Learnings from my Product Manager interview @ Google
This article is part of a multipart series of my experiences interviewing at Google, Facebook, Airbnb and Walmart Labs. (link coming soon)
Google is probably the most challenging PM interviews in the sheer breadth of areas that are covered. Preparing for an interview at Google is a great way to prepare for other company interviews and sharpen important PM skills.
The Process
Recruiter call — Similar to any recruiter call, the recruiter would ask you about your background, recent work, why do you want to work at Google. A few ‘tell me about a time when ..’ questions may also be asked. If the recruiter already has a team in mind for you, then they would bring that up and ask if you are interested. You should ask what the next steps are, you can get a good gauge of what your next round would be.
Phone Screen — This is a 45 min video call with a PM. Would start with a quick questions about yourself (5–8 min max) It would normally be a product design questions with a blend of an estimation question or strategy question (30–35 min) Finally you get a chance to ask few questions. (3–5 min)
Onsite — This is the big day. 5 onsite interviews. 1 day. 4 PM interviews and 1 technical interview. Typically Google doesn’t give the order of the interviews or who the interviewers would be before the interview.
PM Interviews — There is no formula for what questions should be here. The PM could ask anything under the realm of Product Design, Estimation/Analytical, Product Strategy.
Technical interview — Most PMs are worried about this interview. Google is the only big tech firm that does tech interviews for PMs and since all PMs don’t come from a tech background (even those who have a tech background) they get worried about this portion. I think the hype isn’t worth it. If you ace your other interviews and do okay in your tech interview, they can ask you to retake it.
Lunch! — In between your interviews they will schedule a PM to take you to lunch. Have fun, enjoy the assortment of desserts and relax. It is not included in your interview process at all. Funnily enough, my lunch PM ended up being my next interviewer. (which is very unexpected according to my interviewer) Since we had built a good rapport during lunch I had a great interview. It was fun and a constructive discussion.
Wait for Results — This is the tough part. You’ve done all you could and now you had to wait. Your recruiter would collect feedback from your interviewers, this could take few days. Your recruiter should call you and tell you next steps. This could be anywhere from 1 day to 10 days (or more in my case).
Hiring Committee- If your interviewers pass you above a certain bar, the next step is HC (Hiring Committee). This is an committee of PMs who see your packet and decide if you get the job. Your packet contains your resume and the interviewers notes. This is the final significant stage and if you pass this, you got the job.
A caveat here is that if HC feels that one of the areas haven’t been tested enough (or you came up short on one) they could ask for another interview in that area.
A thing to note — Google (and Facebook) hire PMs as generalists. Which means that typically you aren’t hired for a particular team. After you get a yes from HC, you will have team matching to see what team you would work with.
Breakdown of each interview type:
Product Design
There are 3 broad categories of design questions:
Favorite product — Google likes this question and variations of it. Be prepared with 3 favorite products, favorite Google product, favorite non-technical product, and favorite hardware product. Prepare reasons why those are your favorite products by referencing design or product principles. Think about ways that you would improve this product as well.
Improve product —eg. How would you improve Google Maps? Clarification is key here, if they haven’t fixed a goal then you could think about driving the core goal for the product. (most of the time its engagement)
Design product X — These questions don’t have a right answer, but the important thing is to show structured thinking. Google especially likes design answers to cover a large number of areas from users -> pain points -> solutions -> prioritization -> metrics -> potential issues -> launch . Of course show structure and make sure the interviewer is on board with where you are in the process.
A big part of product design for Google is thinking big. Google likes to build products that are 10x better, not small increments. Suggest solutions which incorporate trending technology and leverage the company’s strengths.
Product Strategy
These could take few forms — Why did X enter the market Y? Why did X acquire Y? If you were the CEO of X, what would you do.
Go through different business frameworks and try to create your own framework to solve questions. I like to answer these by thinking about how does helps 1)customers/users 2)ecosystem 3)company. This encompasses most frameworks and allows you to think about it as a PM (user centric thinking).
Analytical
Thankfully Google has stopped testing analytical skills through brainteasers, which they were known for in the early years. Now, they like to test these skills through estimation, metrics and diagnose questions.
Estimation questions could either be product related (estimate storage required for Gmail) or market/situation related (estimate number of cars on highway 101 during traffic). The main objective here is to see how you can break down an ambiguous question and tackle it. Don’t worry about solving complicated arithmetic.
For metrics and diagnose questions check out my breakdown of the FB interview.
Technical interview
If you are an experienced PM, they most probably will tailor the interview to your area of expertise. Your recruiter may even ask you what area you would prefer to be interviewed in.
If you are less experienced (<5yrs) then you could expect a combination of simple algorithm/coding questions and system design questions. They don’t expect you to be able to do dynamic programming or design a search engine backend. Be comfortable writing pseudocode and thinking through edge cases.
Preparation
One thing that personally helped me was reading the How Google Works book. Interesting takeaways included their values, factors in product decision making, and traits of great PMs (Jonathan Rosenberg).
Strategy — Read https://stratechery.com . Its an amazing resource not just for interviews, but also open up your mind about the tech world. Definitely check out the latest Google I/Os and go through their product philosophy. For Google its all about how to build scalable products backed with technical insights.
Technical interview — Going through Cracking the Coding interview chapter on system design and watching videos of people solving system design questions are great resources.
To get comfortable with coding, I just started coding for fun. I solved many questions here https://projecteuler.net/ which really taught me true meaning of optimizing code. In hindsight, I felt it was an overkill compared to the level of question I was asked. Check out beginner coding questions on Leetcode and the Cracking PM interview.
I’ve put together more resources in my main piece (link soon)
Other Tips
- Google offers a interview prep session with current PMs if you have proceeded past the video screen round. Your recruiter may tell you about this, or you could ask for it to be scheduled. Though I am not sure if everyone has access to this.
- In my experience, I have felt Google is slow in their process. If you have a few interviews lined up then you may want to have Google first. It gets difficult if you have an offer in hand and are waiting for Google to get back to you with your results. Not a great situation to be in.
- Reach out to current PMs, they will be more inclined to help you out if you say you have an interview coming up. They can give you feedback on your approach to questions and what to focus on.
Conclusion
In the end, I didn’t make it. After onsite interviews and then some, I got a no from HC. Preparing and interviewing at Google was extremely fun. I loved practicing and going through all of my favorite Google products and learning a lot about Google. I admit, I was terrified of interviewing at Google and thought that interviewers were looking for the next Sundar Pichai, but in reality, its just a discussion with a peer. The questions are interesting and they push you at times to see how creative you can get.
A big reason for writing this is so that I can remember the learnings from my process, so that next time I won’t have to spend as much time gathering the knowledge. Hopefully it helps a few as well.
