Product Manager Interviews: The most common questions asked
I have interviewed at dozens of places by now for product roles. Unfortunately all in Hong Kong because my visions of relocating back to Bay Area hasn’t worked out. I’ve taken a break lately because an offer came to me in April and Covid killed my headcount. Then I got back on track and I screw up because it’s been a while.
Know the basics about a company, but don’t over study it. Your interviewer knows more than you do about the business they’re in.
Focus on talking about what you’ve done, the challenges you’ve had and how you overcome them.
Most common questions:
1. What have you built?
2. What are the most important things about a product?
3. What do you think is the best product?
4. How do you come up with hypotheses?
5. How do you validate your ideas?
6. How do you get feedback?
7. What are the challenges you faced?
8. How did you setup your KPI’s / metrics?
9. Did you meet your metrics?
At the end of the day, you never know if you’ve done well or not, so don’t sweat it. What I can tell you from experience is that you’re better off working with and for people you can click with, versus a bunch of jerks who may or may not know their stuff. If you’ve got game and you can climb over the system, go for it. If not, trust your gut feelings and stay away from bad people, otherwise you won’t last very long.
More questions (updated constantly):
- How do you allocate your time between various types of tasks (e.g. release planning, sprint review, retrospective, etc)
- How do you manage conflicts of requirements among various stakeholders?
(ask for rationale or use cases: measurable benefits/value, sit everyone together and talk it out)
- What do you manage delays?
(provide a new eta and only when necessary, squeeze another release between sprints)
Semi-related, my personal obstacles:
Personally, I’ve been narrowed into “INTERNAL product” jobs, aka “Business Transformation”, “Digital Transformation”, “System optimization”, etc. This is because most businesses in Hong Kong are not innovative, they are all stuck in a vicious cycle of trying to migrate away from legacy platforms, hence the “transformation”. Most roles say that I lack the experience, because I don’t have enough corporate exposure in EXTERNAL products, meaning regular retail customer facing stuff. The biggest difference is with internal products, there is no competition, so no matter how terrible your platform is, users are forced to stick with it. That skews a major part of what product management (naturally) is all about — refining your features to stand out from the crowd.
Running my own e-commerce platform gives me the chance to understand market competition and learn the tricks of the trade. Whether it’s hardware or software the idea of product is essentially the same. Check out my global shipping e-commerce marketplaces and give me any feedback! (I will post them later)
