PM Interview Prep Workshop: Stephen Cognetta, CEO @ Exponent

Written by Andrew Tokar and Anjanei Dhayalan

Edited by Phyllis Njoroge

Product Buds aims to be a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming environment for aspiring Product Managers of all social and cultural identities, as well as educational and career backgrounds. We held an event on Wednesday, June 17th with Exponent’s CEO, Stephen Cognetta with 300 attendees!!

Stephen is a former product manager at Google and has conducted thousands of interview prep sessions. Stephen has spoken on product management at Google, WeWork, Duke, Yale, and more. He co-founded Exponent to help people land their dream tech careers. Exponent helps people land their dream job in product management, product marketing, data science, and more. They offer resources for aspiring product managers, including Interview Prep Course, Expert Interview Coaching, Skills Course, Free Database of Interview Questions, and Company Guides.

In case you missed the special event or if you’d like a writeup, read on for some of the valuable insights Stephen provided. Also, use our special Product Buds discount to Exponent’s products!

👤Interviewers Are People Too

Your interviewer wants to have an engaging back and forth with you. They want you to give them an interesting answer. Treat the interview like a real conversation with a coworker. Gauge their reactions, allow room for them to speak, and adjust your communication style to fit theirs, just like you would in a regular conversation.

❓Ask Before You Answer

Clarifying questions are king in PM interviews. Asking the right questions will ensure that you get all the relevant information on the table, fully understand the question you’re answering, and may even provide you with a nudge towards the right answer. Keep reading for a few case studies that explain how to approach this.

🔉Use Active and Passive Pings

It’s easy to fall into a nervous monologue during a high pressure interview. It might feel like a safe bet to keep rambling until you feel like you’ve covered all your bases with your answer, but there’s often a better approach. A good way to keep the interview organized and interactive is to check in with your interviewer after key points in your answer. These techniques create engagement and can help you ensure that you’re giving an answer that the interviewer wants to hear.

• An active ping encourages a response from the interviewer if you want to make sure you two are on the same page.

Ex) “Now that I’ve outlined the needs of the user for this product, I’m going to move on to brainstorming and analyzing potential solutions. Do you have any questions for me?”

• A passive ping opens the door for them to make comments at any time.

Ex) “I’m going to move onto my final recommendation now. Feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions or feedback regarding my answer.”

👣 Backtracking with Grace

Uh oh! You’ve bungled an answer. It happens to the best of us. That doesn’t mean your interview is over though. Covering your tracks and pivoting quickly as soon as you realize you messed up can show the confidence and quick wit that employers love. You should do this in a way that reflects your own communication style, but Stephen recommended saying something like this:

“Actually, now that I think about it a bit more, (blank) may be a better solution because of (blank).”

But for real though…enough of the conceptual stuff. Let’s dive into some tangible examples!

🔎 “Solve the Mystery” Questions

These lay out a vague scenario and give you the task of getting to the bottom of it by asking the right questions. Here’s an example:

Imagine you’re speaking with a Data Analyst at Facebook who asks you to determine the cause of a 6% drop in DAUs using only the stats she has available. How would you do it?

Stephen suggested the approach of asking questions about every stage where information is collected, all the way down to the final user’s interaction with the product. That flow of information for Facebook looks like this:

• User → Device → Device OS → FB App → Telecom Network → Server → Data Center

By asking questions about each of these points, you can slowly work your way through every possibility until you arrive at the answer. Here are some examples.

• Which group (region, age, gender, etc.) of users was most impacted?
• Were there any recent updates to the app?
• Have there been any recent outages on a major network?

⛰️ Mission Driven Questions

These often ask you to measure something. It’s your job to figure out what metrics are most relevant to the scenario.

Imagine you’re on a team at Google trying to gauge the success of a Google Doodle. How would you do it?

The most common answers the audience gave were click volume and click-through rate (CTR). However, Stephen pointed out that these two metrics aren’t necessarily aligned with the goal of a Google Doodle, which doesn’t seek to drive marketing revenue.

By asking what a good Google Doodle hopes to achieve (the answer being user delight and a boost to brand image) you set yourself on the right track towards quantifying its success.

🤔 Estimation Questions

These ask you to tackle a seemingly impossible prompt. The trick here is to ask clarifying questions, break down the problem into smaller, more manageable chunks, and demonstrate strong analytical thinking and attention to detail (even if you don’t get the answer exactly right).

Ex. How much does the Empire State Building weigh?

First, ask a few questions.

• Is the building full of people? Does this include the foundation? What about furniture?

Make incremental guesses and add them up.

• Guess the number of floors, the dimensions of each, the kinds of materials they contain, and use these to make many small, reasonable guesses add up to a total answer.

Consider smaller details.

• How would elevators, walls, plumbing, etc. impact our measurement?

Use references to make educated guesses.

• If you don’t know how tall one floor might be, use your own height or something else you’re familiar with as a reference.
• If you’re between 5 and 6 ft tall and think the ceilings are twice your height, that’s a pretty strong guess.

Remember, it’s more important to demonstrate strong logical thinking than it is to guess the right answer (although arriving at an answer close to 365,000 tons doesn’t hurt).

⚙️Product Questions

These seek to assess your product sense. They may ask you to design a type of product for a specific purpose or group of people (ie. a 10X version of a library with 21st-century tech) or to explain what your favorite product is and why.

The key to a successful answer is to demonstrate understanding of the product conceptualization process and to connect your answer to a thesis or tagline you have about the world of product today.

If you’re asked for your opinion on a product, or to justify your love for it, Stephen suggests coming up with an arguable thesis for why it works or doesn’t.

• For example, you might love Slack. Think about why this is and believe that its use of emojis is key to its success

Many interview prep resources lay out frameworks for approaching these questions. Some examples include:

• Users → Pain Points → Ideas → Product Vision → Feature Prioritization

AND

1. Identify the root of the problem by asking questions.
2. Stratify the causes to better understand the relevant issues.
3. Present your solution in stages so that your thinking remains cohesive.
4. Mention the tradeoffs/limitations. No solution is perfect. Anticipating the interviewer’s concerns shows foresight and self-awareness.

It’s important to understand why all of these elements are relevant to the process, but Stephen recommended structuring your thoughts organically rather than following a pre-ordained model.

If you tend to get stuck in the ideation phase, Stephen suggested a preparation technique that can help. Before your interview, make a Big Ideas List of major tech trends today and research examples of each one. These can be things like automation, the sharing economy, or work from home tools. When you’re asked to conceptualize a product, think about how it could intersect with each of those trends.

• For an example, let’s go back to that library of the future. If you applied those tech trends, you might come up with ideas like a social book sharing network for people near you and a drive-through library that puts the book you want right in your hands so you don’t have to search for it.

We hoped that you enjoyed our takeaways from this wonderful event. If you’d like to be a part of Product Buds, please join us! and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up with the great initiatives, events, and posts by our team.

Thank you so much for being a part of our journey as we all sprout, grow, and flourish as a blooming community.