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, prioritisation skills and experience working in product. Although not required, technical backgrounds are advantageous, particularly when applying for roles at tech companies.
Top Product Manager Interview Questions & How to Answer
Here are three top product manager interview questions and tips on how to answer them:
Question No. 1: What are your preferred management frameworks?
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 which frameworks the company currently uses and discuss how your own methodology can work within those frameworks.
Question No. 2: How do you prioritise between the different needs of your users?
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 No. 3: What is your strategy for onboarding yourself to a new product?
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 as well as any research you have already done.
You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?
44 Answers↳
3 flowers - 1 rose, 1 daisy and 1 tulip
↳
The solution is quite simple, if you start with the “All but 2” first: Roses = All but 2 = Two flowers are not a rose; one tulip, one daisy Daisies = All but 2 = Two flowers are not a daisy; one rose, one tulip Tulips = All but 2 = Two flowers are not a tulip; one rose, one daisy Answer: One rose, one daisy, one tulip. Less
↳
I would say, "Do you consider three flowers to be a bouquet?"
Pepsi or coke?
32 Answers↳
Water!
↳
Personally, I can't tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi and I try to limit my consumption of soft drinks because they are unhealthy. If you compare the ingredients in in a can of Coke vs. a can of Pepsi, they are essentially the same, but everybody has their particular brand affiliation. That's really where these beverage producers excel: branding. And I think UnitedHealth could learn a lot from Coke and Pepsi in terms of branding and PR. The insurance industry in general isn't always seen in the best light and I think that's something I could really help with, marketing UnitedHealth's services so that customers have the same positive feelings they do towards Coke and Pepsi. Less
↳
Coke, please. And a bourbon chaser to go with it. Thanks. ;>)
What's the color of money???....
31 Answers↳
An 80's movie about Pool hustlers staring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.
↳
(Well played, Chad.) (Well played, Chad...)
↳
its rainbow color; when you have it, it shows your colors to others around you; when you don't, it shows colors of others around you. Less
An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents and a grapefruit costs 60 cents, how much is a pear?
22 Answers↳
This question is meant to be asked verbally so what you hear is Pear but what they mean is PAIR. So the issue is can you think beyond past paterns or are you predisposed to thinking linearly. Oh yeah... a pair is 2. Less
↳
After reading this thread, I have decided not to continue with the interview process. What a bunch of stupid crap. Seriously? This is how they determine who can execute a project and give excellent customer service. SMH! Less
↳
your numbers are off a bit..its apple = 40 orange = 60 grapefruit = 80..the answer is 40 cents because its 20 cents per vowel in the word...tricky but right... Less
Quelles sont les valeurs de l'entreprise?
21 Answers↳
Bởi vì tôi ưu thích công việc này
↳
Tôi cảm thấy rất yêu thích công việc này
↳
Công việc này là niềm mơ ước của tôi
you are on a biz trip and travelling from one city to another. you have a stack of unsorted flight boarding passes. only departure city and destination city are on the boarding pass. how do you find the first departure city and your final destination city
15 Answers↳
Your current location is your departure city. Your final destination is the city whose name occurs only once among all the city names minus your departure city. Less
↳
Why wouldn't you just look at all of the cities listed on the documents and the two which don't ever repeat are your departure and destination city. (For the two that don't repeat, one will only be listed as a departure and the other one will be the one that is only listed as a destination.) Less
↳
Assume this is a acyclic graph (a city is not visited again once you leave it). Now, arrange the boarding passes and note the number of times a city appears in departure as well as arrival. For all intermediate cities this number will be the same. For the initial city the arrival-departure = -1 and for the destination arrival-departure = +1. Now, you start traversing from there. Form a table where you take each node and note the next node. For cyclic graphs it is more complex. You will still find the initial and destination city the same way but the traversal will be hard. Less
The manager of component 'A' says his functionality is more important than that of component 'B.' The manager of component 'B' says his is more important than that of component 'A.' You can only implement one A or B, but not both - which do you choose to implement.
14 Answers↳
The key question to ask is definition of "IMPORTANT". Is it important to the managers (ego equation), important to the end consumer or important for Amazon. The first one needs to be thrown out immediately and the others must be quantified based on achievability, impact on end user and ROI. Less
↳
I would say whichever is more valuable to customer & gives competitive advantage to Amazon. Less
↳
In addition to the above suggestions, I would look at cost and time to market and then score both options. Then define value metrics. The cheapest and most valuable either as a technology sustainer or for customer wins. Given that it's Amazon, customer value will hold up the highest as one of their corporate culture virtues. Less
What is the marginal cost of a gigabyte in gmail?
12 Answers↳
Here's my guess at what they're looking for. Marginal cost - this is the additional cost for adding a user. It doesn't need to take in to account the software development effort, but it should take out the atomized cost for everything else. You need to price out the the cost of the enterprise HD/GB. We can call it $1 by GB. Then you need to realize that there needs to be redundancy, so at the lest we need to double that number, if they put a super high value on data retention triple it. Then you need to think about server cost and divide that out, server rack space cost and physical rack area...etc. So if it's $1 for the actual HD space it's probably more like $2.50-$3.50 for the total marginal cost. I don't work for google, but my guess is that they're looking at the though process. What will change with a marginal user increase and what will not. If you only think of the cost of the HD then you're not getting a job with google. Less
↳
The marginal cost of adding a gigabyte is either zero or thousands of dollars.. Either the gigabyte is already physically in existence or you would have to build a new server. The marginal cost is not averaged across all gigabytes. There might be a minor increase in energy consumption due to this extra gigabyte, but who will notice that? If your goal is to stand out in an interview, I would suggest going the Thousands of Dollars answer. For those non computer guys out there, let's relate this question to something physical.. What is the marginal cost of adding one more person to an airline flight.. Their are two situations, the plane in not already full so we can essentially neglect the cost of the additional passenger since it is so low.. (The extra energy to move the 200 pounds, when the plane is already moving hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the 25 cents for a soda..) But if the plane is already full, then the marginal cost of one extra passenger is the cost to fly a second plane.. Thousands of dollars... Less
↳
Isn't marginal cost the cost to produce an additional unit? So costs like designing the user interface, maintaining the webpage (which would have to be done no matter the gigabyte capacity) shouldn't be accounted for. Less
Difference between Risk and Issues in Project Management
10 Answers↳
Risk is something you anticipate in Project whereas Issue is something that is already happened in Project Less
↳
? Issue- potential to impact – have a plan to mitigate. (Is a "Known") ? Risk – We can devise plans to mitigate but no expected ETA.(several unknowns)- Also Risk can become an opportunity Less
↳
Risk is something that can happen in future while issue is a current event, something that has already happened. Risk may or may not occur but issue is a problem that has already occurred. Issues tend to need a more reactive responses while Risks require proactive planning. Risk can be predictable and will be preventable. But if there is an issue, its cause of bad planning and execution. Less
How many minutes before 5pm is it if 30 mins ago it was four times as many minutes after 3pm?
11 Answers↳
The answer is 18 minutes. It made sense to me to sketch a timeline showing the 3 components of time given in the problem that add up to the 120 minute total span. (X = minutes before 5pm, 30 min gap, and 4X is time between 3pm and the start of the 30 min gap.) Visually and chronologically it would look something like: 3pm --> 4X --> 30 min --> X --> 5pm. So then algebraically, the equation is 4X + 30 min + X = 120 min. Therefore 5X = 90 or X = 18. Less
↳
18 mins before 5 = 4:42. 30 before 4:42 puts the time at 4:12. There are 72 minutes between 3 and 4:42 divided by 4 is 18. So the answer is 18 mins before 5pm. Less
↳
That last explanation seems like you need to know the answer before you even start trying to solve. My solution is as follows: 30 minutes before 5 is 4:30 leaving 90 minutes between 3 and then. The remaining time needs to be split into an interval so that x4 exists. The most logical interval would be in 5ths because the 4 proceeding intervals would be 4x greater then the following. 90/5=18 for each interval. 18 being four times less then 72 minutes proceeding it. This literally look me about a minute and a half to reason through, which I'm assuming the interviewer would not want to sit through. Guess I would fail. Less