Product Management: How to Answer the Top 5 Interview Questions

hi I'm Priyanka today I'm going to share with you some of the most common questions used in product management interviews and what interviewers are actually looking for in your responses

in my experience as a product leader I've been on both sides of the interview process and I'm so excited to share some tips to help you Ace those interviews

let's dive in one how would you design an oven for a person in a wheelchair I suggest a four-step approach for this type of product design question first

ask clarifying questions and gather information for example you can ask does a person have any disabilities besides being unable to walk what kind of oven are we

talking about how are they going to be using this product or oven and so on second start to Define what specific problems you want to solve next design

the product features I suggest making a list on pen and paper and then talking your interviewer through it so they understand what is your thought process and finally prioritize that feature list

that you came up with and share your decisions around what you prioritize to build first in your MVP or minimum viable product and why

two Google is thinking about acquiring the question and answer site quora should they acquire it why or why not with this question the interviewer is

trying to test your product strategy knowledge you might Begin by thinking out loud about the strategy of both the target company and its potential purchaser what

do these companies fundamentally do are their missions aligned would the purchaser gain something from this acquisition then think through the customers the competitors and overall

industry Trends as well as your Revenue generation or monetization plans ask the interviewer what are goals and success criteria are for example do we want to

capture a new target market or generate a new Revenue stream don't forget to summarize your product strategy based on all these different considerations and share the products value proposition

with the interviewer [Music] three a number of videos watched on YouTube per day similar to what I talked about for the

product design question earlier I suggest you take a four-step approach to answering this type of Market sizing or estimation question step one always

start by asking clarifying questions to validate your assumptions remember these questions are meant to be intentionally vague for example in this case you could

ask are we calculating the number of videos watched in North America or just the US can we assume that we exclude the videos that are abandoned halfway

and so on next decide whether you will use a top-down or a bottom-up approach and share that with the interviewer also share what is your overall approach or

formula for example in this case it would be total number of YouTube users multiplied by videos watched per user per day estimate this for a few

different types of user segments based on user behavior and then add up the total once you share this approach jump to step three which is get into the details

and do your estimations you could start with the U.S population being 300 million and how many of that have internet and how many out of that watch

YouTube and so on once you have your answer in step four don't forget to do a reality check on your answer to make sure it sounds reasonable

4. give me an example of a time when

4. give me an example of a time when your product failed how did you work with others to figure out what was wrong and do a second launch for these types of Behavioral questions

the interviewer is testing a few different things such as your resilience your ability to collaborate cross-functionally with different teams and your ability to be creative to

impress the interviewer with this question make sure to give real world examples from your experience on how you tackle challenging situations as a product manager if you had a failed

launch what did you learn from it how did you motivate your team to Pivot when the product design or strategy changed five how do you measure the success of a

product for this question I suggest you start by asking what stage of the product life cycle are we talking about for example if the product is very mature your

customer acquisition and engagement metrics might be already strong and you might want to focus on customer retention and referral the r

or pirate metrics framework is also quite helpful to remember the stages of the product life cycle a stands for acquisition then a for activation

and then retention referral and Revenue so it talks about that different stages in your customer life cycle you might also want to ask the interviewer what

their success criteria is to align with them and get clarification for example you're asked to design the inside of a self-driving car the interviewer might

tell you that the success criteria is net promoter score which is a referral metric and then you can design your product with that metric in mind

and there you have it I hope that gives you a good sense of what to expect in a product management interview and how you can Ace your responses

[Music]