Product Manager Interview Case Study Presentation

How Many Cars Are Sold Each Year In Singapore

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

This is a frequent market estimation question in case interviews. Hiring managers use a market estimation question to assess a candidate’s ability to predict the market by asking smart enquiries. Remember that part of this exercise is about communication, so try to elaborate on your answer even if your numbers may not be accurate.

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

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.’

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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Make Sure You Can Explain Your Product To A Five

As humans, we think everyone has the same mental capacity when learning about something that we know very well. We all unconsciously believe that everyone has the same amount of information about the things we know.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, and its perhaps the number one reason why so many presentations fail.

Your audience will consist of different kinds of stakeholders who come from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. Some of them might be completely unaware of the product you are discussing, while others might have spent days thinking about the product you just presented.

Regardless of the audiences average knowledge level, its always best to start simple. This way, youll ensure that everyone is on the same page with the basics. As you progress further, let your audience engage and ask more detailed questions. Your answers to those questions will display your proficiency in the product and prove to your interviewers that your thought process was beyond the basics.

Map Interview Steps To Pm Attributes

Now we need to align what we want to test for with how we test for them .

A couple pointers:

Your high priority attributes should be tested in at least two different interviews. This gives your interview panel multiple data points to measure the candidate on what matters most to you.

If you find that multiple interview steps are testing for the exact same attributes , consider consolidating.

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Best Practice Interviewing For Any Position

In Yale Professor Jason Danas recent New York Times article The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews, Professor Dana recaps research showing that loosely run interviews are often useless, if not misdirecting, for evaluating a candidate. His best advice for conducting useful interviews:

What can be done? One option is to structure interviews so that all candidates receive the same questions, a procedure that has been shown to make interviews more reliable and modestly more predictive of job success. Alternatively, you can use interviews to test job-related skills, rather than idly chatting or asking personal questions.

Geoff Smart and Randy Streets well-regarded book Who: The A Method for Hiring, based on extensive hiring research, outlines a structured interviewing approach as well:

Create a job blueprint covering mission, outcomes, and competencies that the hiring process and interview questions align around

Perform rigorous short screening interviews evaluating fit against the blueprint using the same questions for all candidates

Conduct detailed in person interviews by the hiring manager with a walk through of a candidates past and future evaluating fit against the blueprint using the same questions for all candidates

Conduct focused interviews with other stakeholders to evaluate specific competencies from the job blueprint using the same questions for all candidates

Summarizing the common critical elements of good interviewing:

How Would You Recommend The Client To Respond To A Competitor That Enters Your Market

Tip: This question is designed to make you think on your feet. Clarify and ask the interviewer to repeat the question if necessary. You want to fully process the question being asked while taking the appropriate time to answer the question.

Example:For this company, they need to identify what makes their product stand out, and outline how it helps their customers generate profit for their business. If a competitor is not in a SWOT analysis conducted by a business, then they need to see this as an opportunity to help the organization expand.

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Tips For Ensuring A Successful Product Manager Case Study Interview

Here are several tips you can reference to help ensure that you have a successful case study interview:

Ask questions: As interviewers may present you hypothetical scenarios during a case study interview, consider proposing questions you would ask if it was a real situation. Interviewers can gauge how you analyze problems and situations by the types of questions you ask.
Focus on solutions: In many hypothetical scenarios, interviewers may offer you problems to solve. Consider focusing on tangible tasks you could achieve and describing how you plan to achieve them.
Describe your processes: Consider also outlining the steps you might take when answering case study questions. This can highlight the skills you possess that help you perform product manager duties.
Leverage metrics: Considering the metrics in a hypothetical scenario can ensure that quantifiable data and metrics support your solutions. An increase in sales with new features or low customer satisfaction ratings are two things that can encourage new products or features.

Case Studies Provide A Joint

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

Your business isn’t the only one that benefits from a case study. Customers participating in case studies benefit, too.

Think about it. Case studies are free advertisements for your customers. While they’re not promoting their products or services, they’re still getting the word out about their business. And, the case study highlights how successful their business is â showing interested leads that they’re on the up and up.

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How Candidates Can Eliminate Some Typical Mistakes During A Key Part Of Product Management Interviews

When I went on my first ever product management interview, I was asked to complete a short presentation on a topic of my choosing. The ambiguity of the prompt made this an especially challenging task for me. The hiring team simply wanted to assess my ability to communicate a cohesive idea, but without any further guidance on the presentation, I struggled. Similarly, a common practice for product management interviews is to include a case study prompt. For some candidates, preparing a case presentation is even more challenging than having an open-ended topic to discuss.

In subsequent roles that I have interviewed for, product case studies have frequently been included. And as a hiring manager for product roles, I have also integrated case presentations into my typical interview process. Seeing product management case studies from all angles has given me a greater appreciation for their value they are a great way to explore a variety of skills and capabilities of a candidate. Recently, my team and I reflected on several product management cases we have witnessed, and I realized that there are some recurring themes that cause candidates to struggle.

Set Barriers And Clarify Assumptions

There are many points that you can cover when it comes to the case study, but to make sure that youre giving a comprehensive and relevant pitch, you need to set barriers and set assumptions.

A key part of this is to understand the time constraints and make decisions about how youre going to handle them. At Product Gym, where we see a lot of people stumble is when they dont know when to stop: they dont know when to create the guardrails, barriers, and assumptions that stop their case study from going in 12 different directions.

When given a case study, the best thing you can do is to come up with assumptions and state them beforehand so you can create the guardrails and connect with the interviewer. Dont be afraid to ask them about a specific time limit or to suggest a timeline that they want the candidates to spend. Ultimately, the time that you spend will dictate the quality of work that youre going to put in.

So what do you do if the company doesnt have given guardrails that they can communicate with you? Dont be shy suggest some and see what they prefer.

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How To Ace The Case Study

Confirm the goals and the context: Begin the case study by confirming what the goals are, and make sure you have all the info needed to give context to the issue. Get granular as you narrow down the scope: who are the users for this product, what are their biggest pain points, and how do those pain points relate to what your product is trying to solve?

Propose and test multiple solutions: With the background of the product and its users laid out, begin suggesting ways to solve the problem. Try out multiple solutions you want to show youre able to move on your feet and wont get stuck after a couple tries.

Narrow down the MVP: Once you see which suggestions are sticking, start narrowing down a minimum viable product . Explain the reasoning behind your decisions so you can show the thought youve put into this and that youll be comfortable defending your decisions to others. Note that product MVPs shouldnt be confined to engineering-driven features only. Think through how sales, operations and other functions could help to support a scrappy launch that optimizes for getting to market quickly.

Plan the go-to-market strategy: Next, lay out your GTM plan. How and where would you launch this product? Which functions would you work with, and how would you work with them?

Understand Your Case Study Ask Questions

Case Study Challenge Solution Ppt Powerpoint Presentation Outline ...

The best way to know what youre getting into regardless of how the case study assignment is presented to you is by asking questions. Never start by going head-first into a case study. First, make sure you have all the information about the problem youre trying to solve.

Here are some examples of questions to ask:

How did the company create this feature?
What stakeholder group suggested this product/product change?
What is the goal of this new feature?
Is the assumption that leadership has already signed on board to this feature?
Are we assuming that this is just a small product that we have been given to test?

Another incredibly important point to consider is the method in which youre presenting the case study. Will it be presented on the spot, or is it a report that youre going to submit later? Youll want to ask questions that clarify the expectations surrounding how youll submit your solution.

Having this information is important for when you present the case study, whether it be in a written report or in person, but it needs to be the focal point of consideration as soon as you start preparation. If it is a whiteboard case study, youll be meant to present and solve on the spot.

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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:

Put Your Product Manager Case Study Skills To The Test

Put your case study skills to the test with our free online training course. Access to instructor-led whiteboarding sessions with real FAANG interview questions to take your prep to the next level.

Dont forget to call us for free career coaching to learn more about how Product Gym can help you land the Product Manager job of your dreams!

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Work On Your Math Abilities

Almost all case interview questions need some type of math computation and execute these calculations without the use of a calculator. Common topics in case interview simulations, for instance, include estimating and value, both of which require a certain amount of arithmetic to answer. While it’s fine if you do not memorise difficult arithmetic formulas, you may spend some time reviewing the fundamentals, such as subtraction, addition, division and multiplication.

Assemble Your Interview Panel

Case Presentation Interview Prep Tips | How to Crack Case Interviews

Product managers are the ultimate dot connectors, working closely with partners from engineering, design, product marketing, sales, performance & lifecycle marketing, operations and leadership. So its important to get a diverse set of interviewers on your panel.

Depending on the size and makeup of your company, this may need to be tweaked, but heres a sample for Mikes Bikes:

Candidate tip: familiarize yourself with each of these panelist roles, and be ready to speak their language. For example, emphasizing an unexpectedly delightful user experience may resonate more with a Designer or PM than a VP of Sales.

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Practice Putting It All Together

If you know youre about to face a case presentation interview, work with one of our MBB coaches. We have a private bank of presentation-style cases we use to prepare our 1:1 coaching clients. Not only will we help you analyze the data and develop a recommendation, well help you build a presentation to communicate it too.

Which Market Should The Client Enter Into And Why Would Entering This Market Align With Their Strategys Goals

Tip: Refer back to a SWOT analysis if presented and pay attention to clues outlined in the interviewers question. Lets stick to the AI software example.

Example:There is a lot of opportunity surrounding the expansion of AI software. Based on who the client works with and the market potential, the healthcare industry is the next market the company should enter into. AI in healthcare is expected to grow vastly over the next decade and the conclusions detailed in the SWOT analysis make this move a viable option for the organization.

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Be Ready To Take Risks

Executing decisions takes a sense of responsibility and ownership, which brings us to our second point. As a Product Manager, you should be a leader who isnt afraid of taking risks. When needed, you should be ready to take the drivers seat. There is no doubt that your responsibility will exceed a single product, and you will soon be expected to come up with ideas that will impact the whole company.

What Improvements Would You Make To The Design Of Our Product

Product managers often oversee the visual and functional design aspects of a company’s product. With this question, interviewers want to determine how you evaluate a particular product’s features and design and detail potential solutions to issues. They may provide you with a product’s basic specifications but refrain from offering more details unless you ask pointed questions. This helps them understand what questions you believe are important when determining effective product designs.

Example:”I think we could focus on ensuring the design is mobile-friendly to target a younger demographic. The desktop app looks beautiful, but I’m having difficulty with the overall flow of the mobile application. Designing a new menu item and layout, we could hold testing trials to determine whether a younger audience responds well to the new design. However, to fully analyze this product, I’d need to know what the target market is and whether there has been any customer feedback.”