How Much Time To Invest
You could spend several months trying to perfect every nuance of your answers but in my opinion, after a while preparing for PM interviews tends to reach a point of diminishing returns. The fatigue is real and you might even get to a point that you stop making any real progress.
So in all, I spent ~10 weeks but that also involved juggling a full time job, family, life in the time of COVID among other things and towards the later part of my preparation, I noticed I was getting worn out and just done with repeating the same questions and answers over and over again.
Here were a few things that help me assess if I was ready to go into the interview battlefield:
- No fear of doing mock interviews: In the initial days, I just ended up postponing my mock interviews because I felt absolutely uncomfortable but as I practiced more, it started becoming a fun exercise.
- Can reasonably get to an MVP or a solution prep interviews: Again, nail the structure but also focus on the content.
- When the feedback starts to get nit-picky: Towards the later half of my prep, both my peers and coaches started nit picking on my solutions and encouraged me to interview. and at that point I felt I could go ahead with the real interviews.
- When you start getting bored: Trust me this can happen! Too much of everything is counter productive and that also holds true for interview preparation. Don’t over do it.
Class Schedule & Location
The product management certificate course is approximately 40 hours of work spread over 8 weeks. Product School offers two schedule types that emulate part-time MBA programs. You can choose to attend two 2.5-hr weeknight classes or a 5-hour class each Saturday.They also offer Product School courses in many cities. Check on their website or speak with your admissions coordinator to see where the classes will be held.If you anticipate needing any scheduling accommodations, Product School is generally flexible in allowing you to attend different times or classes. I had to miss a few weekends due to work and they allowed me to attend the weeknight sessions instead . They sometimes have students call into class remotely via Zoom as well.
Make sure you plan out your class schedule for the 8 weeks youll be attending. If you have any issues, let your instructor or admissions coordinator know as soon as possible.
How To Prepare For Pm Interviews
Most people prep the wrong way. They memorize trite frameworks and waste time studying old interview questions. Interviewers don’t want that.
Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, focus on demonstrating your core PM skills. It’s a win-win-win: 1) skills make you an attractive candidate 2) it’s scalable for multiple interviews and 3) it helps you succeed on the job too.
RocketBlocks is designed specifically to help you build your PM skills – from product sense to technical fluency. Its like a gym … but for your brain.
Customers love using RocketBlocks
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Why Do You Think Exponent Was Successful
Exponent filled a gap in PM interview prep. Theres books and blogs that you can read, but its hard to get any interactive practice unless you know a product manager. Exponent takes a practice-based learning approach, which weve found to be far more helpful than existing methods. Also, candidates could practice on our library of sample questions that didnt really exist online.
We created content that covered the whole funnel, from the structure of an interview to frameworks for answers to how you should conduct yourself. We have behavioral, analytical, design, and technical questions.
Right now, our videos are some of the best content in this domain on YouTube. There arent a lot of good examples online. So, the course curriculum reached an unmet demand.
How Did You Get Started With Exponent
Stephen and I went to college together, and weve worked together at a bunch of hackathons. Two years after we graduated, Stephen decided to take some time off and travel around America before starting business school in fall 2018. While he was traveling, he started coaching potential product manager applicants and doing practice mock interviews on the side. Given his past experience in product management at Google, it was a natural way to help people and earn a side income. Stephen got much more interest than expected, and in August, he got the team together. We set out to build an online version of Stephens practice interviews, and we originally called it PMLesson.
We signed up for a Stripe Atlas account, incorporated a business, and started building .
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How Did You Launch The Course
The first thing we had was 1:1 coaching, which people liked. Stephen mostly sourced his friends who were product managers or former product managers to be the coaches. Then, once the website was done, we added on a self-paced course with interactive questions. Customers purchased the course for a one-time fee.
The website got a lot of traction. People would purchase the course, then, if they wanted extra 1:1 help, we hired more coaches that they could work with. Eventually, we added resume reviews to the coaching package.
The Ultimate Pm Interview Study Plan
Here’s how to crack the PM interview, written by Richa Pareekh, Uber PM and former Google PM.
Are you worried about getting the ultimate PM job? PM interviews are difficult and very very demanding, especially with the rise of the prominence of the role. And it can take a few weeks to prepare for all of the most commonly asked product interview questions.
I recently landed multiple mid-senior level PM offers from top technology companies , and I want to document the process I followed for anyone else who may be in similar shoes in future.
In this article, I’ll focus on how I landed my dream PM offer, and how you can too.
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Social Recommendations And Mentions
Based on our record, Exponent PM Interview Course should be more popular than The PM Interview. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021.We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on Reddit, HackerNews and some other platforms.They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.
The PM Interview mentions
- PM Interview Prep Advice?
– https://thepminterview.com/ to practice questions your own.– Source: Reddit/10 months ago
Exponent PM Interview Course mentions
Salary Negotiations After A Job Offer
Did you get a job offer and you want to maximize the compensation that you are being offered? If so, then you have 2 main ways:
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Honest Thoughts On Pm Interview Prep
Product Manager at Meta
I know, I know, I know! This is not what you expected in a Metaverse Newsletter. Me too! But last week, 2 strange things happened:
So, this morning I had two choices: either to research some stuff up on Fortnite from the internet and write the article anyways OR write about something that people have been asking me. Even though I have a lot of resistance about writing on PM-related topics, Ill flow where the streaming is taking me. So enjoy this take on the PM interview preparation while I figure out how kids are playing Fortnite.
Quick Note Regarding The Favorite Product Question
Sometimes the interviewer will ask a Favorite Product question, followed by the Product Design question. This is structured as follows:
- What is your favorite product? How would you improve it?
The second part of the question is explained in the above steps. One way to answer the first part is to format your answer using the following structure:
Also Check: How To Conduct An Effective Job Interview
Plus Expert Product Managers At Top Companies
Rick Ochs got the job at
Pedro got the job at
Rick Ochs
Product Manager
With Product Alliance, I was able to ace multiple FAANG interview loops and land offers at Amazon as a Principal PM Manager and Google as a L6 PM on GCP. Thank you Product Alliance!
With Product Alliance, I was able to ace multiple FAANG interview loops and land offers at Amazon as a Principal PM Manager and Google as a L6 PM on GCP. Thank you Product Alliance!
Latha Srinivasan got the job at
Pedro got the job at
Latha Srinivasan
Pedro Bobrow got the job at
Pedro got the job at
Pedro Bobrow
Product Manager
Product Alliance blows competitors out of the water in terms of quality, quantity, and depth of content.
Blows competitors out of the water in terms of quality, quantity, and depth.
Michael Xu got the job at
Pedro got the job at
Michael Xu
Logan Hutchinson previously taught at
Logan got the job at
Former Lead Instructor
I’ve taught product courses before and taken several others for research. This is the best course on the market for product veterans preparing for senior PM interviews.
Peter Tan got the job at
Peter got the job at
Peter Tan
Program Management Intern
Itâs uncanny how many of the questions covered in this course I got asked during my interviews with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Itâs uncanny how many of these questions I got asked during my actual interviews.
Ishita Ganotra got the job at
Ishita Ganotra
Ishita got the job at
David Lie-Tjauw got the job at
David got the job at
Brainstorm 3 Solutions Explain Tradeoffs And Recommend One
Now its time to show your creativity. Think about the problems that your users are facing, as well as your business goal. How can you use the problem and optimize your goal? The is to be as creative as possible.
Some creative ideas for the alarm clock for blind people might include:
- Wrist band that has voice recognition and vibrates to wake up user
- Ear piece that is modified as an alarm clock
- Modification to the bed
- IoT device with Alexa/Google Assistant integration
After you list your creative ideas, then you should explain the tradeoffs of each approach and select one solution as the recommended one.
IMPORTANT: It is super helpful to have some backup creative ideas that work with multiple problems, in case you cannot think of something exciting during the interview. The following ideas might be helpful:
- Machine Learning
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Prepare And Then Forget
Mastering any art requires both learning it and then forgetting it. To be a skilled musician, you must learn the notes, keys, etc but then you also need to forget it so that the music inside you can come out. The same is true for PM interviews.
Read the PM interview book, take the exponent course. And then forget it.
Consider these courses as starting points. Solve a few problems from them. And then leave it. Dont go into the rabit hole of more and more mock interviews. Realize that they have diminishing returns beyond a point. When you have reached a point when your answers are not getting any better, then quit.
Pm Interview Question Banks
This would be my top recommendation to start practicing questions as you can practice questions aloud along with a timer to see if you can wrap up your answers within an appropriate time. It contains questions from all question categories and has a neat interface to use!
I created this question bank as a one-stop shop to get better at behavioral interviews and storytelling! It contains 110+ curated behavioral questions across 11 categories based on my personal interviewing experience. This preparation matrix will help your stories become really crisp and impactful! You can read more about it here.
They have a great question bank with over 2000+ questions and answers added by the community across different question types. Though you might have to pay to unlock all the questions. I recommend taking a 1 month subscription and power through the questions.
This question bank has top 50 questions with mock interview videos for each question type.
Some other question banks that are worth taking a look at:
Note: Be sure to review the interview questions on Glassdoor before interviewing for a particular company.
While it is great to know and practice with all of the resources above, different blogs and publications always come in handy with unique perspectives and resources. Here is the list that I have always referred to and found helpful.
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Whats Next For Exponent
Were exploring launching courses in other verticals like software engineering and investing more in our platform for a better experience across the board. Were now partnering with top-tier business schools to deliver our educational content to MBA students at large.
Its clear that this set of content is useful for product management. For our next courses, well likely start off with video since its been so valuable its been for our community.
Related articles:
Product School Review: Everything You Need To Know Before Considering Pm Bootcamps
There are many paths to a career in Product Management. Many prospective PMs consider business school, internships, side-projects, startup experience, or bootcamps.Bootcamps are a very popular learning model in the tech industry for several reasons. They are usually a great way to get condensed, accelerated learning for a fraction of the cost of a traditional degree or certificate.One of the more well-known product management bootcamps is called Product School and I had the pleasure of attending their Product Management Certificate course in the spring of 2018. In this article, Ill discuss what Product School is, what the courses cover, and how it might help your PM career.
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How Do You Make The Videos
We ask people with experience in product management to do mock interviews, a strong example for other candidates. We ask a question, an expert will do a sample answer, we ask follow up questions, give feedback, and we record the session. We dont have to edit too much .
Stephen is the personality in videos. Having that continuity – the same face and voice everytime – is important since students get to know his cadence and style. Learning from a single person is easier, although we might test out adding more variability in the future.
Some of the videos we put up on YouTube for free, and others are only accessible from the course. Most of the videos you cant access without paying for the course. The live stream ones are mostly free and on YouTube. Right now, our channel has about one thousand subscribers. Generally the view count has been growing rapidly
What The Interviewer Is Really Looking For
Interviewers are looking for people who can solve unsolved problems.
Some examples of such problems are:
These are all extreme examples of unsolved problems. But it doesnt have to be this extreme. An interviewer can ask these questions somewhere in between of a seemingly normal problem as well. These are the type of questions in which all preparation goes to the wayside.
It is fairly obvious for interviewers to test this since PMs are often operating at the edge of some technical or business frontier. They will encounter solutions for which there are no easy/ obvious answers. To be more concrete, what will differentiate you from the crowd is:
The problem with all of these is that they cant be prepared easily for. There is no easy course/ book that you can read that will prepare you for these. In fact, preparation is often counter-productive. The more you train your brain for ready made answers, the more you will not be able to think creatively. To borrow a Machine Learning analogy, your brain model gets overfitted. It cant tackle anything new now.
How should one go about interview preparation. Heres how I did it:
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The Evolution Of The Pm Interview
The PM interviewing process has become surprisingly sophisticated since then. I guess the reason is that the role has become so popular that you need more and more filters to find good people. PM is a very high leverage role. One bad PM can take an entire line of business down and so you really need to be selective about hiring.
If I recall my own PM interviews for the companies that I have worked for, here is how my preparation looked:
As is very visible, the preparation time for PM interview has grown at the same exponential rate that this role has grown.
How Do You Edit The Videos
Weve only learned how to make these videos through practice. None of us had previous video experience, although I think Stephen took one film class in college. Weve invested in multiple recorders , lighting equipment, and a video camera to improve the quality of the shot. We record audio and video separately, then, using Final Cut Pro, sync audio and video together. Right now, theres minimal editing. We add a watermark and title cards to show the experts name and cut out the bumpers, but thats basically it.
The fact that the videos can be so valuable with no editing speaks to the usefulness of the content on its own.
Theres room to take editing further by putting more overlays in the videos. We want to try producing higher quality videos. Like, really polish the examples we show and make sure theyre high quality.
There are some things that are easy about videos. An hour of content takes an hour to create. But its hard to know when and how much to invest in the quality of the editing. Its not easy to change things like branding retroactively since you have to take the older videos down and re-post them.
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