Breaking into Product: How do interviewers evaluate a PM candidate (Part 2)

Hey there!

Welcome to “Breaking into Product” — post #8.

If you are planning to enter (or have recently entered) the Product space, you will love our posts! With this series, we aim to share exclusive content and insights on preparing for product management interviews, common Q&A, interview preparation strategies, etc to help you ace your interviews.

In this post, we will provide insights into what interviewers look for and how they evaluate candidates using various types of questions. If you haven’t seen part 1, do check it out. It covers evaluation through Guesstimates & Product Design questions.

Breaking into Product: How do interviewers evaluate a PM candidate (Part 1)

In this post, we will be covering RCA/Metrics questions & Behavioral questions.

If you want our case studies to reach straight to your inbox, subscribe at: https://tearthemdown.substack.com/

PS — These evaluation/assessment pointers may differ for specific PM roles such as Tech PM or Data PM, etc.

Through a “Metrics / RCA” question

What the interviewer would be looking for in a candidate:

1. Understanding Metrics
   Did the candidate have an understanding of the Product metrics? Did the candidate provide a relevant and comprehensive list of metrics to look for?
2. Evaluating Metrics
   Did the candidate articulate which metrics are important, backed by sound logic?
3. Analysing Metrics
   Did the candidate analyze changes in the metrics? Is the candidate able to break down a metric and understand the drivers that could affect a metric?
4. Impacting a metric
   Did the candidate create a plan to impact the metric positively — through product changes or any other levers?

🧐 To understand how to solve/approach such questions, take a look at our previous post:
Breaking into Product: Part 6 — Root Cause Analysis

Through “Behavioral Questions”

What the interviewer would be looking for in a candidate:

1. Role
   Is the candidate able to play an ownership-type role or just a participant in the discussions?
2. Achievements
   Did the candidate have any good or great achievements? Is the candidate able to explain how it was achieved? Were the results due to the candidate’s work? or would the results have occurred even without much involvement from the candidate?
3. Communication Skills
   Is the candidate able to communicate and drive the discussion clearly? Is the story easy to follow?

We hope this helps you understand interviews and perform better. Feel free to reach out at thehustlers2021@gmail.com for any questions or guidance.

We have put our sweat and tears into creating this post. Share it in just a click and help us grow! 😃

If you want our case studies to reach straight to your inbox, subscribe at: https://tearthemdown.substack.com/

Will come back with another interesting post. Bye!