So you’re interviewing for a product manager role…

You’ve gone through two interviews with GreatCompany, Inc, and they’ve invited you in for a third. The next step might be a 3+ hour interview or “project assignment” where you’ll meet 3–8 people asking you a variety of “What if…?” questions about a [their] product / business challenge, and spending quality time at a whiteboard walking them through how you’d turn their engagement, conversion, or fill-in-the-blank numbers around.

This first post is Part I of a two part series to help candidates (and hiring managers) think about what a more senior level product manager thinks about when at this stage. Specifically, what do they think about doing in their first 90 days on the job? These two resources, here and here, are also excellent for going through some actual interview scenario exercises.

Post summary: (TL;DR)

• Hiring managers’ focus and decisions should be on the mindset of product managers; and tennis ball exercises miss some of the important areas of understanding that mindset.
• Senior level product managers’ biggest value is not as an order taker based on what you, the hiring manager, wants done. The most valuable strengths that a good senior product manager brings in their first 90 days (and next 9 months) — is discovering, planning and then allocating resources for what you should be working on for identifying and realizing meaningful outcomes.
• If you’re a senior level product manager who does focus on the why and how, vs just the what, don’t be discouraged by company rejections. Your focus is spot on and you just haven’t met the right team yet.

Methodology

I asked six women to answer three common questions in product manager interviews today. I quote them and their titles (where permissible), and for brevity, I compiled and aggregated common answers under three main areas. This post provides insights for how these women have answered these questions and what they expect when they’re are doing the interviewing.

These women have come from large established companies, startup organizations in growth mode, and external agencies, across industries. Each PM has had increasing levels of responsibility as product managers, from individual contributor to leading cross-functional teams and holding budget and P&L responsibility.

I asked women specifically because, as a woman in a highly competitive field, I was interested in learning what successful senior level women PM’s in the field were thinking and doing in interviews when these questions were posed. I was particularly interested in hearing about how they thought about the first 90 days on the job and how they communicated that in an interview where tactical solution-generation and execution seemed to be the hiring manager’s focus.

These were the interview questions I asked them to answer. They were invited to share how they answer as a candidate, and/or what they look for when interviewing PM’s as a hiring manager.

1. What would you do to impact [key metric] in the next 8–10 weeks?
2. What top three priorities do you have in order to realize the main goals you discussed (Q: 1) to impact/influence that metric?
3. Let’s talk ‘brass tacks’: What would you actually do your first 8–10 weeks?

I classified these questions into three buckets:

1. Mindset of the product manager.
2. Strategy
3. Execution: ‘brass tacks’

……

Q/A

Me: What would you do to impact [key metric] in the next 8–10 weeks?

Navya G. (VP, Product, Peek): One way to think of this is, we as PM’s have to be really good generalists. When you are thrown a KPI in an interview, you may or may not have had to impact or influence that before. Which is fine.

The way to think about the question is, how do you educate yourself about what you need to know in order to influence that metric? For me, it starts with education and lots of learning. It could mean, understanding your users. You’re not moving a number, you’re impacting lives. And understanding people and their goals is your job …. you want to understand your users.

The second part is, learning what’s been done before. Understand what other leaders have done to move that metric.

Then, it’s knowing the industry and the competition.

So it’s about getting educated, quickly, and demonstrating how you would move from knowing the least to knowing the most and under what timeline. You don’t need to know all the right answers. But how you go about getting all the education you need, from inside and outside the company, on a continual basis, quickly and to what end, is key.

P.K. (Prod Mgr, Tech platform for stock photography): My first instinct is to take a step back and think, Who is it for? We can focus on increasing market share, or reducing churn, but what is the real end product or benefit to the customer. But I want to understand what the core value proposition is, what job they are hiring us to do.

So in first 8–10 weeks, and you’re looking to make an impact, the absolute wrong approach is to come in WITH THE SOLUTION in an interview. Especially in a fast growing startup! With tremendous growth, there are lots of challenges of the product as a result. There is a lot of historical context behind why things were built.

So a better approach to this question is to understand why you built this, what was the thought process behind that, what has been considered already?

Take a step back and listen instead of propose solutions.

Tanya Elkins: (VP, Global Prod Mgmt, Solera Global Data & Content):

When I’m interviewing, [or answering this question], I’m expecting to understand their thought process. I want them to ask me “What does that mean to this business?” I want to have a dialogue.

It’s okay for them not to have domain expertise, I’m assuming they don’t, in fact. We have to rely on people who have the right thinking process!

I want to see they understand that KPI’s are always tied to a business goal. For example, I want to be asked, “Why do we track [X]?” and then asked “Based on what data are we convinced that that [X] KPI actually drives that business goal?”

Also, I’m impressed if they think about this cross-functionally. They might say “Who also observes a movement in that metric? Is it somebody in operations, is it the customer? What does it take to move the needle? To notice that we made an improvement?”

Secondly, I want them to describe how they would use that key metric in their onboarding into the company. In other words, How will they know who to talk to and when? How will they start to build the network as they drive their first project? What is their plan?

Navya: As a PM you are responsible for picking wisely. How many weeks do I have to improve the metric? Work backward to really know when do you need to start, and when do you need to be finishing. You have a structured way of planning and thinking. You can show your execution chops that way.

Me: What are your top three priorities to realize any main goals you outlined in answer (1)?

Melissa G: (VP, Product, Yummly) This will depend on your company and its stage and industry, but for me it comes down to these three things: 1) Ensuring focus: on doing a few things very well vs trying to do many things. 2) Sustainability: For example, metrics around acquisition and activation have lots of short term things you can do. But what can you do that’s sustainable for the business longer-term? I’d rather focus on things that provide sustainable growth and not on activities that rely on short term levers (like buying ads). 3) Connecting users with your core product value. For example, people who have specific diet preferences understand and get the most value from the personalized nature of our product, and that allows us to serve them in a meaningful way.

Sofilina W.: (VP, Product, healthtech startup) I would walk the interviewer through what I know so far about the company and what I heard during prior interviews. Assuming I know what metric they are focusing on, I like to review the analysis I’ve done on their users, what I’ve uncovered or understood about user stories, and what exists already in the product. I may not end up with three priorities, so I would present one or two if that’s what I deem best. But I’d show, based on my learnings and research (whether internal or external), how I came to choose one or two vs three priorities.

Jessica Hall : (Senior Director, Product Strategy & Design, 3PillarGlobal) You know you can’t nudge a number right away. But as someone who is external to their organization, you’ve had to have done your homework before coming in the door. So, my priority is to come in with some stated assumptions and then ideas, and places, that I know to look to solve their problem.

Secondly, you haven’t drunk the koolaid yet, or experienced the curse of knowledge. So learning what has been done before and where any potential landmines exist is a priority.

Finally, one of the best skills of any PM is facilitation. Can you drive to some sort of decision and then go off and motivate people quickly? So much about being a leader vs an individual contributor is about motivating people to action.

The most important really is to first understand where is the company in its maturity. Is it a new head of product they are hiring for, or is it a coach type of role? How many product people are in the company? Knowing this first helps you know what they are looking for — someone who writes user stories and grooms the backlog or someone who can think critically, strategically and coach teams to execute on a product vision and process.

There was a lot of information in these interviews so I broke it up into two parts. Part II is forthcoming.
If you’re interested in receiving it, please post in the comments and I’ll be sure to share when it’s done.

Clapping is always a nice thing to do if something in this post was valuable for you ~ Thank you, in advance, if you found something Clap-worthy!