Why product manager interview question

Product management skills and experience The interviewer will want to understand how your past product management experience will translate into the new position. Prepare answers to the following questions so you can effectively describe your experience: How would you explain product management to a stranger?

Tell me about the product s you own. Who are the customers? How big is the customer base? What type of customer research do you conduct and how often? How do you develop product strategy? What inputs do you use to build your roadmap? How do you plan releases? What development methodology does your company follow? How often do you launch new features? Where do ideas for new features come from? How do you decide which ones to build? Take me through how you manage a feature from conception to launch.

Tell me about the most successful product have managed. What made it so successful? Describe one of your failures. Why do you think it failed? What would you do differently? How do you know if a product launch is successful?

Can you share a lesson from your last product launch? Leadership skills Successful product managers must be skilled at leading a cross-functional team. Here are a few examples of interview questions that explore your leadership skills: What types of people do you like to work with? Tell me how you motivate other people?

What makes you really angry? How frequently do you meet with cross-functional teams? Tell me about a project that required you to influence people that did not report to you. If I spoke to your coworkers, what is one word they would use to describe you? Tell me about a time when something went wrong at work and you took control. Have you ever had a disagreement with a teammate? What was the outcome? How do you communicate with executive leadership?

Describe a time when you used data to make a decision. How would you describe your leadership style? Who do you respect most for their leadership ability and why? Here are some questions you can ask to learn more about the company and the role you are applying for: What is the strategic vision for this product? How do you develop your product roadmap? How does product management work with executive leadership? How are releases managed?

How often are new features released? What is the best thing about being a product manager here? What is the hardest thing about being a product manager here? How do you onboard new product managers? Interview tips Use this guide to help you answer some of the most common interview questions. Best of luck in your interview. Product management. Introduction to product management What is a product?

Roles and responsibilities. What is the role of a product manager? How are product teams structured? Which tools do product managers use? What skills are required to be a product manager How do product managers work with other teams? How do product managers work with engineers? What are some product management job titles? What does a product manager do each day? Career growth. How can I learn to be a product manager?

What are some tips for new product managers? How do I choose the best product management certification? This question should be easy for you. The answer should pop into your head when you read the job add. Sometimes when looking for a job desperation drives us, not passion. Be aware of your motivation. Honestly, I find this question lazy on their part. How to Answer Draw a large T on a piece of paper. On the right side of the T, list your experiences that map to the requirements.

Take the top 3 most important requirements and chat about them and how your experience maps to them. Remember to tell a story. Tell the story of how you overcame the odds and did A, B, and C.

What are the challenges the company is facing? A good PM will come to the interview armed with this knowledge. How to Answer This is easy. Just do your job and research and analyze the company. Find something about the company and relate it to your passions for the job opportunity, then explore that with them.

For example, when I interviewed at a company in the education space my answer was something like:. You need to do the same. Honesty is critical to being a PM. If you are not honest, then you are not trustworthy and they will not place an entire developer team and a critical project in your untrustworthy hands. How to Answer Every PM under the sun has failed at a project and the interviewer knows that. So when answering this question, outline the failure so they have the context but spend most of the time explaining what you learned from it.

They want to see that you are strong enough to disagree with your manager, but also willing to commit wholeheartedly to their decision. That just makes you and your manager look bad. Also, this question helps them understand your influence at your last company. Or is your remit to little features that nobody notices? How to Answer Think of the most challenging decision you had to make that had resounding consequences on people, product, and company processes.

Describe the challenge and make sure that they know that before you made the decision you completely understood its ramifications. A good PM understands the trade-offs and can make the hard decision that has the least trade-offs and the best outcomes for the business.

Are you a quiet PM type, cracking away at some Redash dashboard in a corner? Or are you out talking to customers, designers, and devs in order to gain insights and drive the business? How to Answer Tell them you like to work collaboratively. Whatever type of PM job it is, your answer should tell a story about how you like to work collaboratively with customers, designers, other PMs, developers, and so on. Truth is there is always a better KPI. So be prepared to discuss this, particularly if your interviewer is another PM.

Be willing to agree if they come up with a better one, which I often did. A good KPI is meaningless unless you can measure it. Do you see the distinction?

That should come out organically in your answer. Tell the story about the pain you were trying to solve and its dire consequences for the user. Tell them about how your team collaboratively worked together to come up with a solution and how that solution solved that pain. Be proud of the team. Be proud of their efforts. It lets them know you are collaborative, driven, and passionate for the customer.

Anything is else bragging, which puts your perceived importance above the team and the customer, which is not good. It says whether you are a Type A or Type B person. Hint, they are not looking for a Type B person to be their PM. They want somebody competitive, sets high goals for themselves, and works aggressively towards them and they want to see that reflected in your hobbies.

The new product would appeal more to consumers who prioritize having something more recent and advanced. You want a candidate who launches a product with teamwork and a schedule in mind. A candidate who replies in generalities is one to approach with caution. I also seek advice from key stakeholders when setting a schedule with dates and deliverables. I hold weekly meetings as the launch date approaches to ensure everything is on track.

The question checks that your values align with those of your candidate. For example, if your company prioritizes teamwork but the candidate names collaboration as something to skip, that could be an issue.

Working with customers and developers and meeting deadlines is what I particularly enjoy, so the paperwork side feels slow in comparison. Not everyone agrees on what good product design means. Maybe your company prioritizes some factors over others, and your candidate should be on the same page. Consumers should be able to use it out of the box without thumbing through a hundred pages in a manual.

Plus, a well-designed product today should be environmentally friendly. This is another question that examines how well the candidate knows your company. You want to bring aboard professionals who took the time to learn about your product s and who can think critically about it. I especially enjoyed the video that went viral and the buildup to the product reveal. One thing I would change would be to narrow the focus of the product. You likely want a product manager who is especially good at something, whether it is data collection, interactive prototyping, coding, analytics or another area.

This question ensures that your teams remain well-balanced. Because of my knowledge of analytics and statistical significance, I was able to determine that ideas for a previous product launch were likely based on chance.

Product managers should have extensive knowledge of their users' needs to design features and products that appeal most to their customers.

The most effective way for them to come up with features that will benefit users is to have a strategy for researching their users and determining their needs.

Look for a candidate who provides a clear strategy for studying user insights and applying them to their feature and updates list. I'll review insights to determine which features they're currently using the most and will determine what type of updates I can add to make that specific feature more enjoyable for them. Another method I use is reviewing the comments and feedback that users will leave on our software or the input they provide our sales or customer service teams.

I'll use these to determine what can be added to enhance they're overall experience.