Day 4:
Interview Preparation And Resume Building
Various types of questions asked in product management interviews are:
1. Basic Interview Questions
2. Product design questions
3. Strategy questions
4. Guesstimate questions
5. Behavioural questions
6. Technical questions
7. Analytical questions
It’s not necessary that all of these be asked as separate questions. It’s common to see interviewers
combine multiple of these into one problem statement.
Keep in mind that every case question asked in a PM interview is typically part of a product manager’s
day-to-day responsibilities. Consider:
Estimations: The PM provides a forecast to the supply chain manager so that the supply team can
buy an appropriate number of servers for a new cloud service.
Product Design: The PM provides not only UX feedback but also product vision for the UX team,
which executes that vision and feedback.
Metrics: The PM is the spokesperson for the product. They need to explain and investigate
changes in business performance to executives.
Go-to-market strategy: The PM is the quarterback of the launch team, which can include
marketing, sales, operations, support, and legal. The launch team expects the PM to bring
leadership and detailed product knowledge.
Technical: Engineers build the product; the PM provides the product vision, roadmap, and
prioritized backlog. Engineers are less likely to consent to a PM’s vision if the PM is not confident
in the technical details.
1.0 Basic Interview Preparation
1. Introduce Yourself- Focus should be on Who you are and who you are best at. And put excess
effort into your achievements.
2. Why should we hire you?- Stress on leadership and your uniqueness among other people. You
should know your USP that other people don’t possess. Like for me it is communication,
negotiation, and leadership skills. I enjoy leading the team and people listen to me.
3. What's your greatest weakness?- You can tell clearly, that it should be something silly you do but
stress that you are putting efforts to improve it.
4. Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it.- Share your experience.
5. Why do you want to work here?- Get to know about the company before the interview, its
products, and the domains in which it works.
6. Can you discuss a situation where you had to make a difficult decision at work? - Will depend on
Individual experiences. If you don’t remind one make one.
2.0 Product Design Preparation
Also known as product sense questions, they are very often asked in product interviews.
Typical examples of product design questions are:
1. How would you improve X product?
2. Design an app for renting bicycles for tourists.
3. How would you design a refrigerator for blind people?
4. Facebook wants to enter the travel domain; what would their product look like?
5. Design a product that helps people become healthier.
6. How would you improve Pinterest?
One of the most popular frameworks used for solving these questions is the CIRCLES framework.
Comprehend the Situation
If you don’t know about the product the interviewer is asking for, speak up. It’s not fair for you to discuss a
product you don’t know. You’re entitled to ask the interviewer clarifying questions.
If the interviewer refuses to answer your clarifying questions, make an assumption based on what you know.
Then, give the interviewer an opportunity to correct you, in the event he thinks differently about whom it is
for or how the product works.
What is it?
Who is it for?
Why do they need it?
How does it work?
What are the business objectives?
Identify Customers
Start by listing potential customer personas.
Time is limited, so choose one persona to focus on. Focus on and empathize with a single customer segment
or persona. By putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, you will more likely design a solution that resolves
their specific needs.
The persona should have the following data points:
1. User Demographics ( Name, Age, Occupation, Location )
2. User Behaviors
3. User Needs & Goals
Report the Customer’s Needs
The third step of the CIRCLES MethodTM is reporting the customer’s needs. You can call it user needs,
user requirements, or use cases. the use-case format is a popular way to capture user needs.
A user story conveys what the end user wants to do in normal everyday language. User stories have
become popular because they are concise, complete, and casual. In a single sentence, we know the
user, the user’s needs, and the intended benefit.
As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>
Examples of User stories:
1. As a traveller, I want to compare the prices of different airlines so that I can choose the most cost-
effective option for my trip.
2. As a user, I want to set daily step goals so that I can track my activity and stay motivated to reach my
fitness targets.
3. As a project manager, I want to assign tasks to team members so that we can track progress and ensure
accountability.
Cut through Prioritization
The prioritization step mimics the real-world development process. You’ll have a big backlog of use cases, but
you’re limited by time, money, and labour. Which one do you do first? In the interview, you don’t have time to
discuss all use cases. So you’ll have to pick one use case.
When you make your choice, it’s an opportunity to showcase your ability to prioritize, assess tradeoffs, and
make decisions.
You can use RICE or any other framework, or can also prioritize with a supporting statement; it’s up to you.
List the solutions
Most candidates freeze when they have a design problem without a solution on the tip of their tongue.
Brainstorming frameworks can help overcome designer’s blocks.
List down all the solutions that come to mind, along with a short description.
Be creative. As part of the interview, most employers are evaluating your creativity or product vision. They’re
looking for product managers who can see future trends, both in technology and customer behaviour.
Don’t just copy features from other products; be creative and think outside of the box. They expect product
managers to plot and execute a plan that exploits that trend for the company’s benefit.
At least three ideas Great innovators know that your first idea is rarely the best. Why? Innovation is an
iterative process. As you learn more about customer needs and competitive products, your proposed
solutions will be more precise and focused. You’ll avoid ideas that have failed in the marketplace.
At the interview, brainstorm at least three ideas. It’s hard, but it’ll be worth it. You’ll find that idea number 2 or
3 will usually be the best of the bunch.
Also, it will keep you from being defensive during the interview. The interviewer will critique your idea. If you
have only one idea, you’ll take it personally. If you have multiple ideas, you’ll be more comfortable because
you’ll have other solutions to prove your self-worth.
Evaluate trade-offs
A pro-and-cons list is a good way to do this.
By evaluating the tradeoffs of each solution, you come across as thoughtful and analytical. You’ll also be
perceived as objective.
You’ll also protect yourself from being defensive. If you’ve taken the initiative to critique your own solutions,
the interviewer has fewer things to criticize. You’ll also mentally prepare yourself for criticism by critiquing
yourself.
A cherry on top would also be adding Pitfalls and Mitigation.
Summarize your recommendation
Summarize with this three-step approach:
1. Tell the interviewer which product or feature you’d recommend.
2. Recap on what it is and why it’s beneficial to the user and/or company.
3. Explain why you preferred this solution over others.
Note that the scope of a product design question can vary a lot. Sometimes you may be designing a new
product. Other times, you may be talking about a small feature in a bigger product. Other times, you may
even be talking about the go-to-market (GTM) strategy of a product. In all these cases, you can still identify
the target user, their needs, and what does (or doesn't) fulfil those needs.
2.3 Combined Approach
In this combined approach, we’ll combine both the previous sections and suggest a new approach. In
the interview, it doesn’t matter if you’re using any very famous framework; you just have to show that
you’re analytical, user-centric, and structured.
2.4 What’s your Favorite Product?
Yeah, this is a Product Design Question :)
Common variants of “What’s your favourite product?”
Some interviewers will add conditions to avoid canned answers, such as:
“What's your favourite Google product?” (in a Google interview)
“What's your favourite non-tech product?”
“What's your favourite app?”
“What are your three favourite products?”
“What's a product you hate that others love?”
“What's a product that you think is interesting but hasn't reached its full potential?”
So when they ask, “What’s your favourite product and why?” they’re trying to
figure out:
If you know about product design,
If you can give good feedback,
If you know a lot about a specific product
3.0 Product Strategy Preparation
A company might mistakenly say, "Our strategy is to increase revenue by
20%." Increasing revenue is a goal, not a strategy. There could be
multiple ways to increase revenue—such as entering a new market
segment or doubling down on converting freemium to paid customers.
How should the goal be achieved?- it's what strategy is
Defining both the goal and the strategy: "Our strategy is to increase
revenue by 20% by expanding into two underserved markets, Mexico
and Brazil."
Strategy questions are mostly asked in senior roles. However, having a good
understanding on this front can get you brownie points as a beginner candidate as
well.
Sample questions
What change or step would you implement if you were the CEO of Google?
4.0 Guesstimate Preparation
Some general data you should know about while solving guesstimates
61+
10%
0-18
Forest
40% 20%
AGE %
19-60 Water
50% 5%
AGE % Agriculture
50%
Pastures
10%
Civilization
Others
10%
5%
Step 1: Understand the problem statement
Start with the problem itself. Understand it thoroughly, and ask clarifying questions if anything is
unclear.
For example, if the interviewer asks, "Estimate the revenue of PVR," you need to clarify what they expect
in the answer.
1. Begin by confirming whether you’re discussing the PVR movie theatre to ensure you’re both on
the same page.
2. Ask about the geography—are we talking about India as a whole or a specific area?
3. Clarify the duration—are we estimating annual, monthly, or daily revenue?
4. Also, confirm whether the estimation should include both food and ticket sales.
Take your time to build your approach, and don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for a moment to think
before you start. Avoid overwhelming them with numbers right away.
Step 2: Build your approach
Step 3: Start Estimating
Yeah, you heard and read it correctly! I know the last two sections are empty.
Start learning guesstimates by watching a few example problems and then start
with your own estimations.
Take a blank sheet and solve guesstimates using the provided resources.
You’ll learn more by doing it directly rather than watching hours of tutorials.
5.0 Behavioral Preparation
Product management is a leadership role where you must guide your team to success without direct
authority over them. To evaluate a candidate’s leadership qualities, interviewers often rely on
behavioral questions.
Some common behavioral questions in product management interviews include:
Can you describe a challenge you faced with a co-worker and how you handled it?
What has been your proudest moment as a product manager?
How did you resolve a conflict between different groups?
Why do you want to join this company?
How do you communicate with engineers?
What is STAR?
Situation: Set the scene and give the necessary details of your example.
Task: Describe what your responsibility was in that situation.
Action: Explain exactly what steps you took to address it.
Result: Share what outcomes your actions achieved.
To effectively use the STAR method in interviews, follow these steps:
1. Situation: Begin by describing the situation clearly and briefly. Focus only on the relevant details
to set the context for your story. For example, if asked about a time you achieved a difficult goal,
you might say: "In my previous digital marketing role, my company decided to focus on growing
our email list aggressively."
2. Task: Explain your specific role or responsibility in that situation. This sets up the actions you’ll
describe next. For instance: "As the email marketing manager, my goal was to increase our email
list by 50% in one quarter."
3. Action: Describe the steps you took to address the task. Be specific about what you did, how you
did it, and any tools or teams involved. For example: "I added content upgrades to old blog posts
to encourage subscriptions and organized a webinar requiring an email address to register."
4. Result: Conclude by sharing the outcome of your actions. Quantify your success and highlight any
long-term impacts. For instance: "As a result, our subscriber list grew from 25,000 to 40,000 in
three months, surpassing our goal by 20%. Webinars are now a regular strategy for maintaining
our list."
Always ensure the result is positive or that you learned something valuable, even if the situation didn’t
go perfectly.
Example- Tell Me About a Conflict You’ve Faced at Work
Analytical Preparation
Every initiative you take, every improvement you suggest, and every feature
request you make has to be backed by strong customer insights and data.
Root-cause analysis questions are also categorized as analytical questions.
You need to have a strong command of how to interpret customer behaviour and
convert vast amounts of data into insights.
ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS (RCA)
What interviewers are looking for
Your ultimate goal in working through RCA questions is to identify the root cause of the problem, but
your interviewer will care most about your approach.
RCA questions are different from product design, strategy, and analytical questions in that they do
have a correct answer, but a logical and thoughtful approach to problem-solving can land you a "strong
hire" recommendation even if you don’t arrive at the exact right solution. Be sure to demonstrate your
ability to:
Make sense of a situation given limited data
Generate and continually refine reasonable hypotheses
Gather information iteratively
Identify a root cause
Benefits and goals of root cause analysis
The first goal of root cause analysis is to discover the root cause of a problem or event. The second
goal is to fully understand how to fix, compensate, or learn from any underlying issues within the root
cause. The third goal is to apply what we learn from this analysis to systematically prevent future
issues or to repeat successes. Analysis is only as good as what we do with that analysis, so the third
goal of RCA is important. We can use RCA to also modify core process and system issues in a way that
prevents future problems. Instead of just treating the symptoms of a football player’s concussion, for
example, root cause analysis might suggest wearing a helmet to reduce the risk of future concussions.
Treating the individual symptoms may feel productive. Solving a large number of problems looks like
something is getting done. But if we don’t actually diagnose the real root cause of a problem, we’ll
likely have the same exact problem over and over. Instead of a news editor just fixing every single
omitted Oxford comma, she will prevent further issues by training her writers to use commas properly
in all future assignments.
How do we solve this?
Before stepping into how to solve RCA question, first I want you to go through these 2 references and
know more about it:
I’m pretty sure after going through the above 2 references, you must have thought, what’s new in it ? I
can easily do it.
Step 1: UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM CLEARLY
This is the most important part of the question and it all depends upon whether you are able to
understand the problem by asking relevant questions.
1. Understand the Metric Definition: Seek clarification on the metric being used. Understand what it
signifies. Start by breaking down the problem into keywords and understanding their meanings.
For example, Ola is experiencing a 25% decrease in daily ride bookings. Ask what “daily ride
bookings” and “decrease” mean.
2. Understand the Product Clearly: If you don’t know about the app, do ask about which specific
product are talking about; you don’t want to complete the RCA on Uber (ride-hailing platform),
when originally the problem was for UberEats.
3. Understand how metrics are calculated and its formulas (if there are any).
Step 2: Draw the rough User Journey (Optional)
Drawing the user journey will help you ask better questions and understand the situation in a better
way.
Step 3: Gather Data to eliminate potential causes.
Step 3.1: Gathering Data
Delve into the nature of the drop. Is it sudden, gradual, seasonal, or recurrent? & Determine the
duration of the decline. u If it’s a sudden change, it cannot be a behavioural reason, as it requires time
to see the effect
Whether the tool/system we’re using to calculate the Metric has undergone any changes
Understand the other metrics related to the problem: Analyze whether it’s also affected or not, and it’ll
help you narrow down potential cases. For example, if Watchtime on YouTube is decreasing, then is the
number of videos watched also decreasing?
Slicing the Data
1. Traffic: Break down the traffic by source (e.g., organic search, paid ads, direct, referral). This helps
to see if the issue is isolated to a particular source.
2. Geography: Compare performance metrics across different geographical locations. Look for
regions with significant deviations from the norm.
3. Types of Devices/Platforms: by device type (e.g., desktop, mobile, tablet). Further slice the data by
operating systems (iOS, Android, and Windows) and browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox).
Compatibility issues can often be isolated this way.
4. Customer Segments: Understanding how different personas are affected can provide insights into
the problem.
Step 3.2: Internal Factors
These are the reasons within the company’s control and directly influenced by the company’s actions.
Any change in Metric Tracking metric calculation or the tool being used for metric analysis
New Products and Features: Often, the launch of new features and products can impact certain
product metrics. This could result from a bug, a UI/UX issue, or changes in user experience due to
additions or deletions in the user flow.
Product cannibalization is another reason that often shifts metrics, where introducing something new to
the product might cause a decline in certain metrics for the older version. This can happen intentionally
or unintentionally.
Glitches and Bugs: A large number of bug reports, app crashes, or support tickets can directly assist us
in identifying the cause of declining metrics.
Some more potential reasons:
Change in Pricing Model/Business Strategy.
Change in Salary of employees.
Step 3.3: External Factors
These are reasons outside the company’s control or not directly controlled by the company.
Competitors: If your competitor launches a new product or service or makes announcements
about changes or features, it could cause some metrics to fall. For example, if Instagram
experienced a dip in its DAUs and MAUs in 2017, it might be due to the launch of TikTok.
External Websites: This can be another issue impacting major metrics as websites like Google and
Facebook act as discovery platforms for many products and services, directly affecting your
website or app. For example, if you’re a Product Manager at a News Media Company and notice a
sudden drop in active users, it might be because people can’t find you on Google or other external
sources, impacting your metrics.
Change in Market Trends: This can be understood through examples. During the initial days of
TikTok, Instagram might have experienced a drop in its daily active user base as the trend shifted
towards short-form video content. Similarly, YouTube could have faced similar drop-offs. Another
example could be seen with the rise in remote jobs affecting websites and apps related to
coworking office spaces.
Demographics: It is equally important to figure out whether the affected metric is due to a
demographic shift. Demographic factors can include gender, age, marital status, family size,
occupation, education level, language, income, ownership, nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and
location. Digging deeper into demographics can help find the root cause effectively.
Seasonality: This is very common and easy to understand, as many products and services are in
higher demand during certain periods or seasons, with a gradual shift in the off-season. For
example, a shake-selling company can expect to see a drop in daily transactions during winter
months, and a similar trend can be observed for an air conditioner-selling company.
Any new government rules and regulations
Are there any natural disasters occurring?
Any change in the economy of a country affects inflation, which directly affects the buying
capacity of users.
Step 3.4: Conclude your hypothesis
Now that you have enough data points, its time to conclude your hypothesis and validate with the
interviewer.
Highlight any patterns, correlations, or anomalies observed in the data that directly point to the
root cause.
Present your hypothesis to the interviewer and explain your reasoning. Use the evidence you have
prepared to validate your hypothesis.
You can also present multiple observations.
Engage the interviewer in a discussion to confirm that they agree with your hypothesis
Resume Building
