What Not to Say in a PM Interview

When interviewing product managers, many companies will ask candidates about their insights on good products and opinions about bad products. Some classic questions:

• What’s your favorite app, and what would you change about it?
• How would you redesign [Google | Facebook | your iPhone | another popular product]?
• Tell me about a product you love and why you love it.

These questions interrogate a person’s “product sense” or intuition about good UX. Do you see opportunities for improvement and delight that others don’t? Are those ideas technical feasible and well scoped? At Google’s PM retreat in 2016, Susan Wojcicki said this trait — “product insight” — is the most important skill she looks for when hiring PMs for her org.

Background

I was an APM at Google for two years before starting my own company (an image and video editor called Kapwing), and now I’m hiring PMs and engineers. I’ve heard and given many answers to product insight questions in real and mock interviews at both big companies and startups. I’ve learned a lot about what makes a good and bad answer from both sides of the table. In this article, I’ll share my take on what not to say in a PM interview when your asked to propose product improvements or changes. Here’s what not to do:

1) Jump in to a proposal too quickly

Good PMs can identify and reduce ambiguity. If you have an open ended question like “How would you redesign a grandfather clock?”, make sure to ask questions and get more context and information before jumping into a design proposal. Understanding the goals, scope, and constraints of the product discussion will give your idea backbone.

Also, it’s fine to ask your interviewer for a moment to think. Taking several seconds to gather your ideas makes your look more thoughtful, not less.

2) Criticize a recent change

Good product thinkers have insight beyond the obvious. They can spot flaws and envision improvements that others have not thought of before. As a result, PM candidates should exhibit originality in proposing new changes and optimism when discussing product innovations.

I’ve heard candidates fry Apple’s decision to remove the AUX outlet or their move to FaceID, both changes that have been heavily scrutinized in the tech media. Rather than sounding like insightful product thinkers, these aspiring PMs seem like technological pessimists repeating things they read about online.

Many great product changes — like touchscreens and social media timelines — were controversial and even unpopular when they first launched. PMs that criticize those innovations can seem like critics in the crowd rather than visionary leaders.

3) Point out an obvious bug or known issue

The app glitches; the software doesn’t handle an obscure edge case; the animation is a bit janky. PMs are responsible for catching and filing bugs, but feature fixes hardly count as product improvements. Candidates should show their capacity for bolder, more big-picture changes rather than focusing on minute, iterative improvements.

4) Fail to Consider Tradeoffs

Yes, everyone knows that short-lived smartphone batteries suck. Every consumer wants their phone to last longer, just like everyone wishes they could teleport and cure cancer. But obvious user pain points don’t count as an insight until you give a product proposal and consider the tradeoffs vs the status quo.

Too many candidates propose better experiences without acknowledging or understanding what the product would lose to make that experience happen. For example, I’ve heard people say “Sign in should be easier, based on your fingerprint” without considering privacy and abuse detection, or “Phone cameras should be better” without a nod to higher hardware costs.

Good PMs know that nothing comes for free; every decision has tradeoffs. Showcase your ability to prioritize and balance by weighing those tradeoffs during the interview.

5) Fail to Propose Anything

Some PM candidates undermine their own answer. Here’s an example: a PM candidate says “I think Instagram should switch back to sorting posts by recency. Consumers preferred the transparency and knew what they were going to get.” Then they undermine their own proposal: “But then again, that might lower engagement because of XYZ, so maybe there’s a happy medium between today’s algorithm and recency.”

Of course, today’s Instagram algorithm is a happy medium, and without a transparent, consistent algorithm users lose the benefit that the candidate pointed out. So, the candidate sounds like they’re saying “Let’s do X. Oh wait, actually let’s not do X.”

During a PM interview, take a stance on a product improvement and defend it. If you realize half-way through your explanation that your idea isn’t going to work, abandon it fully by expressing your mistake and definitively pick a new idea. Don’t get caught in the rabbit hole of chipping down the substance of your proposal.

Conclusion

In an interview, it’s better to propose something bold that won’t work than bring nothing to the table. New PMs coming from consulting, engineering, or finance might feel uncomfortable with making proposals with so little information, but making decisions with conviction is part of a PM’s job. Practice the answers to common product insight questions before going in to your interview so that you can avoid some of these common pitfalls.