5 Thoughts on How to Crack the Product Manager Interview

In my opinion, Google has one of the most difficult product management interviews. I’ve observed accomplished and smart people come to Google for on-sites but later get the news that they didn’t make it this round. 

While the interview is challenging, it is not impossible. Here are 5 thoughts that will help you land the PM Interview at Google or wherever you are applying.

1. Build a schedule and stick to it

It’s tough to find time to study but you’re going to need to. I solved this by building a schedule but keeping it simple. My challenge for you is to do interview prep every week day for 30 minutes, over a 1 month period before your interview. Leave a three day break between the last day of prep and your first interview to ramp down and relax. If you have multiple rounds, small refreshers are fine in between but the bulk of your studying will be before the first interview. Don’t wait until an onsite interview to start studying.

2. Listen to how great you sound

When I started preparing for the interview I had no confidence with my answers. They seemed too long, I rambled and didn’t get to an answer I was proud of. Also, I wasn’t comfortable doing mock interviews with strangers and all of my Product Manager friends were too busy to help. 

So my advice is to remove those barriers from your mind. Record yourself giving an answer and listen to a few times. Use the voice memo app on iOS or the recorder app on Android. You might hate the sound of your voice but you can hear the content and can make adjustments.

It doesn’t help to answer questions without feedback and if you hear yourself responding, you will be your most honest critic.

3. Draw a structure with words

An interview is a story and every great story has a beginning, middle and end. If you tell someone a story that starts at the middle it’s a confusing nightmare. Be explicit with your responses to guide where in this story you want me to follow, and paint a mental picture of how you organize your thoughts. Here’s an example.

Question: Tell me about a non-tech product that is designed well?

Average Response: I think my IKEA rocking chair was designed really well. When I bought it for $20.00, I remember setting it up and it was very easy to build. It’s comfortable to sit in for long periods of time and aesthetically fits really nicely in my living room. My friends seem to like it, always ask me where I got it and I tell them IKEA! When I look at IKEA, a lot of their products are built well.

Really Great Response: I judge good design based on 3 criteria; does it solve a real problem, is it innovative and is it as little design as possible. It solves the problem of sitting comfortably so it fits the first criteria. On the second, it’s very easy to build and rocks without leaving marks on the ground so I’d consider that innovative. Finally, it’s minimalist and made out of a single piece of bamboo. So according to my principles, I feel it’s a very well designed product.

4. Build your own frameworks

There are countless frameworks that are taught in business school. Porter's Five Forces, The CIRCLES Method, BCG Growth Method. These are all great and helpful to give structured responses but they aren’t built in your voice. They aren’t customized to your strengths so my advice is to build your own frameworks based on how you think. This will make it easier to remember, feel more natural and others will be impressed that you have enough experience to build a framework (even if it’s heavily based off of an existing one). Here’s an example:

CIRCLES Method (Generic Example)

• Comprehend
• Identify customer 
• Report needs
• Cut through prioritization
• List priorities
• Evaluate trade-offs
• Summarize recommendations

Liam’s Product Design Framework (Customized Example)

• What’s the Business goal?
• Identify our personas
• Identify the problems that they have
• Propose a few solutions
• Weigh the solutions strengths and define success

5. Practice thinking of bad ideas

This is an odd piece of advice but has served me well. We need to admit that ideas are precious and can be easily squashed from our fear of sounding foolish, but it’s those moments which make us unique.

When I was interviewing at Google, a PM asked me to build a healthcare product. After going through some personas and user problems, we decided to build something for the elderly. I immediately thought of my grandmother and how she just wants to talk to people. My first suggestion was to hire people to listen elderly tell their stories. 

At that moment I thought I had bombed the interview. That is the worst solution to helping elderly with mental health issues, but we continued down the path. It sparked into a different idea; let’s build a video chat service that incentives younger people to spend their free time with the elderly. This wasn’t something the interviewer had ever heard of before and would potentially increase elderly happiness.

Now that I’m on the other side and interviewing candidates, these little moments of creativity leave a massive impact. Practice this as much as possible. When giving solutions to your problem, try to add a far fetched one in to the mix and see where it takes you. Those little, unique ideas sometimes are the ones that make a lasting impact on your interviewers and show that you think differently in your problem solving approach.

Final words

I hope you find these thoughts as useful as they were for me. Comment below if you’d like more of these type of articles or just lists of interview questions and answers. 

Are you a Product Manager or will be soon? Let’s connect on LinkedIn. 

Good luck on your next interview! You’re going to do great with a bit of practice.

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This post has been published on www.productschool.com communities.