Facebook RPM Program Overview: Everything You Need to Know From Application to Interview
Key Facts
What is the RPM program? It’s a rotational product manager program consisting of 3 six month rotations. Every six months you will be on a different product team, solving an entirely new product challenge!
Who is the RPM program for? The program is meant for relatively early career stage PMs. This usually takes the form of either fresh university grads or industry hires with a couple years of previous work experience. Successful industry hires have previously done everything from consulting to Teach for America so don’t let your lack of previous PM/tech experience deter you from applying!
Where is the RPM Program? The RPM Program takes place in Facebook’s Menlo Park (MPK), NYC, Seattle and London offices. My understanding is Facebook typically hires fresh university grads for the MPK office and looks for industry hires for the Seattle, New York, and London offices. However, all RPMs do their first rotation in Menlo Park regardless of their home/permanent office. Temporary relocation benefits are provided for those coming to California from somewhere else.
Applications for both university and industry hires opened on July 26, 2021. They will close promptly Friday July 30th at 5pm PST for Facebook’s Menlo Park, New York City, Seattle and on August 8th for London offices.
To get the latest official info and apply, follow the links below.
Facebook RPM Website: http://fbrpms.com
Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/fbrpm
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What does the interview process look like?
- First Round (Phone): Recruiter screen (20 minutes)
- Second Round (2 Video Calls): Product Sense Interview (45 minutes), Execution Interview (45 minutes)
- Final Round (Onsite): Product Sense Interview (45 minutes), Execution Interview (45 minutes), Leadership and Drive Interview (45 minutes)
Types of Interview
Product Sense: This interview will test if you can turn a big ambiguous problem space into a great product. It will typically be in the form of one very deep hypothetical “what would you build for x” with a series of follow-up questions to understand your thought process.
Execution: This interview will put you in the shoes of a Facebook PM and force you to evaluate different trade-offs, figure out the right metric to track, remove roadblocks for your team etc. This interview is meant to access if you can tactically get things done on a daily basis to build your product vision.
Leadership and Drive: This interview is usually comprised of 4–5 behavioral questions and is meant to help access if you can effectively lead and inspire a product team, deal with conflict, facilitate communication, etc.
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All of the above information are facts to the best of my knowledge. Now, time for the fun stuff —opinions. Before getting in that, let me tell you a bit about myself:
My name is Parth Detroja and I have been a PM at Facebook for about 4 years now. As a Facebook employee, I might be a little biased in my opinions but it’s worth noting I turned down offers from both Google and Microsoft to join Facebook.
I am also the co-author of Swipe to Unlock, which is a bestselling book on technology and business strategy in half a dozen languages. Several top companies including Google, Microsoft and Uber all recommend Swipe to Unlock as a preparatory read to all their PM interview candidates.
All opinions below are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of Facebook or the RPM Program as a whole.
Interview Prep
How do you recommend prepping for Meta interviews?
Meta is a company that is known for often asking interview questions that pertain to Meta products. So I would strongly recommend playing around with the Meta family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, Workplace) to first become familiar with our product suite.
Then I would recommend reading our product release updates and watching our annual Connect product conference and just generally researching 3rd party news publishers like TechCrunch for updates on what products Facebook Inc. might be releasing in the future. Understanding both our current and future products as well as how they fit into the greater Facebook mission is critical for all aspiring Facebook PMs.
If you are short on time or just looking for a summary of all the key company info ranging from company financials to the latest publicly known product strategy roadmap, Product Alliance provides all that and much more for all the top tech companies. Here’s a sample video:
How did you recommend preparing for PM interviews such as Facebook’s analytical thinking and product sense rounds?
I think having experienced PMs who are calibrated interviewers at their companies mock interview you is the best practice experience. These PMs can analyze how you interview and provide tons of useful tips, tricks, and advice from the perspective of an actual interviewer. If you have friends or family in the PM world who are willing to mock interview you, I would recommend practicing with questions similar to those you will get in the actual interview. If you look on sites like Glassdoor, you can find tons of previously asked Meta PM interview questions for both execution and product sense rounds.
If you don’t have experienced PMs in your network who can extensively mock interview you, I think the next best thing, or perhaps even better, is watching senior PMs from top companies be mock interviewed and then evaluated by other senior PMs to break down exactly what a 10/10 answer looks like. Here’s a sample video featuring RPM alum Stephen Song:
Many of the people I know who received Meta RPM offers have completed the Flagship Meta PM Interview Course. Having watched some of their videos myself, I was blown away by the quality of their answers (and I am not just saying that because I am friends with some of the instructors). Trust me when I say they blow Cracking the PM Interview and Decode and Conquer out of the water. Reading good answers in those books have become tables stakes. However, seeing exactly what a perfect answer looks like, from body language to whiteboarding structure and everything in between is an absolute gamechanger. What makes the Product Alliance Meta course truly a must watch, is that actual Meta PM hiring leads reveal exactly what they are taught to look for in product sense, analytic thinking and leadership and drive interviews and share the most common mistakes keeping promising candidates from securing offer letters.
At Meta, when we get trained as product interviewers, we are specifically taught that you should never issue a HIRE decision unless that candidate is someone you’d be willing to fly across the country to convince to join your team. That level of conviction leads to a pretty low offer rate so I highly recommend studying and practicing as much as possible!
FAQs
How is Facebook’s RPM Program different from APM programs?
A lot of companies have Associate Product Manager (APM) programs for new grad PMs out of undergrad. The typical APM program consists of 2 one year rotations as an associate product manager. I think a pretty big difference at Facebook is you do 3 six month rotations instead. This lets you get exposed to a lot more diverse product challenges on a faster time horizon.
Facebook’s RPM program also lets you retain a single manager across all your rotations rather than switching managers with each rotation like in most other programs. Manager continuity lets you have a single point of contact who you can work with to achieve professional growth and development goals.
Why doesn’t Facebook require a computer science background like all the other top rotational programs?
I think it’s because in many APM programs at other companies, you are more of a project manager than a Product Manager. You are given a very scoped out project and it’s your job to handle the execution. Give such, you will be doing a lot of project management for which a technical background can be really useful for more effectively conversing with engineers and estimating engineering timelines.
At Facebook, PMs are given much broader scope and have strong engineering managers who they can lean on if they lack a technical background. This means you get to spend more of your time figuring out the bigger picture product vision and business strategy! There’s a reason Facebook named it’s program RPM rather than APM. It’s because you’re not an “associate” PM. You are a full fledged PM tackling ambiguous hard problems!
Can someone with absolutely no tech background get hired as an RPM?
The short answer is yes. It’s definitely been done before. The program is looking for people with the skills to be successful (eg. product vision and leadership) rather than particular previous experience. However, I think having a strong understanding of high level technical concepts and business strategy are very useful for leading engineering and crafting product strategies that solve user needs while delivering business value. This is true for PMs at all companies.
I know “high level technical concepts and business strategy” is extremely vague and not very helpful. That’s why I teamed with two other PMs from Google and Microsoft to write the book Swipe to Unlock on the core concepts and case studies every PM should be familiar with. This book is recommended to all interviewing PMs as a preparatory read at several top companies including Google, Uber and Microsoft. You can check it out here if you’d like.
What’s the coolest thing about the RPM Program?
I think something really unique about the program is after your second rotation, you get to go on a two week long research trip around the world with the other RPMs of your start date cohort. This trip is usually comprised of three countries of your choice. Best of all, what you decide to research is entirely up to you and then you get to present the findings of your research trip to all the PMs in the company during a PM all-hands!
If you have any questions I didn’t cover, please leave them in the comments. Thanks for reading!
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