Senior PM gives his 10 Essential Product Manager Interview Tips (he's ex Google & Meta)

Mark how you doing good to have you on again good Tom thank you so much hi everyone uh my name is Mark I'm a product coach here at I got an offer and um so excited to help you get you where

you're going so for today um let's talk about 10 tips uh that you're going to need as you go into your interview process Y and uh Mark has been our product manager at meta at Google so uh

he's run a lot of product manager interviews and he's perfectly placed to to know what you need to do to Ace those interviews so cool Mark um what's tip number one all right thank you Tom let's

go and get started so tip number one is uh you want to understand who your customer is like a good product manager and the first thing you're going to want to know is for every interview you're going to go into you're going to want to

know basically the company's Mission and their products right you want to know their core values you want to know the range of products they have you want to show that you've done your homework and in many of the interviews like product

sense which I'll talk about you're going to be you're literally going to want to site uh the uh the mission for example something I do I can show you literally right here is I will talk about a mission and I know the mission because I

literally have it on a Post-It note right in front of me and it's on the screen so I look like I'm I'm looking at the screen when really I'm just reading a Post-It note uh good tip all right

nice so uh so for example like you got an interview with meta uh obviously you can't read up on every you can't use every meta product uh you can't like

exhaustively know like everything about uh what they're doing but you need to have a pretty good sense of maybe experience using some key products and a good sense of the mission that's exactly

right which actually leads to tip number two so tip number two is really mastering product sense so you've seen these interview questions like design

this feature for Amazon or improve a feature on Google Maps or you know create a flying car or build uh education for Facebook and the product

sends question is the most important question at all of these companies um they really assess your ability to ideate to design to kind of improve

products um this is uh such an important thing if you're going to spend any time um or if you're going to spend lots of time really really focus on product sense and and get them get them really really strong tip number

three um good product management in my opinion is about being the glue and it's about being able to lead teams it's about being able to show strong decision-making and you're going to want

to show this in every part of your interview process whether it's product sense or product strategy or the leadership and behavior questions just being a strong assertive leader being

someone that like makes a really compelling Point um all of these product companies are looking for candidates who has a vision you can Inspire and you can

lead um so in everywhere I think about like how I can really project myself how I can really um have kind of force of persuasion um and and show good examples of where

you've taken initiative and made tough decisions um so showing leadership and drive is really really critical for um all of these interviews yeah so I guess

in in there might be candidates here who um have had a leadership position um already um but just pointing that to POs to that position isn't in itself evidence of leadership you need to give

specific examples of of what you did as a leader um and I guess you're saying like in the way that you answer the questions in other types of interview questions you need to show that you're you're confident in kind of making

decisions and and persuading people um of a certain course of action that that's exactly right in fact I I'll turn this into a little bit of a um you know a don't do as well so for example when you're doing your product sense

interview uh big component of that is let's say segmentation right and so you'll do a segmentation review and then at the end a good product leader will

say okay I'm going to pick segment X okay and it's just a check-in right yeah a weak product leader will say something like okay here's my segmentation what do you think about

that and I'll actually ask to interview just like no don't do that be assertive you're driving the show so a good way to show leadership and drive in all of these is just kind of Drive the

interview and drive the drive the answers and that also helps demonstrate leadership and drive right okay all right what's next tip number four um data driven decision

making um this is a what I call an oldie but a goodie uh and in fact it's become even more important just in terms of how you think about data and how do you make

data informed decisions um um there really is no excuse for product managers not to be very familiar with all the latest metrics um and you should be

really schooled on all the activation metrics from well adoption engagement quality um and and then you know like all the dozens and dozens of metrics in

there you should be really solid on some of the metrics that I really like that I think that people don't spend enough time on are things like

retention for example I know at meta that's such a huge um uh such a huge metric um and in other companies it's becoming more so um and it should be because it's it's such a great way to to

drive products as you kind of move forward but I guess my point is is that you want to showcase in all of these interviews and again in all these questions that you're making decisions

um where you've got data you've got data at your back right and there's no reason why you can't get data on almost anything and a lot of that also just asking good questions of why so make sure that your questions are are are

backed and informed by data uh and uh I think you'll do really well on these interviews all right number five uh technical proficiency and I have to confess this is probably the the most

Mis understood tip for these interviews what I think is important is not demonstrating an ability to code right because you're never really going to be expected to code as a product manager and if someone is expecting you to code

as a product manager they really don't know what they're looking for so what you're looking for obviously is product managers who understand customers and understand markets but that being said at the end of the day as a product

manager you have to work with designers you have to work with engineers and they are very very technical and so they're going to be um you need to be really kind of a good Steward of the software

development process in general you need to be a good Steward in system design um you need to understand that technical challenges are very real right engineering challenges are very real and you need to be empathetic of that and

sympathize it sympathize with um your your colleagues to be able to uh work on trade-offs and work effectively with uh with your teams um when I was at Google something

that we would do as part of the development process um is that while product managers weren't involved in uh coding obviously we were involved

in systems design and just like you'd have a product manager walk through a spec and a plan for how to you know how and why to build a product and or who

and who and what to build right um and Engineers would be in that and Engineers would ask questions just making sure we're building the right thing for the right Market um on the other half of that equation was then the engineering

team going back and saying okay um we understand the requirements and and uh here's how we're going to build this and they would have a technical design review where they would uh walk through

their system design and product managers um would be invited to those meetings and you can ask questions like well how does this scale and how does this work and what happens here and does it break um and so those are the types of

examples that you need to demonstrate so when I talk about technical proficiency what I mean is you need to understand how the Big Blocks work together um you don't need to know how to code but you

do need to know like how things kind of actually work and be able to communicate about them and in the interview setting you want to be at that level right you want to be at a high level you don't want to be at the coding level you don't want to be bragging about how much you

know SQL because no one cares right and besides you can just ask chat GPT to do SQL now anyway so it doesn't really have any value anyways um so you know that's kind of the right Fidelity you should be thinking about with technical

proficiency okay and is that is that consistent across all like the the top companies cuz I know that I know that generally like Google is known to expect a bit more technical proficiency from it

from its PMS compared to say meta which uh you know seems to seems to be happy with with a bit less um would you recommend kind of um uh varying your

your your kind of preparation in technical terms depending on which company you're going for a little bit I think um I I think Google and meta are at about the same level there are some

roles specifically which are very Niche roles like for example you know there are product manager AI research roles which are very technical right and they're looking for like phds and in data science and phds and Ai and things

like that um but those roles are pretty rare I'd say for more generic you know vanilla product management roles um I think the technical differences between Google and meta are not that much in

fact um Google used to even have a technical design interview section as part of the whole kind of flow but they've actually deprecated that uh in recent years because they found that it really wasn't that valuable as a

predictor for good candidates and actually to me that was a really good signal that it's really not about the technical skills yeah right that it's really about the product management skills but obviously you should be technically proficient now in the in the

when you're talking to startups and things like that then what I'll say is your mileage may vary and some of them are looking for very deep vertical uh expertise um which you may or may not have but the but the big companies are

really looking for product management skills and always come back to that always come back to look I'm I'm a I'm an expert in markets and customers and uh and um and uh you know I presume you

have some good Engineers who can work on actually building things cool great all right next tip number six understanding the user experience so we talked about

product sense being really important but um really good product managers and especially for the big companies have to have a really Keen sense for UI design and user psychology um you should be

talking about like in pain points anxieties and and how you work things and you should be thinking really really basic primitive things right but those

things are really good to to uh to build uh great designs um so you should be able to um uh create wireframes you should be able to create mockups uh one

thing I recommend um and this is for all um uh all the product sense interviews so in a product sense interview you're actually going to be um uh you know creating a you know creating a product

so what I recommend doing is like taking a taking a piece of paper like I have here and then kind of folding it in four right so you've got uh when you do that this is kind of a classic trick right

when you do that you've got like four panels as you can see here right and then I would draw just like monkey simple uis

right I'm just going to draw one here just you can see like the Fidelity is super low right so you can see like option one option two option three buy right very simple uh very simple

illustration why is this important one it shows Simplicity and thought right which is really key to doing UI and obviously this isn't UI this is a you know this is a sketch on a napkin pretty

much right um but it demonstrates um your willingness to to sketch and being able to sketch and kind of get in the weeds and work with designers is actually a really really amazing thing um some of the best designers I've

worked with and I've worked with a lot of amazing Des designers in the past what I always like to observe in when they're in meetings and you may notice this is that yeah sometimes they're paying attention but like half the time they have a a sketch pad and they're

just like doodling and they're drawing little things and I'm when I see them doing that I'm just so inspired I'm just like ah I love working with the best designers because that's what they do they you know they doodle and they draw all day long and they're just thinking

about these things um so I think when you can demonstrate that you're also doodling right then you have the ability to Doodle and you know you have no pride of authorship look here's a doodle and uh and off you go uh so I I strongly

recommend that that's a great way you can demonstrate um your expertise and user experience great I love that one cool what's next Mark all right number

seven practicing behavioral questions now these are the questions like tell me about yourself why do you want to work at this company and tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with a you know colleague and what was your biggest

challenge um these are classic questions um there's about 15 of them in total right if you're to kind of catalog them all and uh and there's about let's say about 15 different flavors what I

recommend doing is um a couple things one is um one write all these questions down and there's lists of them um and Tom maybe that's something we can share in a future content with people as well

too um write them all down actually write narratives for each one of these things in advance right so you want to answer all these questions for yourself write them down on a Google doc um you want to time them so your answers are

five minutes or less because that's really kind of the the time boundary that they're looking for and then um once you've done that so then you've got then you've got your stories right okay now the question is are your stories

good and there's um a lesson that I recommend here is is to do this one for each of your stories um what I want you

to do is uh look at um um Amazon's leadership principles right and make sure each of your stories has at least one of those leadership principles that's embodied um whether you like or

don't like Amazon really doesn't matter but I think the leadership principles are quite excellent quite recognized and so if you do this and you're and you have your answers in these interviews people can't help but Come Away with

that you're probably a strong leader because they going to see different behaviors come out in your leadership questions that are widely recognized as being um strong features um so you're G to want to and and the Beautiful part

about the behavioral questions is you can write them all down you can practice them and when you go into the interview you've already got the answer right it's done you don't have to go oh crap when was the time I had to work with engineer and it was hard like you've thought

about it right and it's already done and so your answers can be uh Snappy and so forth and of course you want to use the the star framework right the situation task action result I will add a little bonus on that which is um I always

thought that it was bad that it ended with result because that's not really where these things end where the end is with a learning and what I always like to say at the end of these and and what I learned was right yeah and that's a

great way to end these questions because it shows humility it shows growth um and it shows you know that's a that's a true uh signal of a of a good leader yeah we um we obviously I I'll put the links uh

in the description we we have lots of uh stuff on on behavioral questions on our blog and um yeah we we actually have a framework called we call the sipil not raty but um the sipil framework which is

very similar to Star but it it tackles that that one problem with star that um it doesn't end in lessons and so so with the sipil framework uh it's a situation problem solution impact lessons um and I

think that's a really useful useful thing to people to to use when they when they answer behavioral question so yeah I'll I'll stick the links in the in the description below if anyone wants to wants to go and have a look at that

awesome Tom cool um tip number eight staying informed about tech Trends this is a tough one I get which is people are worried they're worried about two things they're worried that they're going to get questions that they don't know

anything about right like uh Hey design a new uh you know um product that can synthesize human DNA I have no idea how that works right um so they're worried about getting

questions that they can't understand um and and they also want to appear like they're kind of with it right both those things are are valid uh valid and and so what I have to say is two things one don't worry about getting a question you

don't know anything about the reason is is that these questions especially by the big companies are designed to be intentionally accessible right what I mean is they're

going to ask questions that they expect that anyone in product management should know about right right and um the and kind of the kind of skin

underneath that is they don't care what you know right they're not testing what you know they're testing how you think right and so first the questions are designed to be intentionally accessible so one that should bring your anxiety

levels way down that's great just to know that kind of key fact but then again right it's good to be informed right it's good to know what's going on what's going on in Tech trends like I learn stuff every day so what's the best

way to stay involved in Tech Trends um this is going to sound uh a little cliche but I Lally do it every day and it helps me um find your you know favorite tech article Tech blog I have

two that I really like um Tech crunch right like it's actually super good right they have all the things going on in Tech that's relevant knowing about yeah it's a little kind of you know light if you will um but it's good right

so I've got all the themes all the time Tech crunch is great by the way I love going to Tech crunch disrupt every year me meeting a bunch of startups it's always fun um so that's one and and the second one is um

strategery now this is more for you know kind of like this is kind of like product management 2011 Ben Thompson strategery really really good deep strategy articles so if I get the question a lot like Mark how can I be a

really deep thinker how can I be a much you know much more strategic thinker and that is a that is a more involved investment and so Ben Thompson Strater is uh in my mind one of the best ways to

achieve that and guy is just brilliant uh in in in all things product so um if you want to if you want to really up your game in in products strategy and product thinking uh go to Ben Townson

Str teacher great I'll check that out myself as well cool thanks Mark cool you got for us all right tip number nine mock interviews yes I know this is a little self-serving um you know the old

expression practice makes perfect I think you can do so first of all you should you should plan to expect you know plan to spend maybe 40 to 60 hours of time spent um doing um product management interview practicing and

things like that you should be researching and learning and practicing the Frameworks and things like that the good news is most of this stuff you can do on your own right um You can do this on your own you can practice on your own

um but then you know before you go into the interviews you're going to want to do uh lots of mock interviews you can do them with peers obviously although the interesting thing is I think that'll get you used to some of the the muscle

memory the feedback you're going to get is going to be U you know it's going to be okay it's not going to be incredibly awesome um I think the feedback you get from um a professional mock interview is just way way way higher and you'll

probably experience that when you do that but the these um experiences you get from your mock interviews um are really going to help you sharpen your presentation make sure you're focusing

on the right things and um like we talked about the um there there are differences between how Facebook interviews and Google interviews and

Amazon and Microsoft and Netflix and coinbase and Stripe Right they all have different things that they're looking for and so um some of those subtleties are are really really important um so

it's good to know in there and go in there practicing with someone who's kind of been there done that and understands why those things are and what's important to those companies because they are looking for some subtle things and those subtle Flags can make a big

difference between a a higher and no higher yep absolutely um and yeah I would I would add if you're GNA do Mo interviews I would do them on iO offer.com but absolutely that's up to

you more self- serving comments yes the I got an offer platform is awesome all right next what okay what's the final Point tip tip number 10 um you

know the old expression you want to tip your waitress um the um uh the same applies to these interviews um and that is you want to thank your interviewer you want to thank your interviewer but let me explain a little more context

behind that so interviewing candidates as a professional is really hard to do right it's hard to do because you're trying to

do two things one is you're trying to do a good job for your company let's say when I interviewed for meta or when I interviewed for Google I'm trying to do the best job for them to bring in the right people right because I don't want to like bring in people who are bad

product managers I don't want to bring people in who are you know not good for the culture right so it's actually a really tough job to actually do an a interview well so one that makes it hard

right the other thing that makes it hard is I can tell as a product manager interviewer that I'm looking across the table at someone who really wants a job right it can make a difference a huge

difference in their personal life and so I'm feeling empathetic and I want to help them in many ways right but of course I have to do my job too so it's a really it's a really tough job being a

product manager interviewer and then but then it gets worse right so so I want you to imagine just imagine this context right that it's really hard doing this interview for those reasons above um and then when you're done with the interview like you've done your interview you're

like a done oh my God that was exhausting I'm done but you're you know what your product manager interviewer he's still got work to do or they I should say he or she right they've still got work to do which is you're done but

they actually have to now do this write up and recommendation and they've got like another 30 40 minutes of work right so that's a lot of stuff so you did one hour of work they're going to put in an

hour and a half to maybe two hours of work right and it really is I guess my point is is those are unsung unappreciated workloads right you never

get you never get appreciated you never really know if your candidate gets hired or not hired it's unappreciated so my point being is you want to thank your interviewer and your thank you goes something like this uh says hey I just

want to let you know um thank you so much for giving you know thank you so much for interviewing me today I know it's a tough job interviewing people um also I know after this interview I'm

done I might go have a beer right but I know you've got work to do um and I really appreciate it and I'm not trying to influence your decision in any way but I just want to thank you in advance because I know doing a good interview is

is hard to do from your perspective all I just want to thank you very much for doing in and just stay you know sincere genuine and like that that that showed you know so there's some interesting Parts about that one is you know it is a

unsung kind of thing to give these products management interviews uh and the other part is that you're also demonstrating kind of empathy right uh which is you know the Cornerstone of great product management which is

understanding who you're working with in that instance you are the product the product manager and is the interviewer and you're showing empathy for your user um it might be Ben it might actually help you are you uh would you recommend

email thank yous as well uh email follow-ups kind of just thanking the interviewer in certain occasions yes when when uh when appropriate absolutely um there's some circumstances where you you know it's just like okay you're

interviewing with you know Sally at meta and you don't know Sally's you know her first name but you don't know her last name and that case it's not appropriate but in the case where you like know the interor like you you might have you

might know who they are in LinkedIn and sending a thank you is absolutely appropriate right wow Mark that was really good it's uh so good to speak to again and uh it's always it's always fun

to hear all your insights um yeah I think we'll we've got 10 I think that's a useful list of 10 to people people as they go into the interview so um yeah thanks a lot let's wrap it up all right

everyone thank you so much hello really hope you found that useful if you did you can like And subscribe and why not come visit us at igotoffer.com there you can find more videos useful Frameworks

and question guides all completely free and you can also book expert feedback one to one with our coaches from go Google meta Amazon Etc thank you and

good luck with your [Music] interview