Product Manager Interview Process — My experiences

Hello current and aspiring Product folks, hope you are doing well.

This is an informative article objectively conveying interview steps of different PM interviews in variety of companies.

I have spent 5+ years across three organizations as a PM and have appeared to many companies for Product roles. And today I am sharing some of those interview processes and steps involved.

A couple of points to note —

• For obvious reasons I have not included the company names and final outcomes
• I have selected only the interview process where I reached till the end of the process regardless of the outcome
• These are not from the big tech companies

Let’s get into it.

Process 1 —

This was prior to pandemic.

• Recruiter call — Communication skills, visa requirement, availability, salary expectations | Phone call | 15 min
• Meeting with recruiter — Interpersonal communication, resume overview and experience clarifications |in-person | around 40 min
• Interview with HR — screening and cultural fit, 4 questions |Phone call | around 20 min
• Interview with hiring manager — Scenario based questions, questions based on previous projects, why certain approach were followed or choices were made, questions based on working with dev teams and stake-holder management |in-person | around 60 min
• Interview with COO — General discussions, future aspirations | Phone call | Around 25 min
• Interview with CEO — Behavioural questions (working with stakeholders, handling disagreements, cultural fit, what is your recent favourite product and why, which book you read recently, which book would I recommend to the CEO and why |in-person | 45 min

Process 2 —

No recruiter and HR were involved.

• Call with Product team member — General introduction, request for resume, communication skills, questions about family, visa status |Zoom|30 min
• Interview with Product team member — Resume walkthrough, questions based on previous projects (with emphasis on strategy, discovery, methodologies followed), why certain choices were made (prioritization methodology), brief idea on what to expect next |Zoom|45 min
• Email with a case study assignment
• Panel interview with 3 product team members (Sr PM, Director of Product, and VP of Product) — Case study presentation. Some questions were asked during the presentation, some at the end. Plenty of counter questions (supporting data for market size, assumptions validations, why certain features were considered in MVP while others were not, unit economics), alternatives to proposed solution and vulnerabilities, also focused on research methodology (competition analysis in domestic and foreign markets, secondary research, interviews of folks from target group, user selection based on geography, demographics, etc) | Zoom | a little over an hour
• Interview with a Sr Dev — High level questions regarding the style of working with the devs, how to avoid certain problems like requirement gaps, communicating business rationale, complexity estimation, etc. A couple of questions about hobbies and participation in any team building and fun activities in current or previous companies|Zoom | 40 min
• A call with hiring manager — discussing the logistics of the arrangement, expectations | Phone call | 10 min

Process 3 —

• Call with Technical Recruiter — General intro, why <company>?, your perception of Product Management, how do you do discovery, have you done any automation projects | Zoom | 40 min
• Interview with Hiring Manager (Director of Product Management) — Scenario based questions, Behavioural questions, Questions about key metrics and why one over another, examples of key decision and approaches (emphasis on data driven decision making) | zoom | 45 min
• Interview with Product team member — Questions related to a project that this person was currently working on (if presented similar problem how would you approach it), working with devs, experiences with different methodologies (emphasis on scrum), broader polling regarding two areas in which the team has active project (current knowledge, experience, and tactical approach towards those areas) | zoom | 40 min
• Interview with a Sr stakeholder — Questions related to previous projects (lifecycle of one of my previous product), Scenario based questions, stakeholder management (obtaining buy-in, resolving disagreements) | Zoom | 45 min
• Case study interview with hiring manager — couple of small scenario based questions where some information was provided and was asked what would you do and why. A comparatively bigger but time-bound case study where several data points and previous learnings were shared (considerable number crunching was required and emphasis was on the time to break-even considering proposed solution and given the impact of those proposed solutions on the unit economics) | Zoom | 1 hr

There are a few more but the article getting longer and the 3 above are already conveying a general idea, hence wrapping this one up.

You may have gone through different process during your PM interviews or you might be an interviewer who either thinks this is more or less correct or might even disagree with some of the points — Either ways please feel free to comment and share your thoughts and experiences.