Behavioral Interview Preparation for Product Managers
All companies will ask some form of behavioral questions in any interview, whether for marketing, product or even engineering. The interviewer asks these questions to gauge your fit for the role through your past experiences.
For Product Managers they are looking to answer a few questions, “Can you lead a team with your vision?”, “Can you deal with difficult situations?” and “Would I enjoy working with you?”
Your Story
Know your story — really well. This is your elevator pitch which you should be able to talk about at any time. There are two distinct times you will give your story in the interview process. To the recruiter and then to the interviewers.
For the recruiter
Recruiters are trying to make sure that you are a good fit for the role before they push you to the next round. They are looking at the job description and the team you will be joining as baselines.
I like to tailor my story based on the job description. For example if the job description mentions responsibilities as “Understand customer needs and gather product requirements” then I would explicitly highlight something in my past work which brings this out. Add the examples in your story and show the recruiter how it makes you the right fit for this role.
For Interviewers
Almost all interviewers will ask you for some part of your background. They are certainly not looking for your resume to be read out to them, so the key here is to tell them a story. Depending on what story you are trying to tell, use the pieces of your career to weave the story together.
What I like to do is go through my career chronologically, starting from undergrad and driving a common theme across my experiences. For example: being fascinated with solving user problems with technology solutions. Finally, I pull it together with how my experiences bring me to this company and make it a great place for my next move.
A word of advice about your story — keep it short. About 1.5–2 min is great. Don’t go into each thing you did at your previous companies. The interviewers basically are looking for what your background is and what set of experiences you bring to the company. This is your best chance to show off achievements that you think are relevant to the job.
Maybe include something that is common to your background. Did the interviewer grow up in the same location/ go to the same school? Mention that.
Another tip I got from a friend is when asked for your story during an interview, ask the interviewer where they would like you to start. Its a simple question, but it allows you to gauge where the interviewer would like you to focus or if they do not have too much time and just want a 30 sec overview. Doing this can save you from annoying an interviewer who wants to get a lot of questions accomplished and is not looking to hear your 5 min life story.
Tell me about..
These are a few common sets of questions that you can be asked in interviews:
- a time you used data to drive a decision
- a time you managed a conflict with a co-worker
- how you managed a conflict of goals between you and a co-worker
- a failure (and what you learned from it)
- a success (and why its a success for you)
Choosing the story
Definitely think about an answer to these questions before the interview. These are trivial questions which have a high probability of being asked if not directly, in a similar form.
Pick a story from your past which really addresses the question asked. When trying to show off a positive story, its common to unknowingly tell a story that may deviate from the question.
Cracking the PM interview suggests creating a matrix where you write down an incident for your last 3 jobs (or projects) which addresses each of the questions above.
Preparing the story
The purpose of these questions are as much to get an idea of your experience as it is to test your ability to communicate clearly. Practicing your answers and making sure your story has a logical flow is critical to clear delivery.
I think STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is a great framework which allows the interviewer to know exactly what the problem was, how you fixed it and what the impact was. It forces you to be structured, preventing you from jumping around different parts in the story.
Practice with a friend or if you don’t have friends, go to Stellar Peers. This is definitely something you can prepare for and get constructive feedback from others on your clarity and delivery.
I’ve mentioned some tips that helped me answer these questions here.
This has been the focus of my behavioral interview preparations. Let me know if there has been something else that you have been preparing for your PM interviews or otherwise.
