How to Do Well in Product Manager Job Interviews

One of the hardest job interviews is the product manager job interview. There are no two job interviews that are the same. While it may seem very difficult to prepare for PM job interviews, I think the preparation is actually quite easy.

Types of interview questions

Before I get into how I think one should prepare for job interviews, let’s briefly go over the four types of interview questions that are commonly asked during product manager interviews:

1. Tell me about yourself

This is usually an opening question that helps the interviewer get to know you better. Many people still struggle with answering this question and talking about themselves. We’ll talk about how we can answer these questions shortly.

2. Behavioral questions

While many companies don’t ask these questions, some companies that emphasize team culture (e.g., Amazon) highly value these questions and pay close attention to your answers.

3. Product manager questions

These might be the hardest types of questions. Users are asked questions such as, “How would you improve Instagram?” and are expected to come up with an answer within 30 minutes.

4. Product management process

Some companies would like to know what sort of product development methodologies you’ve been following. There are different motivations behind asking these questions. In some cases, they want to see if your approach matches theirs, and in other cases, they’d like to see if they can learn from you.

How to prepare for the PM interview questions

The best way to prepare for product manager interviews is through practice and being ready to answer all the above questions. During your practices, keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. How to answer “tell me about yourself” questions

• Be specific with the outcome of your work: Instead of “I did product growth at company X,” say, “I was in charge of driving # of active users at X and increased the number of active users by Y% by doing such and such.” This way, the interviewer knows what you actually did and how well you did it.
• Tell a story: If you have worked for 10 years, I think it’s a good idea to assume you’d like to talk for 30 seconds about each of the first eight years of your career and one minute about the past two years. This way, they get a full picture of your career and how got you here. One mistake many people make is skipping through the first few years of their career and jumping straight into what they are doing now. The issue with that approach is the interviewer will not really learn about who you are. When you tell a good story about your career and achievements and interests, it makes it easier for them to relate to you and see how you’ve ended up in that interview.
• Mention why you’re interested: By the end of your background story, the interviewer should have a clear idea of why you are applying for the job.
• Don’t tell the interviewer you want this job to grow your skills: There is nothing in it for the company. It means you don’t really care about the company and product and mission. You are just there to get a skill set, then you’re out. Instead, explain to them why you’re interested in what they do (and hopefully, your resume and background story reflect that) and why you want to be part of their team. In fact, instead of hearing you’re here to get a skill, I’d prefer to hear, “I’m here to use my skills to help you grow.” Remember, you’re not applying to college. You’re there to get paid for a job.
• Stay away from naive terms, such as, “I learned to do” or “I tried to do”: Instead, show decisiveness, and say what you have actually done as work and what the outcome was. For example, instead of, “I learned to do wireframing,” say, “I wireframed.”
• Practice your story: Make sure you’ve rehearsed your story a few times. You don’t need to memorize everything line by line, but you have to know what the story is.

2. How to answer behavioral questions

There are lots of good articles and exercises on the internet about how to answer behavioral questions. I like following the standard STAR framework, where you first describe the Situation you were in, then talk about your work (or Task), then mention the Actions you took to deal with the situation and, finally, the Result or outcome of your actions. Many people skip through the last step (Result), and finish their answers by just describing what actions they took. It’s important to highlight how your actions translated into a positive outcome. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, since there are many other sources.

3. How to answer product manager questions

This is usually the most scary part of PM job interviews for product managers. Contrary to popular belief, it is not that hard to answer product manager questions. They just require practice. You can practice by reading and practicing product manager interview questions and answers, teaching yourself to think like the interviewer by giving feedback to other PMs’ answers, and doing mock interviews with other product managers.

There are different types of product manager interview questions. Product design, product improvement, metrics, estimation, problem solving and product launch questions are the most popular. They each have their own frameworks and require practice. You will have to be able to answer all of them. It can take a lot of time to practice answering these interview questions, but by learning how to answer them well, you also become a better product manager, as you learn to follow certain frameworks during your day-to-day activities.

4. How to answer product development process questions

As I mentioned earlier, many employers ask these questions to see if there are synergies in product development operation. Practice your answers, and make sure you’re covering the things that matter to them. If you spend time with your users, highlight them. If you follow Scrum and Agile methodologies, mention them. If you use applications and software that make you a more efficient PM, bring them up. And talk about your relationship with the rest of the company and how you work with them as a PM.

In the end, it’s important to remember that, just like how unpredictable the job of a product manager is, the interview structure and the questions asked during product manager interviews are also unpredictable. They’re usually a reflection of the employer’s priorities at the time of the interview. If the employer highly values team dynamics and culture, you will be asked a lot of behavioral questions. If they’re focusing on optimizing their product, you will be asked more product manager questions. The only way to do well in all these is to practice and be prepared to answer all types of interview questions.

This article is written by Bijan Shahrokhi, creator of Product Management Exercises, a repository of product manager interview questions for the PM community.