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Product Manager Interviews

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Product Manager Interview Questions

Often considered the "CEO" of their product area, product managers oversee the strategy, production, and implementation of a particular product. Because product management teams include members from different backgrounds such as engineering, design, and data design, product managers must have strong communication skills and excel in cross-functional work environments. Expect to answer questions about your management abilities, prioritization skills, and experience working in product. Though not required, technical backgrounds are advantageous particularly when applying for roles at tech companies.

Top Product Manager Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: What are your preferred management frameworks?

How to answer
How to answer: Describe which management frameworks you prefer to use when managing teams and products and explain why you like them. Outline any limitations of the frameworks and how you overcome them. If possible, research what frameworks the company currently uses and discuss how your own methodology can work within those frameworks.
Question 2

Question #2: How do you prioritize between the different needs of your users?

How to answer
How to answer: Product managers need to make tough decisions that balance the needs of different users while keeping in mind the resources of the team and the general cost-benefit analysis for the company. Explain the process you use to make those decisions, including what research you do. Outline how you communicate your decisions to internal and external stakeholders, how you manage expectations, and how you deal with any negative reactions.
Question 3

Question #3: What is your strategy for onboarding yourself to a new product?

How to answer
How to answer: A product manager is expected to know everything about a product, such as how clients use it, the business model, and the roadmap for further development. Outline who you plan to talk with to learn about the product and its users, how those conversations will happen, and what you hope to learn. This is a good opportunity to show your enthusiasm for the future of the product and its possibilities and any research you have already done.

52,927 product manager interview questions shared by candidates

ROUND 1 Google recently developed a technology that can detect human emotions in a 2 X 2 dimension (energy level and body movement). What are some of the products you can build using that technology? I listed 7-8 ideas and then I was asked to choose one and do the product design for that idea. FINAL ONSITE ROUND Software Engineer Round / White board interview 1. What is object Oriented programming? 2. What is an interface? 3. What is a case and how do they work? (Beyond the Google Chrome Cache) 4. What happens when you enter a url and hit enter? (Including server side) 5. Write the algorithm for a mathematical problem 6. Write the SQL code for solving a problem that was given 5 PM rounds 7. You are the PM of Facebook's New feed. How will you select things that are to be shown to any user? (Lots of follow up questions) 8. Let's say Google is able to develop self-driving cars. What are some of the businesses you could start with that technology? 9. You work in Google's e-commerce business. The team is planning to enter into the hotel vending machine business. How will you design the product? (Used the CIRCLES framework to build the product design) 10. You are the PM of an enterprise analytics product. Your team just launched a product at end of Q4 and everyone is very exhausted from all the work that went into launching the product. Soon after the launch, the sales lead makes a request for a big feature based on customer feedback. The operations support person also circles back with a request to fix a bug. Given that you only have 2 weeks before your team goes on leave for the new year, what will you priority between the two: build new feature or fix bug? Engineering team just reported that both the actions will take 2 weeks. 11. You are the PM for a steaming video service. You come into the office and see that one key metric has dropped by 80%. What will you do? 12. You are the PM for Google Cloud developer series. Which customer will you focus on: Cloud Natives (Companies built entirely on cloud - start-ups / individuals etc.) or Legacy Enterprise (companies interested in moving to cloud) 13. Google wants to build a robot lawnmower. How will you do it? 14. Which Google product you do not like? Why? How will you improve it? Let's say you are the PM for that product. What will be your three roadmap like?
avatar

Product Manager

Interviewed at Google

4.4★
Dec 9, 2017

ROUND 1 Google recently developed a technology that can detect human emotions in a 2 X 2 dimension (energy level and body movement). What are some of the products you can build using that technology? I listed 7-8 ideas and then I was asked to choose one and do the product design for that idea. FINAL ONSITE ROUND Software Engineer Round / White board interview 1. What is object Oriented programming? 2. What is an interface? 3. What is a case and how do they work? (Beyond the Google Chrome Cache) 4. What happens when you enter a url and hit enter? (Including server side) 5. Write the algorithm for a mathematical problem 6. Write the SQL code for solving a problem that was given 5 PM rounds 7. You are the PM of Facebook's New feed. How will you select things that are to be shown to any user? (Lots of follow up questions) 8. Let's say Google is able to develop self-driving cars. What are some of the businesses you could start with that technology? 9. You work in Google's e-commerce business. The team is planning to enter into the hotel vending machine business. How will you design the product? (Used the CIRCLES framework to build the product design) 10. You are the PM of an enterprise analytics product. Your team just launched a product at end of Q4 and everyone is very exhausted from all the work that went into launching the product. Soon after the launch, the sales lead makes a request for a big feature based on customer feedback. The operations support person also circles back with a request to fix a bug. Given that you only have 2 weeks before your team goes on leave for the new year, what will you priority between the two: build new feature or fix bug? Engineering team just reported that both the actions will take 2 weeks. 11. You are the PM for a steaming video service. You come into the office and see that one key metric has dropped by 80%. What will you do? 12. You are the PM for Google Cloud developer series. Which customer will you focus on: Cloud Natives (Companies built entirely on cloud - start-ups / individuals etc.) or Legacy Enterprise (companies interested in moving to cloud) 13. Google wants to build a robot lawnmower. How will you do it? 14. Which Google product you do not like? Why? How will you improve it? Let's say you are the PM for that product. What will be your three roadmap like?

Design scenario: Let's say you have a tv remote with 3 buttons, mute, vol up, vol down. What would you expect to happen if a user hits vol up button when its muted? Talk through the scenarios and what the user is trying to do. What would you expect to happen if you hit vol down button when it's muted?
avatar

Product Manager

Interviewed at Google

4.4★
Aug 22, 2014

Design scenario: Let's say you have a tv remote with 3 buttons, mute, vol up, vol down. What would you expect to happen if a user hits vol up button when its muted? Talk through the scenarios and what the user is trying to do. What would you expect to happen if you hit vol down button when it's muted?

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