In today’s competitive job market, product managers can’t afford to turn a blind eye to product manager interview questions.
That’s if you want to increase your chances of landing a PM job. Granted, companies across the globe all use their own unique approach to scout for talent and bring them on board as part of their team.
That said, when conducting interviews for product manager roles, most recruiters aim to find out three things about you:
Therefore, the most common product manager interview questions all help recruiters unearth insight on one or more of these three categories.
Study these questions and answers ahead of time to prepare yourself for your next product manager interview. That way, you’ll stand a greater chance of impressing your interviewer.
1. Product Management Questions 2. Technical Product Management Questions 3. Product Roadmap Questions 4. Product Prioritization Questions 5. Product Design Questions 6. Product Analytics Questions 7. Product User Questions 8. Communication Questions 9. Cross-Functional Team Questions
Describe some of the most important inputs you take into account when crafting your product roadmap. Explain why you use them.
With this question, interviewers want you to provide key insight into the things you value the most when creating product roadmaps.
Recruiters understand just how instrumental product roadmaps are. Not only do they define the technology that will be used to build the product, but they also condition the development team’s workflow. For that reason, figuring out how you piece together a product roadmap will let them know how good your product management skills are. The best candidates know that the most important inputs are market-related, strategy-related, and technology-related. The key, however, is to know why these inputs are important. For example, in the case of market-related inputs, product managers need to express how customers, prospects, competitors, and the target market all impact a product roadmap.
The same goes for strategy and technology: candidates must be able to show a clear link that shows why how inputs are directly related to product roadmaps and vice-versa.
Here are some more common product roadmap questions that recruiters may spring on you in a product manager interview:
2. Talk me through how you managed the roadmap for your previous product. 3. Describe how you communicate the product roadmap to all of the relevant teams at your company. 4. Create a roadmap for an imaginary product. 5. One of your highest paying customers demands a feature from you. This feature wasn’t included in the initial product roadmap. Describe how you will react. 6. You are the Product Manager for Groups. Discuss how you will create both a one-year as well as a five-year roadmap.
Name your favorite software tools to manage team members. Explain how you use these software management tools.
This is yet another product management-related question. Here, the aim is to get a feel for the type of tools, applications, and software that the candidate uses when they’re on the job as part of their management strategy. In this case, the question specifically asks how candidates manage team members. Once again, the answers you get will vary as every candidate will have their own preferred set of tools that they use to manage team members. That said, the best candidates will make mention of some of the most popular management apps out there. These include Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Bamboo HR, and Zoho, among others. The key here is for the candidate to first describe what the app is, and then break down how they use it to manage their team members. In doing so, you should show the benefits that the app can bring to people management.
Therefore, it’s more important than ever to make sure you hire the right product people. And the first step to hiring the right product team is to hire the right product manager.
Here are some of the most crucial product manager interview questions you should be asking and the ideal answers for them.
We’ll go over the top questions and answers for a product management interview, as well as the thought process behind each one.
According to a survey conducted by 280 Group, 21% of products fall short of the needs of the customers they’re created for.
Therefore, whether you’re onboarding or looking for a position in managing a product, this guide will help you out.