Some tips for a Product Management interview

A great career starts after a successful interview. Make no mistake, clearing interview is an art. Maintaining a structured approach in the cases and explaining your answers fluently is not an easy task. It requires loads of preparation and tons of practice. We’ll give some tips that might help you with your product management interviews.

When you have ample time

1. Follow the Industry Trends
   Technology is a fast-evolving field. As a PM, you should know about the top technology and industry trends around the world. To be in touch with technology news, you can read news from r/technology, Verge, or CNET. To follow the product trends, you can read blogs like stratechery, a16z, or listen to podcasts like How I built this with Guy Raz and Reid Hoffman’s Master of Scale.
2. Follow the PMs on Twitter
   Product Managers and Leaders are highly active on Twitter. They share insights, opinions, and interact a lot on the platform. Following them on Twitter will give you a lot of new insights into product management. Some popular PMs on Twitter are — Marty Cagan, Des Traynor, Diana Kimball, Kate Catlin, Shreyas Doshi, Suzie Prince, and Noah Weiss.
3. Join numerous communities around the world
   There are a lot of communities that help you with finding jobs, providing solutions, helping with concepts, and even taking mock interviews. Some of the communities are Creative Product Managers, Product School, The Product Stack, r/productmanagement, and The Product Folks’ Slack.

Knowing about the trends in technology and the product world gives you an edge over others.

Frameworks recommended in Decode and Conquer

When the interview is close

1. Learn concepts
   Prepare! There is no alternative. Start studying the frameworks from Decode and Conquer and The Product Manager Interview, both by Lewis C. Lin. Both the books clearly explain all the concepts that may be required in a PM interview and provide several sample cases to refer to.
2. Practice Frameworks
   The books provide good frameworks, but it’s up to you to understand and practice them. Product Design cases by CIRCLES(TM), App Critique by setting parameters of judgment, Guesstimates using a top-down and bottom-up approach, and so on. It’s all about practice. Just pick up any tech product and work on it by thinking from the customer’s perspective!
3. Mock and Repeat
   Mock interviews are invaluable. The best way to learn is by doing it. So give as many mocks as you can. You can refer to the Exponent youtube channel to watch a plethora of mock interviews.

When in Interview

1. KISS
   When asked about the success metrics, tell the interviewers about success metrics and not goal, non-goals, prioritization, Newtonian motion, or quantum physics. In short, Keep It Simple Silly. Brevity, structure, and creativity should be your aim, and not elaborating an answer when not needed.
2. Highlight your strengths
   Questions like, tell me about yourself, can prove to be a pivotal point in your interview. This is the place where you shine and highlight your strengths and achievements. From a PM perspective, you can highlight your analytical skills, problem-solving skills, historical impact, technical skills, and customer engagement experiences.
3. Do your homework
   You should not go to an interview without any research about the company. You should read out their latest trends and business updates. Their business tells you what sort of job you might be entering. And the second part of homework would be practicing all the frameworks.

There are many more cliches like being calm and composed, do not get stressed, and so on. Well, they exist and will continue to, but we did not want to provide you a generic solution. We wanted to provide you with the most helpful and niche resources which you can rely on.

Shubham Gatkal
MBA, IIM Calcutta 2019–21