Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, Iโll earn a commission, at no additional cost to you. Read my full disclosure here.
Disclosure: This post might contain affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, Iโll earn a commission, at no additional cost to you. Read my full disclosure here.
The goal of this post is to explain how to prepare for Product Manager interviews. I will give an overview of the interview structure, dive deep into the 5 types of interview questions and provide resources for mock interviews.
This is part of a mini-series of posts related to career development. The other related posts are:
- Interview Preparation Guides
- Role-specific information
Overview
A typical interview for high-tech companies consists of 2 rounds:
- Phone interview (45 minutes): The interviewer either calls the interviewee via phone or they use a Communications app (e.g. Skype, Zoom, etc)
- Onsite interview (4-5 interviews, 45 minutes each): The interviewee visits the company’s offices and talks to the interviewers face to face
There are 6 types of questions:
- Product design questions (aka Product sense), e.g. “How would you improve Google Maps?”, “Design a fridge for blind people”, etc
- This is by far the most important type of question for PMs. It’s also the question that causes the most rejections.
- Metrics (aka Product Execution), e.g. “What metrics would you track to determine if Google News is successful?”
- Strategy, e.g. โWhich company should Facebook acquire?โ or โIf you were the VP of Windows, what would be your strategy to increase market shareโ?
- Analytical questions, e.g. “How much incremental storage does YouTube need every year?”
- Technical questions, e.g. โExplain to me how Twitter/Google/FB/WhatsApp/DNS/etc is architectedโ
- Behavioral questions, e.g. โTell me about a project that youโre very proud aboutโ or โtell me about your biggest failureโ or โtell me about how you resolved a conflictโ
For more information about the types of questions, you can take a look at the following resources:
- Official PM interview prep guides from:
- Lewis Lin‘s lists with PM interview questions for:
- PM interview guides from Exponent for:
- PM interview prep guides from IgotAnOffer.com for:
- How to Interview At Amazon by David Anderson (Bar Raiser)
Lewis Lin has created detailed study guides, explaining what items to study each day, based on your target companies:
- 30-Day Google PM Study Guide
- 30-Day Facebook PM Study Guide
- 36-Day Amazon PM Study Guide
- 2-week PM Interview Preparation Plan
I also recommend the following PM interview preparation books:
- Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews by Lewis Lin
- The Product Manager Interview: 167 Actual Questions and Answers by Lewis Lin
- Interview Math: Over 60 Problems and Solutions for Quant Case Interview Questions by Lewis Lin
- Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology by Gayle Laakmann McDowell and Jackie Bavaro
- The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen
Finally, if you prefer the structure of an online preparation class, then I recommend the PM interview preparation classes from:
Product Design (aka Product Sense) Questions
This is by far the most important question for Product Manager interviews. Most candidates are rejected, because they did not perform well in this question. Fortunately, it is also the most standardized one.
Question types
- What is your favorite (online/non-tech/household/Google/Facebook/etc) product? How would you improve it?
- How would you design a <X> for <Y>, e.g. an alarm clock for the blind, a fridge for blind people. etc?
- How would you improve <existing product>, e.g. Google Maps, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn Search, etc?
- How would you design an app for <X>, e.g. museum visitors, birthday planning, etc?
Methodology
All the questions shown above are answered using exactly the same format. The approach below is a modified version of the CIRCLES method that was created by Lewis Lin.
The goal of this approach is to design a product that:
- solves the most important problem
- for the most important use case
- for the most important persona
- that will lead to the optimization of the most important business goal
As part of our answer, we want to list some options for goals/personas/use cases/problems/solutions and prioritize them in order to find the most important one.
Step 1: Ask clarification questions
Let’s say that the interview question is something vague like “improve a pen“.
As part of the first step, we want to ask the interviewer, if he/she has any preferences regarding the “5 Ws and 1H” questions:
- What is it?
- Who is it for?
- Why do they need it?
- When do they need it?
- Where do they want to use it?
- How does it work?
- Are there any constraints in our solution (e.g. money or time)?
In our example, we might ask the interviewer “who will use the pen?” and they might respond that this is a “pen for astronauts” or a “pen for toddlers“. These are very important details that will change our approach drastically.
In many cases, the interviewer might respond that it’s up to us to decide how we want to approach the problem, i.e. there are no constraints from his/her side.
Step 2: Provide the structure for the answer
In this step we tell the interviewer that “In order to solve the problem I’d like to setup a business goal, talk about users of the product, their use cases, the problems with the existing solutions and then I’ll brainstorm potential solutions. Does this seem ok with you?”. If there is a whiteboard, we can also write the following list:
- Goal
- Users
- Use cases
- Problems
- Solutions
The interviewer will now understand that we have a structure and verify that the approach looks good.
Step 3: Establish a business goal
This is an extremely important step that is overlooked by most candidates. We cannot build a good solution for anything, if we don’t know what we are trying to improve.
Some options for the business goal:
- Increase user engagement
- Increase number of users
- Increase revenues
- Improve the user experience
- Increase retention
You can enumerate some of the potential goals and ask the interviewer if he/she has a specific goal in mind. If they don’t they you can pick one of the above and justify your choice. Typically, the “easiest” one to select is user engagement.
Step 4: Create a list of 3-5 user personas and select your most important persona
In this step you write down a list of 3-5 user personas that can potentially use the product. You explain to the interviewer that each persona is and how they use the product. For example:
- Travelers
- Elderly people
- Students
- Content creators
- Business owners
- Parents
After giving some details about each persona, you can ask your interviewer if he/she has a preference on the target. If not, then you identify your most important persona and explain why you are focusing on that persona.
Some sample reasons to select a specific persona:
- They are the majority of the users
- They are not served well by the current version of the product
- All other personas are served well by competitive products
IMPORTANT: One thing to note here is that even if the interviewer specified a persona, when he asked the question, e.g. “design an alarm clock for blind people” you should still create a list of the secondary users for that item. For example, there might be caretakers (for blind people), teachers/parents (for children), etc. After enumerating them, you should pick the main persona that was initially identified by the interviewer as your main target. However, this way you showed your understanding about other secondary users of the product.
Step 5: Create a list of 3-5 use cases and select the most important one
Now it’s time to think how your target persona will use the product. Let’s say that you are designing a “bookcase for toddlers”. Some potential use cases include:
- Adding a book
- Removing a book
- Searching for a book
- Storing a toy
- Retrieving a toy
If you are designing an “alarm clock for the blind”, then some use cases include:
- Setup an alarm
- Snooze the alarm
- Stop the alarm
- Check the time
- Change the time
Sometimes, depending on the problem, your solution should address all use cases. Typically, if the question was “Design XYZ”, then you probably need to address everything. If the question was “Improve ABC”, then you prioritize one use case to improve. You can also ask the interviewer if he/she wants you to focus on one use case or to find a solution for all of them.
Step 6: Write down problems with the existing solutions
This is a bit of a brainstorming exercise that will help you when you identify the solutions in the next step. Think about the most important problems that your target persona has with the current product. For example (depending on the problem):
- Blind people cannot
- Locate the buttons
- Check the display
- Older people cannot easily
- use the latest technology
- walk long distances
- move heavy equipment
Step 7: Brainstorm 3 solutions, explain tradeoffs and recommend one
Now it’s time to show your creativity. Think about the problems that your users are facing, as well as your business goal. How can you use the problem and optimize your goal? The is to be as creative as possible.
Some creative ideas for the “alarm clock for blind people” might include:
- Wrist band that has voice recognition and vibrates to wake up user
- Ear piece that is modified as an alarm clock
- Modification to the bed
- IoT device with Alexa/Google Assistant integration
After you list your creative ideas, then you should explain the tradeoffs (advantages, disadvantages) of each approach and select one solution as the recommended one.
IMPORTANT: It is super helpful to have some “backup” creative ideas that work with multiple problems, in case you cannot think of something exciting during the interview. The following ideas might be helpful:
- IoT device (Internet of Things)
- Machine Learning
- Augmented/Virtual Reality
Quick note regarding the “Favorite Product” question
Sometimes the interviewer will ask a “Favorite Product” question, followed by the “Product Design” question. This is structured as follows:
- What is your favorite (online/non-tech/household/Google/Facebook/etc) product? How would you improve it?
The second part of the question (“How would you improve it”) is explained in the above steps. One way to answer the first part (“What is your favorite product?”) is to format your answer using the following structure:
- I evaluate products based on 3 criteria (pick 3 criteria, examples shown below):
- Usefulness
- Innovation
- Ease of use
- Product <X> is my favorite product, because it excels in all 3 categories.
- I find it very useful, because…
- It is very innovative, because…
- It is really easy to use, because…
Additional resources
- Introduction to CIRCLES Methodโข Product Design Framework (document, video) by Lewis Lin
- Books by Lewis Lin
- Teng Lu’s answers in Quora: Teng Lu has answered a variety of PM questions in Quora. Search for the ones that include “design”, “redesign” or “improve”
- Exponent PM interview prep classes:
- Product lessons by Linda Zhang: “What’s your favorite product?”. A simple question reveals a lot
- IGotAnOffer.com
Metrics (aka Product Execution) Questions
Question types
- Success questions: What metrics would you track to determine if <feature/design/product> is successful?
- Change questions: Engagement/Usage/Revenue for <product> is down by X%? What do you do?
- Prioritization questions: What features would you prioritize for <product>? (e.g. Facebook Messenger)
Metrics framework
In order to answer all the questions in this section, you will need to use a framework that describes the metrics for a product, such as:
- AARM (document, video)
- Acquisition: How many customers sign up for the product
- Activation: How many users have done at least one simple action (E.g. logged in)
- Retention: How many users have used the products multiple times
- Monetization: How many users have paid for the product
Methodology
- Success questions: What metrics would you track to determine if <feature/design/product> is successful?
- Determine business goal (i.e. which part of AARM we are optimizing for)
- Brainstorm what actions a user can do with this product that will impact the business goal, e.g. create a post, send a message, upload a picture, etc)
- Associate metrics with the above actions, e.g. # users, # posts, # messages, etc
- Evaluate the metrics and select the most important one
- Example: What metrics would you use to determine success for the Facebook Newsfeed?
- Change questions: Engagement/Usage/Revenue for <product> is down by X%? What do you do?
- Understand the exact metric, e.g. was the drop within the last 30 days or 5 days? Was it worldwide or in one country? Was it in all operating systems?
- Do a Root Cause Analysis to identify the causes
- Summarize your findings
- Example: YouTube traffic went down 5% โ how would you report this issue to the executive team?
- Prioritization questions: What features would you prioritize for <product>?
- Determine business goal (AARM metrics)
- Create prioritization criteria, e.g.
- Impact, based on our business goal (e.g. # expected users, revenues, etc)
- Customer satisfaction
- Ease of implementation (easy, medium, hard)
- Evaluate all features based on above criteria and provide overall prioritized score
- Example: You are a product manager for Facebook Groups. Can you talk through your prioritization process?
Additional resources
- Books by Lewis Lin
- Teng Lu’s answers in Quora: Teng Lu has answered a variety of PM questions in Quora. Search for the ones that include “metric” or “success”
- Exponent PM interview prep classes:
- Product Lessons by Linda Zhang: What to do when your metrics dip. A Step by Step framework to solve data mysteries
- IGotAnOffer.com
- The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen
Strategy Questions
Question types
The range of questions in this area in tremendous, which makes it very different to prepare for. I believe that this set of questions is the toughest of all, since it is very easy to get a question that haven’t prepared any frameworks for.
Some sample questions:
- CEO: You are the CEO of <company>. What would you do to <X>, e.g. improve revenues by 50%
- Acquisition: Should <company A> acquire <company B>, e.g. should Google buy Ebay?
- Market entry: Should <company A> enter <new business>, e.g. should Google create is own cell phone?
- Implications: What are the implications of <technology> , e.g. Machine Learning, AR/VR, IoT, etc
Methodology
- CEO questions
- Ask clarification questions to understand the problem
- Determine business goal (using the AARM metrics that were discussed above)
- Create the customer journey
- For each step in the customer journey, think about the levers that change the final output
- Brainstorm solutions by thinking about how to modify these levers
- Discuss tradeoffs between each solution
- Select optimal solution
- Example: How would you turn Facebook events around?
- Acquisition questions
- Ask clarification questions to understand the problem
- Determine business goal (using the AARM metrics that were discussed above)
- Create a SWOT analysis of the target company
- Think about how:
- Your company is making money
- The target company is making money
- Potential synergies
- Discuss how the competition will be affected
- Create a list of tradeoffs (pros, cons) for the acquisition
- Provide final recommendation
- Market entry questions
- This about the 4 Cs:
- Company
- Competitors
- Collaborators
- Customers
- Also, think about Porter’s 5 forces
- This about the 4 Cs:
- Implication questions
- Talk about the implications in the PESTEL areas:
- Political
- Economic
- Social
- Technological
- Environmental
- Legal
- Talk about the implications in the PESTEL areas:
Additional resources
- Books by Lewis Lin
- Teng Lu’s answers in Quora: Teng Lu has answered a variety of PM questions in Quora. Search for the questions related to strategy
- Exponent PM interview prep classes:
- IGotAnOffer.com
Analytical Questions
I have written a detailed analysis on these questions, including sample questions, interview preparation guidance and their evaluation criteria at my post “How to Prepare for Technical Program Manager Interviews” (section titled “Analytical Ability”)
Additional resources
- Exponent PM interview prep classes:
Technical Questions
Before starting to prepare for technical questions, you should check if your target companies ask these types of questions. For example, Facebook and Amazon do not have technical interviews for Product Managers. However, Google and Microsoft do. Also, Amazon does have technical interviews for “Product Manager – Technical” (PM-T) positions.
The goal of the technical interviews is to evaluate whether an interviewee can actively participate in technical discussions with Software Engineers. PMs do not need to write code in their jobs, so there are no coding questions during the PM interviews.
Technical explanation questions
The most popular type of question during a PM technical interview is a technical explanation, e.g.
- What happens when you type โwww.google.comโ in your browser?
- What is the CAP theorem?
- How does a search engine work?
In order to avoid duplicating information that already exists elsewhere, I would like to recommend the following great resources that will help you prepare:
- How to Prepare for Googleโs Product Management Technical round When You Are Not Technical by Divya Sharkar
- Technical PM Questions by Exponent (paid class)
- How to crack technical questions in PM interviews by IGotAnOffer
System Design questions
Another type of question is a System Design question, e.g. How would you design Twitter/Facebook/Uber/Skype/etc.
In order to answer these questions, you can look at my post “How to Prepare for Software Engineering Interviews” (section “System Design questions“).
Behavioral Questions
I have written a detailed analysis on these questions, including sample questions, interview preparation guidance and their evaluation criteria at my post “How to Prepare for Technical Program Manager Interviews“. You can take a look at the following sections:
Mock Interviews
After going through all the materials above and getting ready to start the interview process, it is always helpful to get some feedback in a low-stress environment. Mock interviews help you test your knowledge and get feedback from another person.
Here is how you can find interviewers for mock interviews:
- PM Interview practice community by Lewis Lin (free): Slack channel, where you can directly connect with other peers, who are studying for PM interviews
- Pramp.com (free): This website connects you with other peers, who are also studying for interviews, so that you can all learn together
- ThePmInterview (free): This site presents you with random questions and has a timer so that you can practice your answer. It is a great way to practice General, Behavioral and Estimation questions (you can select them using the filter on the right side of the screen), but there is no feedback for your answers
- Exponent: This site has 3 options for mock interviews:
- Peer interviews (1 free, rest are paid): Every day at 6pm PST, you can be matched with another person doing PM interviews, so that you can practice together
- Top PM Interview questions (free): This is a list of the top PM interview questions that are asked by top companies. You can see how other peers answer these questions or you can answer them yourself and get feedback
- Mock interviews (paid): You can select mock interviews from a list of experienced Product Managers in the top tech companies
- IGotAnOffer (paid): This website will match you with experienced PM interviewers, who have experience from top high-tech companies
- Use your network: You can talk to other developers that you know (either from your own company, via LinkedIn, etc) and ask them to do a mock interview for you
Salary negotiations after a job offer
Did you get a job offer and you want to maximize the compensation that you are being offered? If so, then you have 2 main ways:
- Ask the help of a professional
- Levels.fyi negotiation services: Chat with former tech recruiters whoโll guide you on exactly what to say to get you a higher offer
- Do It Yourself (DIY)
- Levels.fyi: Find the salary band for your level in any tech company
- 71 Brilliant Salary Negotiation Email Samples by Lewis Lin (book): Learn how to negotiate your salary with easy-to-use emal samples and phone scripts
