Never Ending Interviews
Nerve-wracking Product Manager Interviews
After gaining experience in product management, I decided to gain exposure to user-based products where I will be responsible for managing the monetization of users on the platform and ensuring customer satisfaction.
I interviewed and did receive offers from a few startups. I ended up joining one role but life had something else planned for me and my visa got denied so I could not continue working.
I came back on the interviewing track and this time I took a different approach by not interviewing for the job but I interviewed product managers from startups and big companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to know their checklist and skills they assess during the product manager interview.
I did this because I wanted to solve the problem that I faced during my interview process. There was no standard process in startups to hire product managers. Also, startups lack training team members to assess the right skills and often team members come unprepared to interview candidates.
I connected with many product managers and thought of solving this problem by providing assistance to startups in conducting product manager interviews. So, I started a company known as SeekForte, a product manager interview practice platform that will help startups conduct a product manager interview and hire the best candidate.
Product Management is a cross-functional role so behavioral questions play a key role in understanding the personality and finding the culture fit. But there should be a checklist for each interviewer to assess the skill of candidates during the manager round, case interview, and on-site round. Every interviewer should assess candidates on one more skill such as roadmap planning, prioritization, communication, leadership, and collaboration skills.
There are many types of product managers and each role is different from another. So the assessment of skills for each role should also be different. There are different types of Product Managers company hire such as
General PM: Product Manager managing all operations of product growth and work cross-functionally to deliver values to customers.
Technical PM: Perform all functions of the General Product Manager and + remain more involved with engineers and take product development decisions. Technical Product Manager also includes an API Product Manager.
Data Analytics PM: Perform all functions like General Product Manager + get involved in performing data analysis to make accurate decisions. These product managers often use tools like Tableau, Looker, Power BI, etc.
To know more about the PM interview process and how to practice and crack interviews login SeekForte
P.S. “I’ve drafted this based on my personal experience with product management interviews.”
