Preparing for a product-manager interview
Tags: product, career, productmanagement
Published: 2022-10-24 17:39:43

**Introduction**

 Over the last 3-4 years, I have conducted around 100 interviews. Received and reviewed over 500 applications for the product manager position. Finding the right product manager is as difficult as a product manager finding a good job. I hired for different companies: banks, IT giants. The hiring processes differ, but on the whole there is some structure, which in many companies are identical.

 The interview process is very similar to a language exam. The results of iELTS or TOEFL don't usually show how well you know the language, but how well you have prepared for the exam itself. The exam has a certain structure. It's important to understand and be familiar with it.
You have to adapt your knowledge to the test - you won't have time to adapt to the exam itself.

 What are the main stages of the hiring process for a product manager?

- HR Screening
- Evaluation of professionals skills
- Evaluation of soft-skills

**HR screening**

 The first person you will encounter will probably be the HR manager doing the pre-screening. What is this? He'll explore your work experience and see how relevant you are to the position. The hiring manager will usually give criteria to highlight who the company requires. For example, the candidate can be expected to have at least 3 years of experience in the position with an emphasis on building applications. Or the candidate can be expected to have a good understanding of analytics, so it is important for the recruiter at the HR screening to know how well you understand metrics. Then, if you have worked as an analyst and you might be interested in building your career further with the focus on this particular skill.

If the HR-manager does not say what the requirements are for candidates for the job, be sure to ask him. Why is this important? Because a product-manager is a collective character of a wide range of skills and nobody can be highly professional in all of them of course. Often in large companies there is a well-established system for assessing candidates, the hiring manager is either looking for an all-round person or he wants to supplement the team with some specific skills.

**Evaluation of professional skills (hard-skills)**
 
After the HR screening, there is an interview with the hiring active specialist. This interview, more often than not, is aimed at diagnosing hard-skills. What are hard-skills?

 A product manager is similar to an orchestra. The wide range of competencies required for each position varies. Let me remind you that you do not have to be an expert in every field. It is important to have basic knowledge in all fields and to be well prepared in two or three areas.

 The main areas of expertise for a product manager include:

- Basic product management:(frameworks/roadmap/canvas)
- Product strategy
- Customer Discovery
- User Experience/Design
- Marketing
- Data Analysis
- Business strategy: UE, Business Models Canvas
- Development methodologies (Agile: Scrum, Kanban, Less, PM)
- Technology

How are hard-skills tested during an interview?

- Assessing the relevance of your past experience for the particular job.
- Testing of professional skills with assignments during the interview.
- Homework test assignments between the interviews.

 How is the testing carried out?

 The first and most obvious thing, of course, you will be asked about your experience. How is the experience relevant to the position? Do you have a successful track record of solving the product challenges?

 The hard-skills testing will also test your understanding of the industry. This can consist of a number of things. First, you may have had experience
in this industry. Secondly, even if you have no experience in this industry, you may be the target audience. For example, if you want to get a job at a music streaming service and you are a music fan, follow new releases, labels, albums and are generally an active user of various streaming apps, then this is also your experience and can be viewed by the hiring manager as an advantage.

 In addition to understanding the industry and the target audience, it is very important to know the market in that industry: it is important to know the main players in that market (both local and global players). Understand how they divide this market amongst themselves. Be aware of what differences they have in their product. Have a good understanding of the business model using which these particular companies and their competitors work. What they make money from. What they sell. Who the users of their product are and who pays for their product.

 It is important to understand that the test tasks during the interview aim to understand how you think, what decision-making frameworks are embedded in you and how you can make quick decisions under stress. The main objective of your interview for you is to stay collected, have ready-made frameworks for different types of problems and not be afraid of them. This is actually quite interesting.

 A homework assignment is a good way to find out how interested you really are in working on the product. It often happens that we look at a large company and think "the main thing for me is to secure the job and then I'll figure it out". However, in this big company you may have 50 products and the specific product you are hired for may be of no interest to you at all. Because you are not the target audience. In that case, this is not a good job fit for you, regardless of the company.

**Evaluation of cross-sectional skills (soft-skills)**

 In large companies, this part of assessment is often carried out by managers in related departments, i.e. colleagues at your level. Why? Because large companies have an established corporate culture, it is very important to understand how the new person will fit (or not) into this culture.

 There are several aspects that will be tested within the soft-skills section:

 Communication. Ability to establish contact with the team, stakeholders, management. How you act in conflict situations. Skills in moderation: moderation and facilitation of working meetings. Presentation skills. The ability to concisely formulate thoughts in a written form.

 Leadership. A team has to be constantly propelled forward. You have to be able to engage the stakeholders with your objectives. Be able to sell your idea to management.

Goal setting and critical thinking. Justify your decisions, formulate goals and focus on them. Trust the facts and call your ideas hypotheses.

 Entrepreneurial thinking. For me it's about resourcefulness, deleting the word “giving up” from your dictionary, focusing on the results and the energy that drives the team forward.

 Creativity. The ability to create from scratch and/or propose new solutions for existing products.

 Attention to detail. Be able to quickly change your focus between micro and macro levels. Balance between between the big final goal and the details of a particular solution.

 Basic management: team motivation, peer feedback, team development, resource management. Also, emotional intelligence: self-confidence, self-regulation skills, stress management.

**Final words**

 Remember, an interview is not a university graduation exam. You can and should ask clarifying questions and you do not have to know everything. My product management experience was built during more than 8 years and right now I don't know everything for sure. At the interview you will not be judged on memorised theory, but on your ability to to cope with new challenges, openness to new things and systematic thinking.

 Finally, after you’ve prepared for the interview using the steps detailed in this guide, it would be a good idea to look into the company you’re applying to. In the job description in the "Responsible for" and "Skills/experience required" blocks, you can see which aspects are most important in this role for the company. These can be emphasised in the preparation. Formulate an understanding of what products the company has. Understand what main problems they solve and how, hypothetically, they can be improved. Research the history of the company, how long it has been on the market, what structure it has, when and what key investments were made.

 I am sure that some of your friends or their friends work or have worked there. Invite them for coffee and ask questions about how the recruitment is performed. Ask for advice and guidance. All of the above together will give you a strong foundation to stand on during the interview. Good luck!