Nail Every Stage of Your Next PM Interview 🎯

Hey Impactful PM, — Areesha, here!

Looks like struggling with PM interview rounds and not cracking them is your recent hobby 👀

Well then, let’s develop a new hobby from today!

Cracking almost any PM interview smoothly and choosing between companies to work with! 😉

Not getting shortlisted anywhere?

Worry not, if you have Areesha by your side! 🦹‍♀️

Before we go straight to cracking interviews, let’s first understand how to get your resume shortlisted.

Getting shortlisted for a Product Role

Here’s what you can do to get shortlisted for most PM job openings out there. 👇

Read the Job Description Carefully 📃

Seriously, read the entire job description carefully. While applying to a ton of jobs a day, you might miss out on key details mentioned in these job descriptions —which is why you’re getting rejected.

Keep these things in mind-

1. Scroll to the qualifications/eligibility section of the description to understand if you meet the basic eligibility criteria for the role.
   
   Do not apply to openings that require an experience level that is way above your own.

2. Understand what educational background the company is looking for. For example - As a Business graduate, you might want to avoid applying to tech-heavy PM roles that require you to be an engineering or computer science graduate.
   
   P.S. - there are a ton of PM openings that ask for a degree in Business, Economics, marketing, or related fields.

3. Read what tools and skills the job asks for. Do a quick self-analysis to see if you’re familiar/experienced with these tools and have the required skills.
   
   If not, mention alternative or similar tools and skills in your resume that help you stand out.

Align Your Resume & Profile with the Job Description 🎯

This is your chance to shine!

Sadly, reading job descriptions alone is not enough. 😢

You need to take some pains and align your resume with most of the jobs you apply.

How do you do this?

• Ensure that you mention all your familiar tools that are also mentioned in the job description. You don’t always have to provide a laundry list of other irrelevant tools you’re familiar with on your resume.

• Ensure that you possess and mention the required skills for the role. You can add a one-liner explanation of how you used your skills in the past during college, in a side project, or in your last job.

• If you hold any certification in Product Management, or a useful tool relevant to the job, make sure to put it at the top of the first page of your resume to make it stand out.

• If you have a product management portfolio, make sure to link it in your resume and mention it in bold so the recruiter notices and checks it out.
  
  If you don’t have a portfolio of projects worked on, it’s better to have one soon!

  P.S - We’re launching some free and paid hands-on projects for you to work on and build a hot product management portfolio for your career 🔥.

• State a comprehensive yet concise description of yourself, your background, and your interest in Product Management in a confident tone on your resume and job profile(s).

Quantify Your Value 📏

Showcase your impact with numbers against each experience or achievement on your resume.

Instead of “Built a feature that helped customers have a smoother product checkout experience”

This sounds more convincing “Increased sales by 30% by implementing feature X in the product’s checkout section”

That way, recruiters know that you’re a strong candidate with proven experience, who can bring results to the table.

If you do not have real work experience, talk about some of your projects.

Upskill Constantly 🚀

Learning never stops.

Keep upskilling yourself as you apply for jobs every day.

Figure out what tools you must be aware of and what skills you need for most openings and get the right course to upskill. 🔥

Best tip- Stay subscribed to Twice the Impact PM to decode product management concepts, learn new frameworks, and upskill constantly for FREE 😉

Nailing your next PM interview 🎯

I will break down the common interview rounds of most PM interviews and uncover the approach to ace each round. 🔥

Round 1 - HR Screening Call

The HR or TA screening call is typically the first call in the interview process. This round happens with the HR directly and they usually want to know you as a person and your career goals.

What will you be asked?

1. Your career background and roles you have worked in the past.

2. Why product management and how you broke into this field?

3. Your career goals (how you see yourself in 5 or 10 years from today)

4. Maybe a few additional questions like are you a team player or a solo player, how do you see yourself as a leader/ in a managerial position as a product manager, or how did you solve a problem at your last job, college, or project?

How to answer?

• When you talk about your background or previous job roles you worked on, make sure to connect past experiences that were more relevant to product management.
  
  This way you convince the HR that you have some relevant experience to break into product management.
  

• Answering why product management is tricky. The majority of candidates usually flunk here. The right answer to this question is subjective and is hidden in your past experiences again. 🤔 
  
  If you’re a student, you need to call out experiences from your college activities and projects you worked on. Whether you lead a team of peers and how you did it, how you contributed to solving a problem at large, what impact you brought in a team collaboration, and more.
  
  If you’re transitioning, talk about your last job role. How you solved work issues, and team conflicts, how you contributed to the decision-making processes, or whether you were involved in a managerial position before.

  
  Sum these experiences up and tell the recruiter “This is what motivated me into product management”
  
  Call out specific reasons from your past experiences and explain why you see yourself fit to be in a product role today.
  
  Like so - “My team-leading and problem-solving skills in college/in my previous company make me confident to take up product management as a career path. I feel that product management helps me utilize all my strengths and soft skills in the right place.”
  

• When answering questions about your future goals, always think big. Not just for the sake of an interview, but for your own sake.
  
  Your answer to this question tells recruiters how visionary and far-sighted you are about yourself.
  
  See yourself in a very honored position and tell the recruiter what you’re doing today to achieve that goal.

Round 2 - Problem-Solving Round

This is where PM interviews get tougher for most candidates.

You’re typically given an imaginary business situation in these rounds and are expected to work through a given problem statement. This round usually happens with a product manager and/or a senior executive from the company.

Pre-work 📃

You need to incorporate these regular preparation activities in your routine to ace this round smoothly. 🚀

1. Read and understand about every other industry in the market. From large scale to small scale, read about all.

2. Learn about different business models. Understand which business models suit best for what type of products, customers, and businesses. Understand how to align your product pricing keeping your target customer, value proposition, and product in mind.

3. Read about international and local business management methods and strategies. Understand what countries and cities are involved in which industry significantly.

This pre-work prepares you to frame unique use cases, handle business situations from any industry easily, and get creative with your analysis with ambitious ideas.

How to attempt?

You need to tackle these situations and case studies very diplomatically.

It is common to get anxious and get things out of your way, but mindfulness and confidence are key here. ✔

Let’s take an example of a business problem here:

“An e-commerce platform has been facing high cart abandonment rates in the last month. There does not seem to be any issue with the UI or backend causing this problem. How would you tackle this?”

Keep in mind: The goal of the interviewer here is to test your approach and analysis rather than getting the right solution for the given problem. So, focus on taking a strong approach while crafting the solution. 🧠

How to answer this correctly?

• Most importantly, do not rush to answer questions as soon as you hear them.

• Take some time to think about the problem and formulate your approach. Tell the interviewers that you need a couple of minutes to formulate your approach, but don’t go beyond 5 minutes.
  
  This will show them that you’re systematic in your approach and you know what you’re doing.

• Be mindful of the time you’re taking and utilize every minute effectively by keeping an eye on the clock.

• Use popular PM frameworks to formulate your approach. Tell the interviewers about what frameworks you’re using and why.
  
  Pro tip - Think out loud! - this helps keep the interviewer engaged, increasing your chances of acing.
  

• Ask clarifying questions. Clarifying questions are those that you can ask to make your root cause analysis effective.
  
  Your clarifying questions for this situation may look like this 👇
  
  - Do we see any competitors giving out better discounts/offers to customers?
  - Have we checked if our analytics tool is working correctly and not giving out faulty results?
  - Are customers not able to find action buttons clearly to go ahead and make a purchase?
  - Have we considered comparing our delivery and other charges with competitors for similar products?

  
  This shows interviewers how well you’re able to arrive at the root cause of a problem.
  
  Asking questions doesn’t just make you clear about the situation, but it involves the interviewer in the analysis making your interview more of an interesting discussion. 😎

• Finally, suggest a solution that fixes the root cause problem. Tell interviewers how fixing this problem, can fix all the other related problems in the system.

You can read about Google’s APM Application Process to get general interview tips and read more about the types of PM interviews at Google.

Round 3 - Technical Round

Don’t worry this is not going to be a coding test or a discussion about software engineering! 👀

As a product manager, you will be assessed on your basic understanding of the product development process, user stories, and collaboration with engineers, developers, and designers.

Good news? You do not need to hold a technical degree to ace this round. YAY!

You must understand how designers, developers, and engineers work on product features that you decide to implement in the application.

What will you be asked?

• How would you prioritize tasks in a sprint for development and engineering teams?

• How would you work on implementing a new feature with your technical teams?

• What is Agile product management?

• What is your understanding of the product development and data engineering process?

• What are APIs?

How to answer?

To answer these questions effortlessly, learn about these topics a little bit 👇

• Agile vs Waterfall model

• What are APIs? How do they work?

• What are user stories and acceptance criteria? How do they help in task management?

• How to communicate with developers/engineers as a product manager?

Round 4 - Cultural Round

Cultural rounds are interesting since you get to know the company’s working style, goals, aspirations, and people.

The best part is you get to chat about your motivations and personality and ask questions about the company’s values and culture.

Stay motivated and be curious throughout every round to make yourself stand out among other candidates. 🚀

The best way to nail your next PM interview is to practice them constantly. Mock interviews can help you refine your responses and make you more confident over time!

Let me know how helpful these tips were by answering the poll below! 👇

Cya!
Areesha ❤️