Product Management Interview Case Study

Which Market Should The Client Join And Why Would Doing So Correspond With The Aims Of Their Strategy

How to Solve a Product Manager Case Study in 4 Simple Steps

Example answer:There is a lot of potential in the expansion of AI software. The healthcare business is the next area the company should enter based on whom the customer works with and the market potential. AI in healthcare is to increase dramatically over the next decade and the findings of the SWOT analysis make this a realistic alternative for the firm.

A Hotel In Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Is A Customer Of A Corporation Their Core Consumer Base Consists Primarily Of International Visitors What Are Some Of The Characteristics That These Consumers Would Look For In A Hotel What Factors Could Impact Their Decision To Stay At The Client’s Hotel

This question is a market-sizing or guesstimate query. Hiring managers ask these types of questions to test a candidate’s ability to appraise the features or characteristics that a business or customer would value most in a certain circumstance. These questions also assess the candidate’s critical thinking skills. In your answer, try to include specific technical details to show your business knowledge.

How Product Execution Answers Are Assessed

These kinds of interview questions have a large scope.

More than anything, your job in these interviews is to get the interviewer on the same page as you.

Explain product management concepts that you may take for granted and make it easy to follow your thought process.

You can expect each of them to assess your:

attention to detail,
and general technical knowledge.

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Prepping For Product Manager Interviews

Weve got you covered! Check out these great resources:

Master The Product Manager Interview Playlist: Weve collected together our best talks on acing the Product Management interview, from a look behind the scenes of recruitment, to how to break into the industry. Check out the entire playlist here, or enjoy this sample from Googles Product Manager

The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Prepare yourself for every kind of question you could ever hope to be asked in a product manager interview!
Product School Pro: If you really want to deep-dive into the best interview techniques, and become the master of any interview you walk into, you should check out the exclusive resources we have in our Product School Pro community. Weve got cheat sheets, templates, and more!
Hired How to Get a Great Product Job: Tailored guide-to-go for PM positions in top tech companies. As this book will show you, some of the most successful product transitions originated from people in music production or finance, with full-time jobs or with no prior experience. The collection of stories of Product Management transition will show you how its done.

Crm Marketing Case Study Prompt

While conducting customer interviews, you discover that service professionals get a lot of inbound phone calls they arent always able to answer right away. For these customers, service pros not getting back to these calls quickly can result in lost business.

Determine whether you should bring a solution to market. If you do, what does this solution look like and what steps would you take to get it to market? In a 13 page document or several slides, outline the steps youd take to go from zero to one on this idea and bring it to market.

Here are some things to consider :

How do you validate the problem exists?
How do you validate the solution?
What is your solution?
How do you bring the solution to market?
How do you know if its successful or not?
Who are your key stakeholders?
How do you monetize this solution?

You will need to make a variety of assumptions throughout this exercise, please state those assumptions in your document. Please plan to spend no more than two hours on this exercise and send it back to me at least three hours ahead of our scheduled time.

Want to follow along as you read the case study solution? Get more insight by watching the full presentation walk-through:

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A Case Study: Building A Product Without Any Full

In this post, you will learn how you can build an effective operating team of up to 30 people without the need for a full-time Product Manager. You will learn about a model of Shared Product Responsibilities and get some examples of concrete building blocks that you can put in place with your team. Read more »

How Would You Make The National Bank Mobile App More User

This is another interview question about the business case. In this case, the interviewer asks the applicant to assess an existing product, a mobile app, and identify what marketing methods they may employ to make it more user-friendly. You may provide some relevant references to your past work or projects as well, if applicable.

Common Product Development Mistakes And How To Avoid Them All: A Case Study

In this case study, CPO Ashley Fidler lays bare a catalogue of common errors made by her and her team when launching a cybersecurity software product. Read on for her honest analysis of the experience and to discover what happens when you combine ideas that are too early for the market, poor customer understanding, a Read more »

Take Notes While Your Interviewer Asks The Question

Product Management Case Study with Solution: How to Solve the CRM Marketing Case Study

This is a crucial step before you answer a product management interview question. As the interviewer asks your interview question or lays out the parameters and constraints, be sure to actively listen to them.

Make notes of the critical points as they do so.

This part of the interview process may feel redundant if you already know how to answer a question. But slowing down and showing that you can listen to directions and process information effectively is equally valuable.

Take the time to get on the same page as your interviewer.

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Nail Your Case Study Interview Prep

You got this. Bring your confidence, your passion for the role , and your enthusiasm to solve a problem. That, combined with our case study interview prep, can take you from underwhelming to impressive as a Product Manager candidate.

Do you still have questions about case study interviews and how to prep for the Product Manager interview process? Schedule a call with our in-house team of career coaches and learn how Product Gym can help you prepare for case study interviews and land the offer of your dreams.

Prepare Personal Case Studies

Its virtually impossible to prepare an answer for every interview question, so the next best strategy is to prepare case studies of work youve done in the past. Apply them as answers to a variety of tell me about a time when you questions. In general, have a few of these examples related to product instincts, leadership and teamwork, and stakeholder collaboration.

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How Does Spotifys Business Model Work

Spotify provides content, they want people spending most of their time listening to music
Its a Freemium product, where some people can use it for free and who wants something better can pay for it
They have ads for people on the free plan, probably they charge companies that want to advertise in the app
They distribute part of the value from the premium plans to the content producers

Do you need to know everything from Spotify? No, but you need to have enough knowledge about the business to build a good answer.

But whats the point here?

The process of discovering a new feature, ideally, should start from a business opportunity.

Thats why its important to understand how Spotifys business model works, so you can build a good argument to justify the 3 chosen features.

As now you know, Spotify provides audio content, they probably want people spending most of their time listening to something, and they have a freemium business model.

While answering the question of the features, you could assume that in this year Spotify is focused on increasing the conversion of users from Free plan to Premium assuming somethings at this moment is okay, you dont have all the necessary information, but it has to make sense on your argumentation.

With that in mind, you already can bring up some possible problems related to the conversion of users to the premium plan, some examples:

Another important point

Pitfall : Trying To Get The Answer Right

Case Study Examples With Questions And Answers

The single biggest mistake I see candidates make with case studies is in thinking that there is a right answer to the case. In some interviews, such as for an engineering role, questions may be designed to see if the candidate can solve a problem efficiently. But the whole point of a product management case is to allow a candidate to demonstrate their process, creativity, and communication skills. It is largely an exercise in critical thinking. The correct answer is one that demonstrates a product managers abilities.

The objective is to showcase the process you used to arrive a particular solution. The telltale sign of a candidate who is worried about getting the answer right is one who frequently requests validation of their presentation. If you are unable to deliver your point of view with conviction, then you probably already know that your case is subpar. On the other hand, candidates who use sound reasoning and build a story around their user generally dont ask a lot of clarifying questions, but instead work to convince the interview panel to accept their point of view.

Lets continue the conversation on or in the comments. For more on product management, follow Trust the Product on Medium.

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Links That Saved My Life

The first one is the Product Manager Exercise, its a website focused on questions on how to prepare for PMs selections processes.

You can search for any question and they have a great database with good answers to those questions.

Now were done of links, I would like to share some tips that helped me a lot on these processes.

Succeeding In The Interview

Phone Screen: This step is typically conducted by a recruiter. It is meant for them to learn more about you at a high level and for you to learn more details about the role. Be ready to tell them about your background and why youre interested in the company in a few minutes. For early stage companies, its not uncommon for the hiring manager or founder to take this call instead of a recruiter. For help navigating this round and beyond, check out our resource on answering questions as well as handling behavioral interviews.

Meeting Your Manager: After the initial phone screen, you will chat with the hiring manager who youll directly report to should you land the job. They will more closely assess you with behavioral questions and product questions. If it goes well, you might go on to meet engineers and other members of the team that youd be working with on a day-to-day basis. They will help determine how well you fit in with the team.

Case Study: Nearly all product interview cycles will include some kind of case study. Many are done via a take home exercise, while some are done live during an interview. For at-home tests, companies will expect more detailed with structured thinking displayed. .

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Keep Calm And Embrace The Fact That You Know Nothing

Most aspiring PMs fail the Product Manager case study not because they do not have experience, but because they panic over a lack of information.

In practice, Product Managers rarely have enough information about the problem they were asked to solve. Having seen many candidates interview, we can confirm that interviewees often disqualify themselves by showing the interviewer that they are not ready to tackle ambiguous real-life issues.

So, remember to keep calm and accept the fact that you have insufficient information about the problem thats thrown at you.

Failing To Explain Why You Made The Decisions You Did

FAANG Product Manager Interview: Crush the FAANG PM Case Study Interview

When answering problem-solving questions, you need to be able to prove the logic behind your solutions through reasoning.

If you cant do this, you will simply be stating solutions to problems without any justification.

Giving reasoning to your solution is the perfect way to close-off an answer to a problem-solving question.

Try to instinctively add reasoning to your answers, rather than wait for the interviewers to encourage you to delve deeper and explain further.

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Understand The Case Study You Are Getting

The very first thing you need to figure out is what kind of case study youve been presented with. The best way of doing so? Ask questions. What are you being asked to solve? What are the main goals and values to consider? Is there a set timeline for when you need to complete the case study?

More commonly, case studies come up in the third round of interviews. But, there are some companies that will utilize these exercises in the preliminary interview.

One great misconception regarding case study interview questions is that the case study will always be a take-home assignment. Although this is common, its not always a guarantee that this will be the case. In some case study interviews, youll have to complete the assignment in a given amount of time and on the day.

Sell Me On A Big Bold Bet

I love case studies that include an idea that radically alters the existing user experience. While a list of incremental optimizations gives me confidence that youre a thorough, data-driven problem-solver, I also want to see evidence that you value conviction. This surfaces best when youre making big, leap-of-faith recommendations. It shows me that you understand that assumptions and complacency can be detrimental to the success of your product. As a bonus, it puts your conviction on full display.

Back to our business messaging platform example: there are plenty of ways to make an invitation experience more intuitive. Whats more interesting to me, though, is questioning whether an invitation experience is necessary to bring an active users network onto the platform, or if this could be automated.

At the end of the day, product manager interview case studies arent just a set of instructions and mock data points. Theyre an opportunity for you to express your unique brand as a product manager. In my experience, a candidate who demonstrates a clear command of product sense particularly in the three ways outlined above alongside a healthy dose of confidence and creativity always gets to the next round.

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The 10 Most Frequently Asked Product Manager Interview Questions

These are the types of questions you can most likely expect in your PM interview.

What’s your favorite product and why? View Answer

Tell me about a time you had to make a decision to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. View Answer

How would you improve Instagram Stories? View Answer

Tell me about a time you made a mistake. View Answer

Should Google go into the ride sharing market?

Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone. How did you resolve it?

Facebook newsfeed usage is down 10%. What would you do to address this problem?

Tell me about a time when you dealt with a technical challenge.

Why do you want to work as a product manager?

Estimate the number of restaurants in San Francisco.

BONUS: Why do you want to work at , Amazon, Apple, etc?

Given the scope of the role, product management interviews consist of many different types of questions, many of them being open-ended or complex.

Hiring managers at major tech companies want PMs that are intelligent, adaptable, quick on their feet, highly motivated, and capable of working with cross-functional teams. The interview process for this role is designed to better understand your working style overall.

Many PM questions will focus on evaluating these and many other traits.

While it’s next to impossible to predict exactly what questions you’ll be asked, you can get the gist from studying what’s been asked in the past.

product vision, product strategy,
passion for product management,

How To Crush Product Management Case Interviews

This two-part blog series shares hard-earned lessons and tips that I learned over 100+ mock cases and interviewing experience with tech firms like Google, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, etc. I have particularly focused on sharing tips and frameworks that I wish I knew before and found particularly missing in standard PM prep books, like Cracking the PM Interview and .

I will attempt to share some of the best external prep resources and casing tips, with examples. Use desktop computer for best reading experience.

Here it goes!

Online peer community for mock case practice: Lewis Lin Slack Community

Books: “Decode & Conquer”, “Cracking PM Interview”, “Lean Product Playbook” , “Case Interview Questions”

PM interviews broadly test on 10 types of case questions:

Product Design* – Design XYZ product for ABC customer? Favorite product?

GTM Strategy* – How would you market/take XYZ product to ABC market?

* – Should XYZ company enter ABC market?

Pricing – How would you price XYZ product for ABC customers?

Brainstorming – How would you integrate XYZ services in ABC industry?

Guesstimate – Estimate market size of XYZ services?

Metric* – XYZ metric for ABC product dipped X% this month, what would you do?

Strategy – Should ABC acquire PQR player?

Tech Casing* – How does internet work? How would you design Instagram?

* – What is the next big idea that we should invest in?

Scope: Identifying the best product recommendation for a target user segment.

Sample Questions:

Solution Approach:

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