Getting ready to apply for a Product Manager position? Here’s an up-to-date list of questions and technical knowledge needed to show the hiring manager that you’re the right candidate for the job.
This year saw a lot of changes in business practices and industry growth—and the interview process has evolved along with that. In the future, expect more product manager roles waiting to be filled. New solutions and business models will necessitate more astute product managers overseeing these upcoming products and services.
Brush up on these potential product management questions, and ace that interview process!
Table of Contents:
Questions for all product managers
- General Questions
- Behavioral Questions
- Technical Questions
- Analytical Questions
- Leadership Questions
Specific questions related to product
- Product strategy
- Roadmap
- Prioritization
- Customer / Users
- Cross-Functional Teamwork
- Product Metrics
- Pricing
- Product design
Specific questions related to seniority
- Intern
- Junior
- Senior
- Lead
- Group
- VP / Director
- Chief Product Manager
What questions should a product manager ask during the interview?
What is the product manager interview process?
Additional Product Manager Interview Resources
What is a product manager?
The overall role of the product manager encompasses many hats: marketing, program management, operations, engineering, design, and finance. Think of the product manager as the “product CEO” or overall owner of the product. From inception to delivery and after sales support, the product manager is expected to know and be on top of everything.
How many product managers are hired and what do they earn?
Studies from Glassdoor indicate that the average annual salary of product managers can range from $63,000 to $200,000. The higher you go up the corporate ladder, salaries and benefits continue to progress as well. Seniority is the driver of the upper range, but this can also be fast-tracked with a combination of experience, education, training, and expertise.
In the US, the product manager roles grew by 32% from August 2017 to June 2019. That’s about 17,801 individuals. There should even be a jump on those figures in 2020 with the burgeoning demand during the pandemic. LinkedIn places product management as having grown by 29% in its 2019 job postings.
The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions
Questions for all product managers
General Questions
General questions will focus on your background and other personal details.
- Tell us about yourself. How about telling us something not in your resume?
- Why did you apply to our company? Why do you want to handle X product?
- Share with us a relevant experience (personal or work) that can make you a suitable product manager.
- What do you do in your spare time? What are your hobbies?
- What made you interested in pursuing the product management path?
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
- What are your top 3 strengths? How about your top 3 weaknesses?
- Why should we hire you?
Behavioral Questions
These are questions about how you handled or dealt with situations in work and life that can tell the company something about your attitude, skills, and personality.
- What was your most challenging task or experience, and how did you deal with it?
- How do you cope in a workplace that has a great deal of pressure?
- In what situation do you work best—working alone or in a team setup?
- If you were to start with us tomorrow, what’s the first thing you would do?
- Can you give us an example of a mistake you made? What did you do to fix it?
- Have you ever had a difficult staff or boss? How did you manage working with her/him?
- Was there a time when you set goals and didn’t achieve them? How did you feel about that?
- Were you ever assigned a project that you lacked the skills for? What did you do?
- Is there a project or proposal that you couldn’t handle in your previous/current company and would like to accomplish here? What would that be?
- Have you ever experienced conflict with a teammate or partner? How did you resolve the situation?
- Was there ever a management decision on a project or launch that you did not agree with?
- Was there a time that your product proposal was turned down or rejected? What did you do after that?
Technical Questions
These questions should gauge technical knowledge in specialized areas such as IT and engineering. Technical questions will also determine your thinking process, logic, and problem solving skills.
- What is your experience working with X framework?
- Are you familiar with what the difference is between front-end and back-end development?
- Have you worked with APIs before?
- Do you know how to code in X language?
- How would you streamline the product development process to achieve faster go-to market time?
- How would you redesign our platform or improve its user experience?
- What part of the product development process would be your weakest point, and what will you do about it?
- What would be your process in assessing new vendors for systems/platforms?
Analytical Questions
These questions determine if the candidate can understand, interpret, and analyze data to make sound recommendations based on the situation and big picture. The product questions can also present a situation or a problem that requires critical thinking.
- Who do you think are our most pressing competitors? Why?
- What is the competitive landscape today telling you about how our industry will fare (threats and opportunities) in the future?
- How should we (re)position the company given the new normal?
- What is the number one app/product in our category? What makes it number one versus our product?
- Why do you think some of our clients remain tech-averse?
- Was there a time that you were faced with a problem you didn’t have all the facts to help you make a decision? What did you do?
- When making a big decision, do you prioritize information or instinct?
- Have you ever decided based on gut or emotion? Why, and what was the outcome?
Leadership Questions
These questions show if you are capable of leading and influencing a team, internal and external partners, and the project as a whole. As a leader, your actions and decisions should also factor in empathy, integrity, confidence, and emotional intelligence.
- Tell us about your first leadership role.
- How many people or units have you managed? How did you monitor and assess their performance?
- What is the best way to describe your leadership style?
- How do you delegate tasks to others?
- How do you properly motivate people in the tech industry, which is known for tight deadlines and busy work schedules?
- How do you handle conflict among team members?
- How will you explain a failed project to upper management?
- How did you gain the confidence of your team?
Specific questions related to product
Product strategy
- What is your product strategy for launching a new digital product?
- How do you manage a new product launch? What tactics, strategies and processes would you use?
- We're about to roll out a modified (V2) version of product X. How would you position new and classic products so that they will both sell well and not cannibalize each other?
- Will you release a beta version to get ahead of competitors or release later so that we can have a “tried and tested” product to launch?
- What learnings can you share from your previous product development experience that can be applied to make future developments faster?
Roadmap
- How would you start creating your product roadmap?
- What if there are many projects queued in the timeline—what will be your approach to building a product roadmap?
- What will be the vision for your roadmap and its strategic objectives?
- What will you do to ensure that the roadmap’s timeline is followed?
- How will you influence upper management to agree with your roadmap plans?
Prioritization
- What framework would you use in prioritizing tasks or jobs?
- How would you justify the priorities and products that are dropped?
- From experience, what tasks can you streamline, skip or compress to make time-to-market faster?
- If pressed for time, what would you sacrifice in a new product launch?
Customer / Users
- How do you plan to engage your customers with a “boring” tech product or software?
- How would you approach the different client groups: new users, loyal users, inactive users? Who would you prioritize?
- How do you get customers to consider our non-performing products?
- What is your plan for an onboarding project so that new customers will ease in to being our loyal customers?
Cross-Functional Teamwork
- What model or strategy would you use in a project with many sprints and stakeholders?
- How will you lead or influence a cross-functional team?
- How will you balance the different types of personalities to get them all aligned towards a singular goal?
- How will you resolve conflict if ideas and suggestions clash among the teams?
Product Metrics
- As product manager, what top 3 metrics would you watch out for?
- How would you increase the adoption rate of your clients?
- How would you improve our existing retention or churn rate? What do you think is product X’s main reason for client abandonment?
- What kind of promotions do you think will generate more conversions for our type of product?
Pricing
- How would you sell or justify product X to someone who is eyeing product Y, which is similar to product X, but a lot cheaper?
- What pricing model would you follow for our product?
- What do you think of undercutting or skimming prices vs. the competition for product X?
- How would you create a pricing model to corporate clients who are interested in our products for the retail market?
- Are you in favor of a dynamic pricing model that, in this age of personalization, can shift prices and discounts depending on the user profile?\
Product design
- From a user experience perspective, how would you rate the product design and usability?
- Putting yourself in the shoes of the user, what needs improvement in product X?
- How do you know when a product is designed well?
- How would you manage a redesign launch for product X?
- How would you future-proof our product design?
Specific questions related to seniority
Intern
- Why do you want to join us and pursue product management?
- What impresses you the most with product X? How would you promote it to your peers?
Junior
- What professional accomplishment are you most proud of, and how did you achieve it?
- What was your greatest learning about product management?
Senior
- What is your breakthrough achievement or a successful product you launched?
- Was there a challenge that you had to overcome to make you a better leader?
Lead
- What was the biggest achievement of your team this year? How much in revenues did you achieve?
- What product delivery or development challenges did you experience and how will you address these?
Group
- What is your first line of attack when competitors launch new products?
- How did you manage your team with work-from-home and remote arrangements?
VP / Director
- What is your vision for product X this year?
- How will your people management strategy change this year?
Chief Product Manager
- Describe your vision for how product management will be at this company?
- How do you ensure the product teams are motivated and innovating daily?
Specific questions related to Top Tech Companies
- If you could acquire a new platform or company to complement Facebook, what would it be and why?
- What do you think we can further monetize in terms of Facebook Messenger services?
- What new Facebook features can you improve on or suggest in light of the pandemic?
- How would you clean up user data to weed out bots and fake accounts?
Amazon
- What do you think are the highest and lowest selling categories on the Amazon store—and what could be the strategy to lift the slow moving items?
- How will you sell Amazon Prime and make it stand out from competitors?
- How would you describe the user interface and experience of the Amazon site? What improvements would you recommend?
- If you would introduce Amazon in a new country, where would this be and why?
- How would you profile the Amazon Prime users?
Visa
- Explain the business model of Visa to a fresh graduate.
- What is the top mobile payment trend you foresee for 2021 and how can you ride on that?
- Is there a wild or out of the box digital payment method you just thought of or pondered on introducing?
- What is the most challenging but successful product you’ve handled from start to finish?
- What category or industry can we partner with to expand the business this year?
Lyft
- If you were to recommend another transportation mode, what would it be?
- Who is the primary target market of Lyft, and do you think it is the same for the different services?
- How would you assess the loyalty of the customer base in terms of using all the services - the food delivery, car, scooter, etc.? What percent do you think are the active users?
- How would you profile the loyal users?
- How would you use algorithms to reward the active users and to engage the inactive ones?
What questions should a product manager ask during the interview?
There are many types of questions that you can ask during your product management interview. What is important is that you assert interest, knowledge and deep understanding of the job.
- How is the culture here in terms of cultivating teamwork, innovation, and strategy?
- Do you have an in-house design and research team, or are these outsourced?
- How do you, at present, build your product roadmap? Is this a team effort or a management directive?
- I’ve always been a follower of product X. Was this idea spawned from an internal brainstorming session? How long did this take from inception to execution?
- What is your internal benchmark for the count of new releases or features in a quarter?
- How is the training environment here? Will I be able to recommend training to take?
- Will I be handling a team? What is the headcount?
Preparation Tips for the Product Manager Interview
Now that you’ve gone through the list of product management interview questions, the next part is to prepare to answer them. The answers may differ depending on your specialization, experience, and personality, so there is no single right answer. What’s important is that you deliver impressive, honest, and relevant answers. Make sure that you also read and research about the company that is hiring you.
How to Stand Out as a Product Manager Candidate
- Dress professionally. Even if the interview is done virtually, dress the part and project as if you were talking in person.
- Talk from your experience because that is unique to you.
- Highlight achievements and find ways to “positivize” your negatives.
- Stay cheerful and professional.
What is the product manager interview process?
Here are the basic steps for the hiring process:
- Apply for the job
Most job openings are posted on employment/career sites or the company’s own career page. Some sites and apps will require you to create an account and upload your resume and/or photo. When you find a suitable job posting, you can apply for it online. It’s just as easy as hitting the “Apply now” button.
- Resume is reviewed
Once your application is submitted, the employer will receive your profile and resume in the candidate pool. Depending on the role, career sites may receive hundreds of applications every day, so only those whose criteria and profile make a good match will be considered and reviewed. Make sure your resume is crisp, clear, and impressive.
- Phone interview
The company, usually through the Human Resource (HR) Manager, will put in the first call and conduct the initial interview. These are mostly questions about your education, experience and job function—high-level questions to determine suitability with the company, role and function.
- In-person interview
Next comes the interesting and most awaited part, the in-person interview. This is most probably conducted by the hiring manager, so make sure you’ve read the job description and reviewed the company’s mission and products. Get ready for the product manager interview questions.
- Take-away assignment
Some job applications will require a take-away assignment in lieu of taking exams in their office. This may be an essay, personality quiz, or case studies. Make sure to read the instructions well, and to send these back before the prescribed deadline.
- Final interview
The final interview shows that you’ve passed the technical and behavioral aspects of product management. Now it’s time to prove your leadership abilities and product management expertise to the big boss who will be doing the interview. This could be in tandem with an HR Head or other company bigwigs.
- Negotiations
Having passed the series of interviews deserves a pat on the back. What should be considered next is the list of benefits, salary and other incentives. Are they giving you what you asked for? It’s time to unleash your academic achievements, training years and management experience. Make these all add up so that your value will be compensated rightfully.
Additional Product Manager Interview Resources
Best Books for Product Manager Interview Preparation
- https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-PM-Interview-Product-Technology/dp/0984782818/
- https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Product-Manager-Interview-Framework/dp/1549948563/
- https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Product-Manager-Interview-Interviewer/dp/0998120421/
YouTube videos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61M1r69ZWDg&t=135s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj0zA7jlGc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SscoymxfaAI
Articles
- https://blog.usejournal.com/the-right-way-and-wrong-way-to-prepare-for-a-product-manager-interview-7aeaabbc3661
- https://productgym.io/blogs/product-management-blog/the-product-manager-interview-bible/
Job sites
Interview tips
- https://blog.usejournal.com/the-right-way-and-wrong-way-to-prepare-for-a-product-manager-interview-7aeaabbc3661
- https://medium.com/@jackiebo/jackies-pm-interview-tips-4659112a7360
- https://hired.com/blog/candidates/interview-prep-10-things-product-manager-interview/
Conclusion
The product manager interview process may be a long and uncertain journey. If you have been able to demonstrate your technical know-how, passion for innovation, leadership, and the drive to deliver a top product, there should be no reason for the company not to hire you.
Some opportunities may yield success, while there are others that you will just learn from. Just keep on searching, and practicing some more.
There are so many product manager openings waiting for you. This guide should help you nail your interviews this year. Good luck!
