Notes from my Product Management Interviews Part 1: Introduction
Product Management interviews can be challenging and very fascinating. There is no fixed template that can help you get from being an aspirant to being someone with one or many offers at hand.
Having said that, it is also true that practicing problems and doing some fair amount of research can definitely help us increase our chances at getting shortlisted and eventually landing an offer that we desire. Also, the more you talk to people who are experienced in this field, the better it is for you to let go of your inhibitions and be prepared for an array of diverse challenges that you’d face in an interview.
But let’s take a step back. Let’s first understand what the Product Management role is all about, and why it makes sense to be a Product Manager, especially if you have a tech background with a fair amount of marketing chops (don’t worry, if you don’t have either of these, you can still make it as a PM — I will try to cover a subtopic in one of the upcoming posts on this).
First things first: What is Product Management?
Product Management refers to a role that is responsible for managing one or more products in a company. Simple as that!
Usually, these products are the key offerings that a company builds over time, after having identified what market they are in, and what problem they are set out to solve (the order of these identification phases are out of the scope of my notes, for now). There can be all kinds of jargons, frameworks, structures, and management styles that one can associate with this role. I’ll start with defining the simplest of them all:
What is a Product?
A product is something that helps a user get from a point A to point B. Easy, right? Well, all the complexities of Product Management is hidden in this very definition.
Let me explain: A user will see value in a product when they realise that 1. getting from point A to point B is essential/important for them, and 2. it is essential but then without the product in question, it is near impossible/very difficult for them to go from point A to point B.
Thus, a product offers a solution that solves a desire, a need for a user, and thereafter, the user will be willing to use this product and sometimes pay money for it, once they realise the degree of utility of this product in their lives.
So, a Product Manager is someone who would be responsible to manage this product, which means
- how the product takes shape,
- in which direction the product heads,
- how the product is positioned in the market,
- how the product gets maintained,
- how to talk to different kinds of teams who are responsible for bringing this product to life,
…and so on, and on, and on!
Very soon, you realise that this role, thus, is a generalist role for specialists (hah!) who can generalise their specialisations as and when required. It’s like using a knife to spread butter on a bread toast and then using the same knife to spread jam on a bread toast, while never forgetting the possibility that the same knife can still be used to split bread toasts into two or more pieces!
Over a series of posts, I will be sharing notes from over 25 Product Management interviews that I have appeared for, so far, in order to land an offer as an experienced Product Manager (preferably a Technical Product Manager). This will be a seven-part series in all, and I will try to keep them as crisp, concise and interesting as I can, so that you can refer to these notes when you prepare for your own interviews. I will add links to various blogs and articles, that I have found to be very helpful in this pursuit.
I will be covering the following (each will have its separate post) in the next parts of this series:
- PM Interviews: The Do’s and the Don’ts — story-telling, enthusiasm and much more
- Product Thinking/Product Sense
- Problem Solving and Data-driven Thinking
- Figuring out Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs
- Tackling Curveballs/Addressing Miscellaneous Problems
- Competency Assessment
I sincerely hope that you, my readers, will find it helpful in seeing value in these posts.
Feel free to reach me at contactsoumyam@gmail.com for feedback, questions and ideas. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: credits to all images used in this post are attributed to the original source in the captions. The author takes no credit for the awesomeness of these images and consequently all copyright claims should stay within the original source’s boundaries
