How to Prepare for Product Manager Interviews — A Curated Reading List
Though there are already many paid crash courses that help one pass a PM interview, I’ve decided to create a list for people who enjoy reading and researching on their own.
This is a curated list of reading materials for current PMs preparing for product manager interviews at a software company. I collected the articles with the general, software, tech company PM roles in mind — if you are preparing for a growth PM / technical PM interview or if the company you are applying for is in the IoT / hardware / medical / finance / blockchain sector, you’ll need to do further research into the specific skills required in those domains.
Good luck with your search!
0. Understand the industry & the business
It’s important to understand the company you are interviewing at from a business perspective: Who are their biggest competitors in the space? How much funding do they have, and when was the last funding round it has raised if it’s a startup? AngelList and crunchbase can give you a quick overview of a company’s operational status if it’s a startup, and websites like Owler and G2.com would help you understand the competitive landscape the company’s product’s in.
1. Practice product teardown
This probably goes without saying, but it is VERY important that a PM candidate spends some of their time understanding the hiring company’s product before they apply for a job interview. Downloading the products, going through the onboarding steps personally and doing a practice run on the product teardown is generally a good way to start.
2. What’s the interview process and format
Most PM interviews fall under either of these two categories: technical interviews (product design, product sense, product strategy), and behavioural interviews (motivation, collaboration, culture check), though you should also understand the specific interview process the company you are interviewing has (How many rounds? What are the themes? Who will you get to talk to? What’s the overall timeline?)
The hiring company’s recruiter would normally explain the steps to you during or after your initial phone screening, and some companies provide pretty comprehensive interview guides or even mock interviews for the candidates to prepare themselves.
Websites like IGotAnOffer have pretty decent write-ups on the major tech companies’ interview process and preparation guides. You can also check out individual’s interview experience posts on Glassdoor, Blind, etc.
3. Preparing for technical Interviews
The technical PM interviews differ vastly at different companies. Though sometimes we see companies asking their PM candidates to analyse a dataset during an interview, to write pseudo codes in a whiteboard session, or even to implement an integration with their API products during an onsite, these are the most common types of “technical” questions asked during a PM interview:
- How to crack product metric questions in PM interviews
- How to crack product strategy interview questions
- How to crack product improvement questions in PM interviews
- How to crack product design questions in PM interviews
4. Frameworks for technical interviews
There are many structures out there in the market when you google “PM interview frameworks”, though it is far more important to explain your hypothesis and rationale clearly than trying to squeeze every word you say into a rigid framework. (I personally find Facebook’s “Understand, Identify, Execute” method more than enough in both job interviews and day-to-day product plannings on my job!)
What a candidate says during a behavioural screening speaks a lot for who they are, what they value the most in their work territory, and what their working style is.
5. What are behavioural Interviews
I find the behavioural rounds the most interesting as both an interviewer and an interviewee myself. What a candidate says during a behavioural screening speaks a lot for who they are, what they value the most in their work territory, and what their working style is. Be sure to pick the best stories to tell during this round (they have to be real ones though — made-up stories get busted easily after some digging) and stay true to who you are.
Behavioural rounds are usually scheduled at the late stage of the interviews and they are a great way for the candidates and the companies to check their compatibility before making / accepting a job offer.
- Behavioral Based Job Interview Questions
- 11 Revealing Product Manager Interview Questions
- How to ace behavioral interviews at Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.
- The SAR Method for Product Management Interview Questions
6. Questions to ask in the interview
Understanding the company you are interviewing at is just as important as getting the job offer itself. Do your due diligence before the interview and be sure to ask questions to help you decide whether this is the right place for you to invest the next few years of your professional life at.
7. Other Sample Questions
- The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions
- The 3 Sets of Technical Product Manager Interview Questions
Other topics to read about before an interview
Data & Analytics
Freshen up your basic statistics skills
- Elementary Probability Theory
- Normal Distribution
- Your Guide to Master Hypothesis Testing in Statistics
- P-values Explained By Data Scientist by Admond Lee
- What a p-Value Tells You about Statistical Data
- How to Calculate P Value
- How to Correctly Interpret P Values
That’s it. Hope this helps!