Product Execution Interview tips

Every company is different in testing for product execution questions. Google and Facebook interviews typically test for product execution. Here are some useful tips in preparing for product execution interviews.

1. Some mandatory reading for cracking the product execution interviews is “Cracking the PM interview” book and going through the frameworks in the book in responding to different types of product execution questions. Second, identifying and becoming familiar with metrics that will be useful to responding to PM interview questions. Metrics such as CAC, LTV, Retention rates and metrics that help you in measuring and reiterating through your product should all be top of your head.
2. Demonstrate structured thinking and have some thought frameworks — The CIRCLES method and other frameworks are great to help you think through this.
3. Practice, practice, practice — If you are interviewing for a particular company, become familiar with their entire suite of products. Have 3 examples for your favorite products, and immediately follow them up with how would you improve that product. Have ideas, jot them down and practice in person and revise the answer. More importantly, practice with other PMs or friends.
4. Prioritizing your product features — As a PM, this is something you have to do on a regular basis. Given an infinite amount of money, time and resources, we can develop every idea out there. However, most companies have some kind of constraints. How do you make decisions in the best possible fashion? Again, this is as simple as drawing a product priority matrix where you have your features on one side and goals on the other and having some kind of scaling criteria which will allow you to stack rank your features is what they are testing you for.
5. Borrow your ideas from the competition. Some of the best innovations came from a current trend out that someone else has come up with. For e.g., I thought one of the coolest features that Snap came out with was the in-content full-screen ads. This a great trend because of the increased engagement with the media. There are many trends in the industry. Its your job to stay on top of these trends. Ben Thompson’s blog Stratechery.com, websites like recode, techcrunch, producthunt, have always helped me understand how other companies are executing on their products and why. In preparation for your interview, doing a ton of reading helps.
6. Understand your users and their motivations. Demonstrating user empathy through product feature development, and knowing that there could be an exhaustive list of different types of users and understanding their motivations will help you build a great product. Most people demonstrate build products for themselves. How do you build products for different geographies, different groups of people and still manage to get the highest revenues.
7. Testing the product — Launching a product without breaking other products or disrupting other users is highly important. How would you A/B test your product in a scaled fashion. Be prepared to walk your interviewer through the process of launching a product.
8. Demonstrate out of the box thinking — A good product manager is structured and methodical in their thinking. A great one, can show out of the box ideas. Keep in mind that these ideas cannot be too far-fetched. But if you can think of a novel way of having some out of the box thinking.

Good luck on your Job hunt.