This article was written based on multiple interviews with product leaders from Google, Meta, Amazon, Stripe, Doordash, Uber, and many more. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
To effectively evaluate candidates for their leadership and expertise in product management, I have outlined four essential rules to follow during the interview process (plus a bonus cheat sheet in the end). These will help hiring managers and interviewers identify individuals who demonstrate exceptional qualities in formulating product strategies, executing plans, and critically analyzing products. Additionally, candidates will have the opportunity to engage with cross-functional collaborators from Engineering, Data, Business, and Design.
By adhering to these rules, hiring managers can ensure a thorough assessment of each candidate's potential contributions to the organization.
Rule #1: Always Follow Your Assigned Interview "Hat"
Each candidate will go through a sequence of five distinct interviews, referred to as the five “hats”. Interviewers will be assigned one of these hats, which will decide the main areas of focus during the interview. This methodology ensures that feedback from the candidate is both exhaustive and addresses all pertinent areas.
The Five “Hats”:
Project Retrospective: 45 minutes
Leadership and People Management: 45 minutes
Product Insights: 45 minutes
Execution: 45 minutes
Cross-Functional Collaboration and Influence: 45 minutes
Hat # 1: Project Retrospective (45 minutes)
Objective: Assess the candidate’s competency in strategizing and efficiently executing complex projects.
Recommended Approach: Engage in an in-depth conversation about one or two projects the candidate has overseen, and ensure that the focus areas listed below are addressed.
Strategy: Proactively influence, formulate, and steer the strategic path of projects and teams.
Execution: Ensure efficient and successful execution of strategies while skillfully navigating through challenges.
Impact: Emphasize the elements crucial for generating significant impact.
Communication: Convey information in an organized, succinct, and transparent manner.
Go-to-Market Strategy: Forge solid and impactful go-to-market or launch strategies that:
Are in sync with the product or company’s roadmap and vision.
Display an understanding of the competitive environment and resource limitations.
Elegantly spotlight the distinctive value proposition of the proposed products or features.
Hat # 2: Leadership and People Management (45 minutes)
Objective: Evaluate the candidate's aptitude in promoting organizational well-being, handling personnel, aiding in people development, and building high performance teams.
Recommended Approach: Reflect on the candidate’s prior experiences that demonstrate achievements and indicate how they effectively navigated the complexities of nurturing, assisting, and developing team members.
Organizational Health: Leverage data to comprehend the challenges encountered by the team and implement reactive measures.
People Management: Monitor team performance, adapt managerial tactics, and take corrective measures as needed.
People Development: Equip individuals for enlarged roles and challenges.
Team Building: Recruit and assimilate high-achieving individuals.
Team Empowerment: Thoughtfully collect and harness feedback from team members to assign authority and responsibilities, ensuring the availability of resources for success.
Hat # 3: Product Insights (45 minutes)
Objective: Evaluate the candidate's capacity to utilize market insights to cultivate and refine product concepts that provide significant value propositions and align with the organization’s strategic objectives.
Recommended Approach: Provide hypothetical scenarios and possibly request additional information to ascertain how the candidate tackles challenges and adapts to alterations.
Identifying Needs: Dissect market opportunities, understand user requirements, and spot opportunities.
Value and Impact: Formulate a product vision centered on value, rationalize decisions, and concentrate on core values.
Intentional Design Choices: Develop product designs, incorporating overarching goals and priorities into the product concepts.
Feedback and Adaptation: Process, assimilate, and iterate based on feedback, fresh data, and limitations.
Hat # 4: Execution (45 minutes)
Objective: Ascertain the candidate's proficiency in prioritization and driving teams in launching ideas and resolving complex problems.
Recommended Approach: Delve into a hypothetical scenario provided by the interviewer.
Goal-Setting: Establish intrinsic goals for a product.
Trade-offs: Rigorously explore trade-offs, taking various factors into account.
Problem Analysis: Apply a methodical approach to understanding an issue and deconstruct it to pinpoint the core problem.
Team Success: Evaluate team performance, particularly in relation to goal-setting and clarity of focus.
Hat # 5: Cross-Functional Collaboration and Influence (45 minutes)
Objective: Analyze the candidate's ability to build cross-functional cooperation and influence effectively throughout the organization.
Focus Areas:
Collaboration: Cultivate positive and efficient cross-functional relationships.
Conflict Resolution: Manage and resolve conflicts adeptly.
Influence: Employ strategic communication to unify stakeholders around common goals and results.
Communication: Articulate information in an orderly, concise, and lucid manner.
Rule #2: Ask Insightful Questions
Creating insightful and precise questions for product manager (PM) interviews can be challenging. Maintaining an extensive list of questions is often impractical. It is recommended to have a concise set (3-7) of carefully crafted questions that resonate with you and are well understood by you. Here are some guidelines to help you generate interview questions:
Focus on Probing Questions
Ask Challenging Questions: Instead of evaluating conversational skills, aim to delve deep into a candidate's abilities. Foster intellectual rigor while maintaining a friendly atmosphere. The best interviews resemble engaging discussions among colleagues.
Create a Welcoming Environment: Start the interview with questions about the candidate's background to establish a comfortable tone. It is easier for candidates to discuss their own experiences. Gradually transition to more demanding questions as the interview progresses.
Pose Complex and Ambiguous Questions: Great questions have multiple layers and don't have a single correct answer. Avoid fixating on one specific response or insight.
Design Scalable Questions: Craft questions that allow for comparison across different candidates. Avoid overly open-ended questions. For PM roles, questions like "Design [X] for [Y unique user base]" tend to work well.
Use Multi-Part Questions: Encourage candidates to explore different angles by incorporating multiple prompts in your questions.
Include Two or Three Substantial Questions: Asking multiple questions helps evaluate candidates more comprehensively. These questions should cover various aspects, and time management is important.
Avoid These Mistakes
Brain Teasers: Stay away from riddles or questions with a single correct answer, as candidates familiar with them may have an unfair advantage.
Company-Specific Questions: Asking about ongoing projects or company-specific matters may not be fair as you have more knowledge in those areas than the candidates.
Overemphasizing Past Experience: While background questions are good ice-breakers, spending too much time on this topic can be counterproductive. Candidates may exaggerate their past experiences.
Requiring Specialized Knowledge: Avoid questions that require deep knowledge of specific fields. In PM roles, adaptability and a strong foundational knowledge are more important than specialized expertise.
Overly Open-Ended Questions: When responses vary too much, it becomes difficult to compare candidates effectively.
Rule #3: Write Succinct AND Thorough Feedback
It is crucial to provide feedback that is concise yet packed with valuable information. Aim to write approximately one paragraph for each feedback section. Clarity and brevity are essential. Make sure that the tone and content of your feedback align with the overall rating you assign. For example, if a candidate receives a score of 3.6, but your feedback mostly focuses on negatives, it will confuse the hiring panel.
Highlight Key Themes and Back Them Up with Concrete Examples: Hiring panels often skim through feedback, sometimes only reading the Overall Summary and the first line of each section. In more complex cases, they may require supporting examples. Structure your feedback to accommodate these scenarios:
Overall Summary: Keep it around a paragraph length and emphasize the main themes without going into too much detail. Conclude with a clear recommendation (e.g., "We should proceed with hiring Tarun if other interviewers observe a stronger cultural alignment.").
Section Summaries: Begin each section with a concise summary, such as "Strong analytical skills but lacks motivation," or use labels like "Below average," "Average," "Above average," or "Outstanding."
Elaborate within Sections: In each section, identify a few key themes in the opening sentences and then provide concrete examples that support those themes.
Focus on Themes, Not Questions: Organize your feedback around the insights and themes revealed through the questions, rather than solely focusing on the specific questions asked during the interview. If necessary, provide additional information organized by question.
Submit Feedback Promptly Within 48 Hours: Writing feedback doesn't become easier with time. It's best to make a decision and draft your feedback within 48 hours after the interview. Some interviewers find it helpful to provide feedback immediately after the interview while the details are fresh in their memory. This often leads to higher quality feedback and a quicker completion time. Remember, delays in feedback can prolong and complicate the hiring process, so timely input is crucial.
Rule #4: Assign Accurate Feedback Scores
The score you assign to a candidate is the primary way to convey your assessment to the Hiring Committee. Here are some helpful guidelines for calibrated scoring:
4.0 - 3.5: Strong Hire - Recommend hiring the candidate based on this feedback.
4.0: This candidate is a perfect fit for the role. Not hiring them would be a significant oversight.
3.9: This candidate is almost flawless and should be hired despite minor reservations from others. I will actively support their recruitment.
3.8 - 3.7: I highly endorse this candidate, even if others have minor concerns.
3.6 - 3.5: This candidate should be hired unless there are significant concerns from others.
3.4 - 3.0: Weak Hire - Consider employment if strongly endorsed by at least one other person.
3.4 - 3.2: I would be pleased if this candidate is offered the position, but my endorsement alone should not be the deciding factor.
3.1 - 3.0: I am neutral about this candidate receiving an offer, but it should depend on strong endorsements from others.
2.9 - 2.4: Indifferent - Do not hire unless the majority strongly lean towards hiring. I do not recommend hiring this candidate, but if others have strong support, I will not object.
2.3 - 2.0: Do Not Hire - Avoid hiring unless there is overwhelmingly positive feedback from others. I am against hiring this candidate, but if they are hired based on overwhelmingly positive feedback from others, I will accept the decision.
1.9 - 1.0: Strong Do Not Hire - Do not employ under any circumstances. This candidate should not be hired, regardless of positive feedback from others.
In summary, scores should effectively and efficiently convey your assessment of a candidate. It is crucial to calibrate your scores accurately to reflect the candidate's abilities and potential contribution to the organization. The tone and language used in the feedback should align with the assigned score, providing a coherent and insightful evaluation for the Hiring Committee.
Bonus Cheat Sheet: Key Elements to look for in Strong Interview Responses
When assessing responses to product/strategy and analytical questions, pay attention to the following important aspects:
Clarity of Assumptions: Determine if the candidate clearly stated their assumptions before providing their answer. Did they seek clarification or confidently make assumptions and validate them? For instance, if asked about improving their favorite app, did they specify a strategic goal and explain their reasoning for that assumption?
Structure and Depth: Evaluate whether the candidate started with a broad perspective and effectively narrowed it down to specific details. Did they demonstrate an organized thought process, such as identifying the problem, segmenting the user base, evaluating primary use cases, and addressing challenges?
Balance Between Methodology and Specifics: Consider if the candidate addressed both the approach and specific recommendations in their response. Could they articulate how they would analyze the given issue and provide detailed suggestions based on their insights?
Integration of Personal Insights and Awareness of Limitations: Assess the extent to which candidates draw on their own product experiences. Did they mention personal preferences, dislikes, and identified challenges? Additionally, did they acknowledge the limitations of their perspective and its representation of the wider user base?
Efficiency and Comprehensiveness: Observe how candidates manage their time. Were they able to effectively communicate key points without spending excessive time on introductions? Did they provide comprehensive responses and seek guidance from the interviewer on whether to elaborate further or move on to discussing solutions?
Critical Self-Assessment and Exploration of Alternatives: Note whether the candidate critically evaluated their proposal, considering its strengths, weaknesses, risks, and constraints. Did they acknowledge any potentially incorrect assumptions? Did they reflect on potential biases influencing their strategy and consider alternative approaches?
Articulation of Thought Process: Evaluate how well the candidate articulated their thinking, particularly in analytical questions. Remember, the focus is not solely on obtaining the correct answer but on understanding the candidate's reasoning.
As you assess responses in PM interviews, it is crucial to evaluate not only the answers themselves but also the candidates' approach to reaching their conclusions. Their thought process, thoroughness, and consideration of different perspectives are vital aspects of a strong response.