Putting It All Together
Just remember, an internship today is a stepping stone to a career. Treat each internship opportunity like a potential job and prepare as much as you can ahead of time so you can shine during your interview. When you answer internship interview questions, highlight your experiences and your skills, and focus on your accomplishments and the value you bring to the internship. Be calm, be collected, and be yourself.
Good luck!
Expert Tips And Resources For Acing The Product Management Interview
The better you prepare for the interviews, the better your chances are for acing the interview no matter if you are the interviewer or the candidate. If you have the time, consider holding mock interviews with colleagues or other product managers.
If youre looking for more tips and insights, check out these past interviewers from expert product managers:
What Is A Good User Interface For A Product
While this question may be more common in the tech industry, you may be asked a variation of it in product management interviews. Here, the interviewer wants to know what you prioritize as a product manager and what you think matters to users. While your specific answer may vary from industry to industry, there are some key principles to keep in mind while answering this question.
Broadly, your answer may look something like: A good user experience is generally made up of functionality, simplicity, and ease of use. Products should, first and foremost, address customer needs. They should also be easy to understand and navigate, and their look and feel should be consistent and identifiable with the companys brand.
Whats more, you can cite some examples of products that you think excel in providing an excellent interface and achieving business goals for the company behind them. While the iPhone is one famous example, there are many smaller examples that you can discuss. If you can share direct experience, this is even better. You can also show off your product development work from a boot camp and provide examples of key pitfalls you will strive to avoid in a product management position.
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What Can Be The Adverse Approach For Product Development
Many businesses may start by designing a product and then exploring ways to sell it. This is an adverse approach. Since customers are the main target of a products ultimate success or failure. This is to explore what the customers are willing to pay and how the producer would meet their needs. Instead of waiting for the product to be fully launched, market research, product experimentation, and testing should be carried out during the development process. While the correct process should be ensuring that the product has been tested and experimented with during the development process, from conception to production.
Product Sense & Design
This the “fun” category. If you’re going into PM, you’re likely excited about owning a roadmap, defining a product vision and deciding on what to build .
This class of interview question is all about putting you in the feature-building driver seat and letting you decide what to build and make the case for it.
NOTE: Every company has their own terminology. Google calls these “product sense” questions, while Facebook prefers the term “product design.”
Example: Pick any Google product and tell me how you’d improve it. .
Example: How would you design a new to-do list app?
Example: Pick your favorite social network and design a new social video offering for it.
If approaching these questions is intimidating, check out the advice and tips from ex-Google PM and RocketBlocks coach, Allen Yang. And to see a Facebook PM answer one of these questions live, check out the mock interview video below:
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Break Down The Process You Use To Gather User Feedback Explain How You Interacted With Your Users In A Previous Company
This question is a favorite among interviewers. This is because the answer you give will provide recruiters with the insight they need to gauge how you leverage consumer data in order to improve their product.
The answer you provide will vary. One of the major factors that will influence your user feedback process will be the type of product you are collecting data on. Another huge element is the type of customers that you are targeting.
However, regardless of the process you use, the key is to state the importance of using both statistical data as well as qualitative data. The best product managers understand that statistics tend to be insufficient in gauging how a user feels about a given product. For that reason, you must allocate part of your user feedback strategy to collecting qualitative data samples that you can analyze and extract meaning from.
Here are some more questions on gathering product user feedback:
2. What was your process for gathering feedback from users? How did you use this feedback to shape your roadmap?
3. How do you know if your users are satisfied with your product?
4. How do you think about onboarding new users to your product?
How Would You Redesign Our Product
To redesign the product, I would build a strategic roadmapI would start with understanding what the product lacks and needs improvement. To determine that, I would communicate with customers, engineers, and other stakeholders.The next step would be to retain and build features that are unique and make the product easy to use. The idea is to make the product innovative and reduce variety so that it does its core function effectively.I would also try to make it cost-effective in order to multiply sales & revenues without hampering the users satisfaction.
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What Are Your Top Product Manager Interview Questions
Product manager interview questions vary depending on the position and the product but practicing questions like this and using The Product Manager newsletter can help you prepare for the interview process. The more insight you have, the more comfortable you will be in your PM interview.
Originally published at on June 25, 2020.
What Recent Industry Trends Do You Think Are Important To Address And Why
The answer to this question helps you gauge the candidates research skills. Its crucial that candidates are aware of whats going on in the industry so they can make better business decisions, and research skills can help them identify these issues.
What to look for in an answer:
- Threats and opportunities identified
- Methods of research
Example:
I noticed that live-streaming is picking up as a way to engage audiences in business. Content marketing is a must nowadays for any business to generate leads, and live video content marketing can quickly demonstrate how to use a service or product to engage audiences with exclusive content. I believe this is an innovative opportunity your business can leverage to engage your audiences and generate leads.
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Explain Your Role On Your Team And How You Work With Them
The objective of asking this question is to identify the knowledge and experience you possess.
Learning about your role in the team helps the interviewer understand your position in the hierarchy, leadership skills and gives an idea of the rapport you share with the team.
Also read: How to Find the Perfect Company Culture?
Product Management Skills And Experience Interview Questions
The interviewer will want to understand how your past product management experience will translate into the new position. Expect to discuss common product management topics, such as setting strategy, creating product roadmaps, managing releases, gathering ideas, and defining features.
Prepare answers to the following questions so you can effectively describe your experience:
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How would you explain product management to a stranger?
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Tell me about the product you own.
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Who are the customers? How big is the customer base?
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What type of customer research do you conduct and how often?
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How do you develop product strategy?
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What inputs do you use to build your roadmap?
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How do you plan releases? What development methodology does your company follow?
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How often do you launch new features?
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Where do ideas for new features come from? How do you decide which ones to build?
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Take me through how you manage a feature from conception to launch.
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Tell me about the most successful product have managed. What made it so successful?
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Describe one of your failures. Why do you think it failed? What would you do differently?
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How do you know if a product launch is successful?
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Can you share a lesson from your last product launch?
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Additional Situational Product Manager Interview Questions
| Please recall a situation when a project went wrong. How did you regain control? |
| Please recall a situation in which you disagreed with a teammate. How did you resolve the conflict? |
| What is your leadership style or philosophy? |
| Do you have any experience trying to build or motivate a team? |
| Whats your approach to communicate your product strategy? |
| How do you communicate and gain buy-in on your roadmap from other team members? |
| Is consensus always your goal? |
| Whats your approach to dealing with customers and users? |
| Is there a difference between leadership and management? |
| As a new Product Manager, how do you establish yourself with development/engineering teams? |
Additional Behavioral Product Manager Interview Questions
| Have you ever failed as a Product Manager? What happened and what did you take away from the situation? |
| Please describe a situation in which you made a mistake. How did you handle it? |
| Please describe a time when making data-driven decisions helped you find success? |
| Do you recall a time you made a decision without the use of data? |
| Please try to recall a situation in which you had to say no to an idea or project. |
| Whats the most challenging problem youve faced as a Product Manager? |
| How do you motivate your team? |
| Have you ever experienced a conflict with a manager or team member? |
| Have you ever had to make a difficult decision while considering the input from many different sources . How did you make your decision? |
| How do you make difficult decisions around determining your priorities? |
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Why Do You Feel You Are Qualified For This Role
I have a degree in production engineering followed by working experience with famous manufacturers. This also includes my contribution in keeping my products in market-facing competition and also failed at some points. I still have the courage and I still dare to face the market needs of competing with other manufacturers. I can make things happen and march through odd times too.
How Can A Product Failure Be Prevented
The key to success of the product is innovation. Refurbishing ideas and using stale concepts is a recipe for product failure. My first step would be to make sure that the product stands out with its features.
I would launch the product to a sample audience before the official launch to gather peoples perspectives about the product. In case of frequent negative feedback, I would identify the pain points and resolve them.
Even though marketing plays a key role, overhyping a product often leads to its failure. I would promote marketing of the product post its release once the reputation of the product has been established.
Pricing the product right is another way as higher prices push potential buyers towards cheaper alternatives that are affordable and relevant.
Resolving bad user experience, poor design, inefficient implementation, lack of quality control, etc. would also help damage control.
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Become A Certified Product Manager
1. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product Management
2. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Technical Product Management
3. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product Roadmap
4. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product Prioritization
5. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product Design
6. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product Analytics
7. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Product User
8. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Communication
9. List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Cross Functional Teamwork
In todays competitive job market, product managers cant afford to turn a blind eye to product manager interview questions.
Thats if you want to increase your chances of landing a PM job. Granted, companies across the globe all use their own unique approach to scout for talent and bring them on board as part of their team.
That said, when conducting interviews for product manager roles, most recruiters aim to find out three things about you:
Therefore, the most common product manager interview questions all help recruiters unearth insight on one or more of these three categories.
We have divided and categorized these questions into the following headings:
Lets dive right in.
Example Question: Think Of A Time When You Had To Work With People Who Didnt Report To You And They Disagreed With Your Direction How Did You Handle The Conflict
This question isnt really about what the candidate did, but how they acted in a specific negative situation. A great way to answer this is by describing the situation and how the candidate navigated through it. For example:
When we went to the sales and marketing team with a product, they were vehemently opposed to the suggested selling price. They believed it was priced too high for the market, especially given our competitors offerings. So, we pulled together the key stakeholders and asked them to help the product team prioritize feature sets. We then took the list to a focus group of our customers and compared the answers. Once we had the information, we got back together to discuss it. It turned out we could pare back on a few features to meet the price point and make our customers happy.
This answer both demonstrates the ability to negotiate and resolve conflict productively but also shows a willingness to listen and adapt for the greater good.
Other types of leadership questions might include:
- How do you manage team conflict?
- How do you create an inclusive and equitable environment?
- One of your team members wont speak up in meetings, what do you do?
- How do you get your team moving when theyre stuck?
- How do you decide to delegate?
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Name Your Favorite Software Tools To Manage Team Members Explain How You Use These Software Management Tools
This is yet another product management-related question. Here, the aim is to get a feel for the type of tools, applications, and software that the candidate uses when theyre on the job as part of their management strategy. In this case, the question specifically asks how candidates manage team members.
Once again, the answers you get will vary as every candidate will have their own preferred set of tools that they use to manage team members.
That said, the best candidates will make mention of some of the most popular management apps out there. These include Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Bamboo HR, and Zoho, among others.
The key here is for the candidate to first describe what the app is, and then break down how they use it to manage their team members. In doing so, you should show the benefits that the app can bring to people management.
Project Management Intern Interview Questions And Answers
Learn what skills and qualities interviewers are looking for from a project management intern, what questions you can expect, and how you should go about answering them.
Project management is one of the most important and in-demand roles in business. A project manager is responsible for ensuring that a project is completed on time, within budget, and to the clients specifications.
If youre looking for a project management internship, youll likely need to go through a job interview. To help you prepare, weve gathered some project management interview questions and answers that you may be asked.
Are you familiar with the Project Management Institutes Project Management Body of Knowledge ?
The PMI is an organization that provides standards and guidelines for project managers. The PMBOK is a document that outlines the knowledge, skills and abilities required to be successful in project management. An interviewer may ask this question to see if you have experience with the PMI or its standards. In your answer, try to show that you understand what the PMI does and why its important. If you dont have any experience with the PMI, you can still talk about other organizations that provide similar standards and guidelines for project managers.
What are the key components of a strong project plan?
How would you manage a project that is behind schedule and over budget?
What is your process for identifying and prioritizing project risks?
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As A Product Manager How Do You Juggle Between B2b And B2c Market Segments
The fundamentals of product development are the same in both markets. Any product with multiple value propositions must define the business model and benefit the customers through effective problem-solving.
The difference is that B2B products focus on enabling simple and profitable business activities for stakeholders while B2C products, demand a good user experience for each individual in the target audience.
Given that both market segments work on similar aspects but have different objectives, I build different roadmaps and strategies to juggle between B2B and B2C markets and in case of any discrepancy, I focus my efforts towards identifying the pain points in both segments.
