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How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

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Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#21

Post by dang »

totalrobe wrote: post #10

Haha this is a funny little idealistic article. If any company actually hires like this I'd like to know. Want the job? This is the real selection criteria at west coast startups: 1) Went to interviewer's school and/or worked at my buddy's startup 2) Drinks the kool-aid? i.e. willing to work 60+ hrs/week below market 3) Previously held self titled "Chief Product Officer" position at "startup" that failed after 3 mont…

Please don't post substanceless, snarky dismissals like this to HN. If you have concrete experiences that are relevant, those would be a basis for a much better comment. But rage-driven overgeneralization is something we want less of here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#22

Post by yanilkr »

dang wrote: post #21
totalrobe wrote: post #10

Haha this is a funny little idealistic article. If any company actually hires like this I'd like to know. Want the job? This is the real selection criteria at west coast startups: 1) Went to interviewer's school and/or worked at my buddy's startup 2) Drinks the kool-aid? i.e. willing to work 60+ hrs/week below market 3) Previously held self titled "Chief Product Officer" position at "startup" that failed after 3 mont…

Please don't post substanceless, snarky dismissals like this to HN. If you have concrete experiences that are relevant, those would be a basis for a much better comment. But rage-driven overgeneralization is something we want less of here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I am not sure you are moderating this right.

That comment was very insightful. People hiring product managers would now know how some others in the company think if they brought in friends or candidates with inflated titles.

One of my very talented friends quit his job for the exact reason. There are CTOs who do not know the difference between java and javascript. We tried to hire an accountant who had a title "Advisor to startups" after talking to her for few minutes we had to rethink hiring.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#23

Post by nzealand »

> Don’t bullshit

If someone simply abruptly said "I don't know" without any follow up, then it would give me serious pause for concern.

By all means, be succinct. Admit you don't know. Ask if the interviewer wants to hear your methodology you would use to get to an answer.

A good PM tailors the message for their audience. My experience set is different from OP, I interview product managers in the non-technical B2B space.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#24

Post by jpadkins »

mdorazio wrote: post #12
jpadkins wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a lot of PM phone screens. I don't ask brain teasers but I do ask basic math problems (i.e. drake's equation type problems). They are very good for screening out candidates who won't be able to do the analytical part of the job.

1) That's not a "basic math problem", it's exactly the kind of brain teaser/gross estimation problem this thread is saying doesn't work. 2) You're going to need to explain to me how estimating the number of communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy (or a similar question) is an indicator of how well a person can understand a product's features, tech stack, and customer needs. Unless your product is s…

One variant I ask is 'estimate the number of delivery drivers needed to start a same day delivery service in a city'. Do you think this is a brain teaser or not? This is clearly not a statistics product...

I find PMs need the ability to break down problems into manageable pieces to calculate, and estimate things with lots of ambiguity. How else do figure out whether an idea is viable or not, and worth spending more time on going deeper on?

And I meant to say fermi problems, not drake's equation.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#26

Post by sweaver »

arafa wrote: post #6

Brain teaser questions don't perform well in studies and should be avoided: http://qz.com/378228/google-is-over-those-ridiculous-brainte... Google suggests doing behavioral interviews instead (which I've also been trained to do and have gotten good results). Technical interviews and such may be necessary as well, of course.

I would say I would -never- base a hiring decision on someone who was poor at answering a market sizing or logic question. However, I do like to see candidates with determination to try and answer, explore multiple possible answers, and remain cool during their reasoning. To me, it’s reflective of your working style and PM’s must remain calm, rational, constantly thinking of all possible options to solve a working challenge.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#27

Post by omgitstom »

Every company will want a PM that understands their vertical. This isn't as simple as researching, a PM should never interview without using the product and using as many of the competitors products as possible.

Every company wants a PM that is a jack-of-all-trades. This could be any degree of technicality, UX skills, marketing skills, developer skills, design skills, customer success skills, sales skills, and PM skills (prioritization, specs / user stories / strategy / go-to-market / scoping / shipping etc). If you aren't a jack-of-all-trades, pick up some hobbies / books / go to meetups to make yourself as well-rounded as possible.

Every company wants someone that is deep in one of the areas above.

Commonalities between companies are they want someone that is a foot deep across every skill set, and a mile deep on one skill set.

Figuring out where you fall on the scale of things and make sure you find a company that is looking for your exact strengths is the most important thing to pass a PM interview. Screen the company as they would screen you. Once there is a match, then Sam's advice kicks in if they are looking for a Technical Product Manager.

For aspiring PMs, I highly recommend taking a job in customer success as a gateway into product management. You learn a lot about working with customers, prioritization, and should be aligned with seasoned PM's at the company for advisement and mentorship possibilities.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#28

Post by arafa »

sweaver wrote: post #26
arafa wrote: post #6

Brain teaser questions don't perform well in studies and should be avoided: http://qz.com/378228/google-is-over-those-ridiculous-brainte... Google suggests doing behavioral interviews instead (which I've also been trained to do and have gotten good results). Technical interviews and such may be necessary as well, of course.

I would say I would -never- base a hiring decision on someone who was poor at answering a market sizing or logic question. However, I do like to see candidates with determination to try and answer, explore multiple possible answers, and remain cool during their reasoning. To me, it’s reflective of your working style and PM’s must remain calm, rational, constantly thinking of all possible options to solve a working ch…

But is there data to support that these questions are effective in finding the types of people that you want? Without concrete and consistent answers to questions, you'll be exposing yourself to bias (subconsciously encouraging people like yourself or seeing their vague answers in a more positive light). You'll also make more of the interviewing experience dependent on what you happen to think of and the mood you're in at the time, increasing the inconsistency of your interviews.

I know the intuitive idea is that you'll get to see how the candidate reacts, but that can be done in a less arbitrary way (and in a job-dependent context) through behavioral interviews and the like. Brain teasers are also often poor candidate experience, since they can feel unfair and unrelated to the work. If estimation is a key feature for PMs, it should be part of the interview process with well-defined procedures.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#29

Post by dang »

yanilkr wrote: post #22
dang wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post substanceless, snarky dismissals like this to HN. If you have concrete experiences that are relevant, those would be a basis for a much better comment. But rage-driven overgeneralization is something we want less of here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I am not sure you are moderating this right. That comment was very insightful. People hiring product managers would now know how some others in the company think if they brought in friends or candidates with inflated titles. One of my very talented friends quit his job for the exact reason. There are CTOs who do not know the difference between java and javascript. We tried to hire an accountant who had a title "Advis…

I disagree that it was insightful; it's a collection of clichés that appear here frequently. The phrase "west coast startups" is particularly spurious, putting down a specific region. Generic comments about idiots are bad enough, but provocations about idiot distribution are worse.

The specific experiences you describe in your comment are another matter. That kind of thing is substantive and can be the basis of a thoughtful comment.

Re: How to Pass the Product Manager Interview

#30

Post by mdorazio »

jpadkins wrote: post #24
mdorazio wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) That's not a "basic math problem", it's exactly the kind of brain teaser/gross estimation problem this thread is saying doesn't work. 2) You're going to need to explain to me how estimating the number of communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy (or a similar question) is an indicator of how well a person can understand a product's features, tech stack, and customer needs. Unless your product is s…

One variant I ask is 'estimate the number of delivery drivers needed to start a same day delivery service in a city'. Do you think this is a brain teaser or not? This is clearly not a statistics product... I find PMs need the ability to break down problems into manageable pieces to calculate, and estimate things with lots of ambiguity. How else do figure out whether an idea is viable or not, and worth spending more t…

Yes, that's an interview brain teaser of the exact variety Google and others have found doesn't indicate much in the way of actual job capability/fit. As someone else in the thread pointed out, anyone can look up the methodology for answering these types of questions in about a minute, and be able to tackle all of the variants easily with little actual thinking.

I agree that product managers need the ability to break down big problems (or requirements/client requests/company direction) into manageable pieces for their team to work on. However, there are better ways to gauge this ability, such as...

- Ask directly for an example of how they have taken a big problem or assignment and broken it down in the past

- Give them a real-world big problem you've had recently and ask them how they would break it up into team tasks/user stories/whatever you use

- Ask them to explain their methodology for determining how long something will take to build or test (ex. some people love planning poker, other people love logarithmic buckets, other people base estimates on experience, and others do something completely different)

Basically you'll get a lot more value out of interviews if you ask directly for experience or process they'll be using rather than trying to back into a skill estimate using a brain game.

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