Notes from my Product Management Interviews: Part 2
This story is written as part of a seven-part series under the topic ‘Notes from my Product Management Interviews’. Read Part 1 here.
In Part 1, I talked about Product Management — what it is, and looked into the definition of Product and then went on to discuss some more aspects that would shape up this series.
As promised, I am writing this post on the following topic:
PM Interviews: The Do’s and the Don’ts — story-telling, enthusiasm and much more
Two of the many key things that I have realised after working as a PM, as well as interviewing for a bunch of Product Management roles, are that, as a Product Manager, you are expected to be a high-energy individual and you have to be a great story-teller.
You are one of the brightest and sometimes one of the wisest brains for your internal and external stakeholders. You are also one of the great speakers in the company. When you talk, people listen (but of course!).
My prior experience working at Jivox saw me fulfil these requirements to a large extent, while it opened up more scope for my future learnings as I made decisions to further my career as a Product Manager.
Interestingly, these traits of you as a PM, are very well evaluated during the interviews. Let’s go a level deeper into this:
1. Product Manager: The Master Story-teller
A Product Manager needs to do many things right, in terms of delivering high quality deliverables and being accountable for the product they are assigned to, but what’s the starting point for you to even begin with working towards your deliverables?
The answer is simple: You need to understand 1. What your customer wants from your product, and 2. how you can rally everyone in your team to help build into your product, what your customer wants and needs. This goes back to the definition of Product in Part 1. Thus, communicating functional requirements of your product is what becomes the starting point of your deliverables, which all the internal stakeholders will look at, when they begin building the product/features/feature-sets.
Thus, your communication is essentially all about making a compelling speech and telling the story behind what the customer wants, and since the customer won’t care HOW you build what they want, you can skip being technical at this stage.
Thus, you become a storyteller for your team, walking them through the ideation process, and giving them a crystal clear picture on what needs to be built, so that there’s no room for error in what ultimately gets built.
Remember, you are ultimately accountable for what gets built, so you have to be a great communicator — both verbally as well as in written.
This is what gets assessed over and over again, in the interviews.
The interviewer would want you to talk about challenges you faced in doing something at your past work/education life, talk about any anecdotes, anything of that sort.
When they give you Product questions (which we will discuss in the Product Thinking/Product Sense post), the same expectation will remain even there — apart from seeing your approach, they’d want to see HOW you think about the problem and how you ‘narrate’ what you are doing/thinking.
The Art of Story-telling, The Do’s and the Don’ts
The Do’s
- be a great narrator, focus on your story and believe in it when you talk about it
- take a pause…before you begin your response to a question, and make a mental note of the starting and the ending points of your response while you are at it
- for tough questions that makes you think, seek some time before you think: remember, you’d have to deal with such questions from your team almost every time you sit to talk to them about an upcoming feature/the next implementation. Your interviewer will be more than happy to give you an extra minute or two, to organise your thoughts
- write down short notes/one-liners so that you don’t trail off as you narrate, or repeat a point more than once. Remember that the interviewer might also be doing the same and sometimes, they might want to come back to their notes and ask you questions just to do a quick fact-check
- if you have multiple aspects to talk about, structure your response by mentioning that you will be giving out a certain number of points — this way, you won’t lose your interviewer’s attention
The Don’ts
- don’t make tall claims. Remember, as a PM, you will always be required to set and manage expectations around internal and external requests w.r.t. what gets built/modified in your product
- don’t mix technicalities when you are making broad strokes and are talking in brief. Mixing technicalities might make you second-guess things as you speak, and you might end up making a weak response
- don’t rush to conclusion. Always take time for a buildup, then talk about examples along the way(if applicable), stabilise your lines to make them stick with your interviewers, and finally, hit the home run by ending with the right tone — your interviewer should recognise the full-stop!
2. Product Manager: The High-energy ‘Rockstar’
As I have mentioned at the beginning of this post, as a PM you need to have high energy-levels. Apart from having a balanced, controlled, nourishing, well-timed diet and getting some exercise and some meditation done right, you can also sharpen this trait of yours by reading interesting product blogs and publications that are relevant to the industry your company is in, talking to your PM peers, and so on. Being aware of things helps you jump at the slightest opportunity you get during those frequent meetings and thus enables you to contribute fiercely and effectively towards your team’s success.
Show off your energy/enthusiasm levels as a PM: The Do’s and The Don’ts
The Do’s
- be curious. Your curiosity most definitely gets tied to your interest levels and consequently, to your energy levels. If you lack curiosity during the interviews, your interviewer assesses (not judges; always assume an interviewer is NOT judging you) that you want to make do with only whatever is given to you on your plate
- be alert. This doesn’t mean look into a problem as a bag of horrors, but be steady w.r.t. what to expect and how to quickly switch to alternative paths/to a plan B, when you sit down to solve a problem with your interviewer. Your alertness defines your energy levels to everyone working with you
- be rational. If you are rational, it means you want to apply logic as much as you can, and thus can take a bunch of decisions without letting emotions drain your energy levels out
The Don’ts
- the first one that comes to my mind is: When an interviewer asks you introductory questions, don’t get too enthusiastic and spend out all your energy in answering these questions. Be level-headed, and wait for the tougher questions to arrive. Curb your enthusiasm (hah!)
- don’t downplay what you have to say. It is a clear red flag for your interviewer as they would want you to be a champion of your thoughts, and in future, of your products. Confidence is almost always the key
- don’t forget to be mindful and to forgive yourself if you are making mistakes. The faster you forgive yourself, the better control on the conversation you end up having and consequently, you will mostly end up turning things around in your favour
Phew! That’s all I have to write for this topic. The next parts will be slightly more technical, and I hope you will stick around to read them as they come.
Feel free to reach me at contactsoumyam@gmail.com for feedback, questions and ideas. If you liked this post, do add claps below — it is a nice ‘vanity metric’ for me that I am doing things right with this series. ;)
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
