here, which is quickly becoming the single best place to find and hire product managersand help you find your next dream gig. Here are different ways the conflict question is asked: These three questions arent all the questions to ask, theyre just the most important ones according to this set of product leaders. The conflict example either a hypothetical or historical example of encountering and managing conflict, with senior, peer, and junior stakeholders. Does the role feel important and ambitious? Exposing the spectrum and depth of these capabilities can make interviewing product managers a challenge. Courses Product Management Software Engineering System Design Engineering Management Technical Program Management UX / Product Design Data Science The worst response to these questions is if candidates cant up with any apps that they use. This isnt Jeopardy: do not judge the candidate on coming up with specific details. In hiring, I look for candidates with both will and skill. Between these two, it's easier to teach people how to execute, and harder to teach people how to creatively solve problems. Plus study sheets on key concepts. On the worst end, the candidate struggles to come up with ideas, provides ideas that are all a variation on a theme, or ideas that are just not great (for example, very complex and expensive solutions for a problem that is unlikely to have a big impact). Tell me about a challenging issue or challenge you took on. But to make sure you hit on the main points every interview should cover, these eleven product manager interview questions are the best for you to reveal your candidate's values and intentions: My current focus is on our employer experience -- making it really easy for companies to offer Mikes Bikes as a commuter option to employees. How have you kept communication from breaking down in a remote setting? Matt from Workframe asks Walk me through a time where you figured out what to build. If youre the right PM for the team, theyll see that straight away! I start off this section by telling the candidate to pretend they are the product manager for this product, and then ask them how they would go about identifying areas for improving the product and come up with some improvement ideas. A Google search turns up many list of Product Manager interview questions, even interview simulations, often written directly for Product Managers. Here are some examples: We aren't looking for amazing answers here, but we are looking for the candidate to pass a minimum quality level. Before Mikes Bikes, I held various product roles at Gusto and Yahoo. Ill ask questions along the way.
C3.AI Faces Reports of Product Delays, Micromanagement From Tom Siebel And dont forget to keep your questions consistent, with predefined good and bad answers, to. I love this question because I get a quick snapshot of the candidates skills and her self awareness of those skills. Must Create An Interview Template. From technical to behavioral interview questions, we got you covered! 90 minutes). There are a variety of questions you can expect to be asked in a Product Management interview. Xiaodi, 1stDibs asks the candidate to describe her ideal environment to thrive in and what she needs to succeed to evaluate the candidates introspectiveness and to match the candidates ideal environment against 1stDibss. Other ways product leaders ask this question: I recently interviewed a candidate for a Senior Product Manager role that needs a lot of user discovery for a whitespace product. Share your vote, discuss, and then the hiring manager makes a decision. As a result, it's critical to assemble a varied panel of interviewees. Put together a compelling offer, share it with them, To benchmark a typical hiring funnel, I asked. Focus on getting to know the person as a human, the role, and a couple skills or attributes that you believe to be most important to this role (more on this below). Thats a good thing for your team, the candidate, your organization, and ultimately your user. As a product manager, you should know that you are at best an imperfect proxy for the products user base, and at worst, completely atypical. When I interview product candidates, I want to know how they think. The goal of the project is to get a taste of how a candidate approaches a new problem.
32 Product Management Interview Questions & How to Answer - Amplitude Interviewing Product Managers for Product Sense - Medium High-level, Id set up your interview process like so: Recruiter phone screen [30 minutes, optional]: Make sure the candidate meets the minimum requirements for the role and is likely to be a fit for the organization. 1. What are they looking for? One of the critical components of the interview loop should be what I call the "Product Sense" interview, in which the candidate's . What is the goal of the product? A quick search on LinkedIn will tell you that there are more than two million people with the title "product manager". Youve made a good impression on your application. Previously Product exec @ InVision, XO Group, Udacity, this article defining the modern strategic Product Manager, Create a job blueprint covering mission, outcomes, and competencies that the hiring process and interview questions align around, Perform rigorous short screening interviews evaluating fit against the blueprint using the same questions for all candidates, Conduct detailed in person interviews by the hiring manager with a walk through of a candidates past and future evaluating fit against the blueprint using the same questions for all candidates, Conduct focused interviews with other stakeholders to evaluate specific competencies from the job blueprint using the same questions for all candidates, (Bonus) This approach discusses tips for effective references using, you guessed it, a consistent set of questions for all candidate, Use a common set of questions every time (the book suggests specific questions), Continuously evaluate responses against the job mission/outcomes/competencies blueprint. Its purpose is to determine if there is a market for your idea and if it effectively solves a problem for your customers. How do we define success, and what metrics can we use to track the product? Less bad, but still not great are use case descriptions that are too narrow, for example, by focusing only on the candidates personal use case. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer an approach that starts by articulating a positions mission, outcomes, and competencies. So youre a product leader, and need to hire a PM. Whats the difference between leadership and management? but never once mentioned bringing users into the product discovery, development, and release process. It can be useful to have at least . I prefer to give candidates at least 1 weekend to work on the assignment. These days, its quite likely that the company youre applying to has some kind of remote working/flexible hours possibility. There aren't many quantifiable indicators of future success, as a product manager's " soft skills " are often way more important than their technical chops. How do you choose which one to implement? In addition to the six skill areas above, several also called out: In addition to competencies, I also evaluate if the candidate would be motivated by the positions mission, users, team, structure, and growth opportunity. Here a sample product case study Ive used for round 1 PM interviews. Junior PMs are allowed to ramble a little. As, (ex-Uber, Microsoft, Skype engineer) confessed in, , we EMs have no clue how to do these. Propose these improvements and see how the candidate takes them. Though some people dont include it, I couldnt imagine a PM interview without it.
Does this position feed the persons soul? How would you face the challenge of managing a team that works across timezones? The guidance here comes from a blend of my own experience at Gusto and Ethos, where Ive interviewed over 200 PMs, and conversations with product leaders from other companies who have scaled their product teams at Stripe and Coinbase. By following best practices of consistent, skills-based questions around career fit, historical skills examples, and conflict handling, youll set yourself up to bring the right people aboard your product team. You can be sure you'll be asked at least a few behavioral questions during your interview process. The last question I ask is what success criteria they would look at if they launched the feature. Product sense: How would you improve feature x in our product? How does the candidate frame the role? What was the outcome?. Most importantly, you arent looking at how close they got to the right answer. Let's face itproduct management is more nuanced because it often requires people to have experience analyzing data and making decisions related to the goals of the business, in addition to some technical skills. The key when being asked these questions is not to rush yourself. Product managers deal with ambiguous and novel challenges. You may end up finding good PMs, but it will lead to misaligned expectations for them and company, and costly hiring mistakes. This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. collaboration, communication, detail orientation, user science, etc. What made it so important or impactful? Which means the hiring company will ask a multitude of questions to figure out if you are the one. You drove a product innovation. Alfonso Fiore something we were also talking about last week! But what about the rest of us? Ask questions that get to the heart of the candidate's past performance on tasks and projects related to product management. Why are you interested in the job/company/industry to understand a candidates interests and ambitions. For example, if the candidate makes the assumption that a company that is focused on growth should pursue opportunities to improve their margins, thats not a very good assumption. Product managers have a responsibility to optimize the teams performance. The problem must excite the interviewer, before exciting the candidate. One of the critical components of the interview loop should be what I call the Product Sense interview, in which the candidates hard product management skills are evaluated: the ability to assess products, identify improvement opportunities, and reason about them and their tradeoffs. . The most important thing is to ask good questions that lead to concrete answers. What is the importance of engineers and technical teams as stakeholders? Technical knowledge questions. Looking for advice on Getting Started with Resource Management? , to share stats he had on conversion rates at each step, and wow, did he deliver. How to answer: Start by demonstrating an in-depth understanding of the company, mentioning the leadership team, how they stand within the industry, and an overview of your favorite product offerings. They want a person who is motivated to do the job, can work with different teams and has the ability to prioritize features that they already know users are looking for.
5 Product Manager Interview Questions (With Sample Responses) About 50% of candidates should make it through this step. Focus on their expectations for the role, basic skill questions, personality fit (e.g. How would you go about determining the root cause?
1x email per week - max. Can you see how and why the candidate will want to thrive in this role? , so definitely go read that, but heres a sampling: Tell me about a time you disagreed with an engineer on your team and how you resolved it. These responses in your back pocket will help you answer confidently and eliminate interview stress! How do you know if a product is well designed? What is the key to a good user interface? And well never share your email. Please. At first, you wing it; by the third time, everyone has their own, completely different setup.. Because of this, the career has quickly become a highly sought-after position, especially by MBA graduates. You said no to a key stakeholder. How well does the candidate see the broader opportunity? Hiring managers usually ask a series of broad questions to get a better idea of your personality and interests, such as: Tell me more about yourself. I wrote a whole post sharing my favorite PM interview questions, so definitely go read that, but heres a sampling: Collaboration: Tell me about a time you disagreed with an engineer on your team and how you resolved it. Describe a scenario which required you to say no to an idea or project. Cultural fit is critical to a successful hire, though I find interviewers can assess cultural fit quickly, and assessing cultural fit varies by whats important to a specific culture. Competitive dynamics of course should not be driving most product decisions, but having an idea why customers choose one product vs. another, and what competitive threats a company might be facing are valuable product management skills nonetheless. The goal is to show how invaluable software is to a successful product launch and team productivity. How do you know when to cut corners to get a product out the door?
15 Product Manager Interview Questions to Help You Prepare Can you lead product team meetings to drive product planning and development? Product managers are the ultimate dot connectors, working closely with partners from engineering, design, product marketing, sales, performance & lifecycle marketing, operations and leadership. How would you improve your favorite product? How many people are currently online in Europe? What would you do to get a team to stick to a schedule? Tell me about your role on your team, who else you work with, and how you work with them. Thats a very expensive way to validate most ideas! Naturally, theyre curious and ask a lot of questionsthe right questionsto ship the product toward completion. They want to know that you work well in high-pressure environments, that youre able to influence without authority, and manage stakeholder expectations. Companies need agile product managers who understand both the technical and design requirements of their products. How do you decide what and what not to build? PM interviews are still just regular job interviews at heart, and sometimes the simplest questions are the most important. is the person motivated and excited? In this round we will discuss 3 things about the company: And we need to prod the candidate into telling us: Once we establish fit we move to a quick check of competency claimed on resume. As much as possible, tee the candidate up, then get out of the way.
Product manager interview questions (With sample answers) Time savings: hiring managers wont need to reinvent the wheel for each open PM role. Good responses talk about impact vs. effort, or do an ICE / RICE assessment. Your high priority attributes should be tested in at least two different interviews. Some people prefer prompting candidates with a specific opportunity for the companys own product. About 50% of candidates should make it through this step. Skill: does the person have the skill to do the job, i.e.
Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews Note you can ask a variant of this question in the negative as another way of probing skills and self-awareness Tell me about a product you worked on that failed, and what you learned..
How to Interview Product Managers | Pivotal Tracker Blog Get more agile interview questions and answers! , but assuming youre interviewing an IC PM (i.e. They can be a rigorous test that standardises your process, if they are set correctly. Bonus points for the company if theyve outlined this publicly on their blog or website. Technical Product Manager Interview Questions: Lets be real! Questions about product are possibly the most common in PM interviews, which shouldnt come as a surprise! They sent across a shortlist of 6 candidates, and I said yes to THREE of them. And dont forget to keep your questions consistent, with predefined good and bad answers, to avoid bias. Interview best practices are generally anecdotal, so definitely do your own research. So its important to get a diverse set of interviewers on your panel. Especially if you don't have a large interview panel. This full post includes what to look for in the answers, red flags, and a ton more great interview questions to inspire you. and in return Ill humbly offer actionable real-talk advice. The product roadmap is a strategic action plan defining the product OKRs, features, positioning, schedule, and contributors needed to build and ship a product. Because product management teams include members from different backgrounds such as engineering, design, and data design, product managers must have strong .
10 Common Interview Questions for Product Managers - Forage What Do Employers Look for in a Product Manager? This gives a little bit of extra signal in terms of structured communication, but mostly, it ties up the discussion nicely before I give the candidate the opportunity to ask me some questions. And in this process, I came across Upraised. Depending on the size and makeup of your company, this may need to be tweaked, but heres a sample for Mikes Bikes: Candidate tip: familiarize yourself with each of these panelist roles, and be ready to speak their language. For example, emphasizing an unexpectedly delightful user experience may resonate more with a Designer or PM than a VP of Sales.
Product Manager Interview Questions (With Example Answers) Either the candidate truly doesnt use technology much (in which case, why are you a tech product manager?) How many iPads are sold in the USA every year? Make a copy of this document to conduct your interview, take notes, and grade the candidate. I lead our Product and Design teams at Mikes Bikes.
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