Perception changes with Experience and he is right about changing or enhancing the experience. After hearing the question my instant thought was regarding Airport checkin and luggage experience. He kind of broke it down nicely. Segmentation is done clearly and solutions were like natural answers once you have the problem defined.
It is difficult to follow. More importantly, there were no clarifying questions to understand what is the current perception and why we want to improve it. And what is the end goal for perception to be?
Should have explored more on solving for the safety and perceptions- a. Demo the security checks like baggage check, manual scanning etc b. Educational snippet on why turbulence occurs, how to best deal with it. c. Walk the users through how crew is trained in dealing with adverse conditions Other agencies involved should be FAA and other regulators - completely ignored them
I was a bit surprised at the quality of this interview. Lot of discussion and but no specific chain of thought.. Problem Statement : Consortium wants to "improve perception of air travel" over the next 1 year, and have a budget of $10m The interview seems to focusing the air travel experience, rather than the perception.. First few questions : - What is the current perception? - Is the consortium responding to an event that happened recently leading to perception of air travel dissipating? - Analyze - if the current perception is due to which part of the travel experience.. It could be just as simple as - security checks being too stringent and biased towards some racial identities - in which case, campaigns and trainings for security about these things, and creating a +ve we are being secure for your own good - will just hit the nail on the head...
I would have selected matching co-passengers.I know a lot of passengers hate seats next to kids and like specific kind of co- passengers.So an algorithm to map your seats accordingly probably could have been a solution.
Interesting but impractical. I wonder why anyone would want to reveal themselves and their characteristics to co-passengers during the booking stage (or at any stage for that matter); especially after knowing that someone (or an algorithm) is going to decide whether to sit next to that person or not basis of who they are.
These “I’m not giving anything away” interviewer responses are not helpful. In the real world you would have a meaningful dialogue with your client and in fact it’s harder to react to the information they are giving than just having free reign. From a case study perspective I think we should move on from these abstract questions to more realistic client dialogue simulations. That will show real clarity of thinking as well as EQ.
this is how it is done in faang-style interviews, so, it is about being prepared to deal with it rather than having a good conversation with the interviewer
The $10 million budget was just casually left out in the answer. Even the interviewer didn't bring it up which was surprising. Other than that, it was well structured.
Travelers are unlikely to bring check-in luggage on shorter flights (San Jose to LA, as the speaker suggested), and we have tools like digital check-in and TSA-pre (or CLEAR), which have already solved the two main painpoints he is discussing. I would argue the stress levels shoot up long before traveler gets to the check-in counter. One issue is the traffic mess at or near the airport, departures and arrivals are both in the same building, all roads lead to the same place up until it splits into a fork. Why even have those designators when it is all in the same building. And it does not make any sense especially when Ride Share is in the garage somewhere outside of the terminal. I am guessing Ride Sharing + Taxi + Airport shuttles = 80%+ of all traffic. With $10m and 1 year, cannot build a new road. But, it buys 40 developers to build a set of features in google maps and provide an API that Ride Share, taxis, shuttle drivers and the rest of the drivers using google maps can navigate much easier and smoother in and around the airport. After that, develop the next set of features to help manage traffic in other areas like in waiting/cell lots. At every airport, the cell lots are stuffed, hard to get to, hard to get out of, and as a result people park on the sides of the road, creating traffic jams, etc. Airport does not allow it, but cannot police it either. Its a mess.
1 major concern in the solution provided is security and border control, the governments are one of the biggest stakeholder in a solution like this. A lot of the current processes are done so that the travel is secure and consolidated in a single location. The key takeaway here is the user segmenting and narrowing down process. So the focus is correct but the solution is not thought of in depth, considering security has to be the biggest factor to take into picture during air travel, in my opinion.
Good point! Interviews like this though aren't actually how things would work in the "real world." Your interviewer is curious about HOW you think through a problem, not necessarily the nuts and bolts of the solution. Security and oversight are definitely concerns in the real world but may be beyond the scope of an interview.
I believe more time is required to think through the process, pinpoint the pain points and brainstorm solutions. The industry is highly regulated like you rightly said.
As a fellow PM who has been in the field for more than 6 years. I found his thought process to be very random. He stated certain facts and then never came back on them. He might be up his aces when he cracked his interview in Google, but has clearly lost it now.
I think the interviewer’s frequent questions on his segmentation hints that maybe he took the wrong approach here. Segmenting between long and short flights in my opinion is not that effective. At the end of the day, the user journey and pain points are pretty similar if it’s a long flight vs a short flight, only thing that changes is that the pain points are more painful on a long flight. 😅
He completely missed the aspect of user feedback and went on to choose a segment to focus, based on his personal experience. I am sure there be tons of feedback available already across the Internet (people tweeting about their bad experiences or good experiences right after their flights), etc and even at offline touch points. I think it’s wise to organise these feedbacks, extract insights and operate on it to avoid spending time and energy on solving wrong problems. Even in case of absence of all of these - we could gather a lot of value insights by just talking to 100 travelers who took a flight in the last 30 days.
Didnt ask why do this? Why now? Didnt segment or consider a particular demographic? Entire US market is still too big and would pilot at a selective few travel hubs. The interviewee spoke a lot about his own perceptions rather than talking about collecting data to learn or disapprove his own theory.
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Perception changes with Experience and he is right about changing or enhancing the experience. After hearing the question my instant thought was regarding Airport checkin and luggage experience. He kind of broke it down nicely. Segmentation is done clearly and solutions were like natural answers once you have the problem defined.
It is difficult to follow.
More importantly, there were no clarifying questions to understand what is the current perception and why we want to improve it. And what is the end goal for perception to be?
Totally agree. What is the perception now and what caused it and what is the goal of improving perception is totally missing.
Should have explored more on solving for the safety and perceptions-
a. Demo the security checks like baggage check, manual scanning etc
b. Educational snippet on why turbulence occurs, how to best deal with it.
c. Walk the users through how crew is trained in dealing with adverse conditions
Other agencies involved should be FAA and other regulators - completely ignored them
I was a bit surprised at the quality of this interview. Lot of discussion and but no specific chain of thought..
Problem Statement : Consortium wants to "improve perception of air travel" over the next 1 year, and have a budget of $10m
The interview seems to focusing the air travel experience, rather than the perception..
First few questions :
- What is the current perception?
- Is the consortium responding to an event that happened recently leading to perception of air travel dissipating?
- Analyze - if the current perception is due to which part of the travel experience..
It could be just as simple as - security checks being too stringent and biased towards some racial identities - in which case, campaigns and trainings for security about these things, and creating a +ve we are being secure for your own good - will just hit the nail on the head...
this is a difficult question, great work
I would have selected matching co-passengers.I know a lot of passengers hate seats next to kids and like specific kind of co- passengers.So an algorithm to map your seats accordingly probably could have been a solution.
Interesting but impractical. I wonder why anyone would want to reveal themselves and their characteristics to co-passengers during the booking stage (or at any stage for that matter); especially after knowing that someone (or an algorithm) is going to decide whether to sit next to that person or not basis of who they are.
should have asked what metric are we improving and by how much
super response to the curve ball questions
These “I’m not giving anything away” interviewer responses are not helpful. In the real world you would have a meaningful dialogue with your client and in fact it’s harder to react to the information they are giving than just having free reign. From a case study perspective I think we should move on from these abstract questions to more realistic client dialogue simulations. That will show real clarity of thinking as well as EQ.
this is how it is done in faang-style interviews, so, it is about being prepared to deal with it rather than having a good conversation with the interviewer
@@Matveyich yep. My comment was just an observation that we need to evolve the faang case study.
How is perception different from experience? How is the 10mm budget playing a role in the strategy?
The $10 million budget was just casually left out in the answer. Even the interviewer didn't bring it up which was surprising. Other than that, it was well structured.
They didn't talk about the budget allocation? So what's the point of having that in the question if we don't incorporate that in the solution?
I am surprised he did not ask "why" you want to do it now? Any reasons why now?
Travelers are unlikely to bring check-in luggage on shorter flights (San Jose to LA, as the speaker suggested), and we have tools like digital check-in and TSA-pre (or CLEAR), which have already solved the two main painpoints he is discussing.
I would argue the stress levels shoot up long before traveler gets to the check-in counter. One issue is the traffic mess at or near the airport, departures and arrivals are both in the same building, all roads lead to the same place up until it splits into a fork.
Why even have those designators when it is all in the same building. And it does not make any sense especially when Ride Share is in the garage somewhere outside of the terminal. I am guessing Ride Sharing + Taxi + Airport shuttles = 80%+ of all traffic. With $10m and 1 year, cannot build a new road. But, it buys 40 developers to build a set of features in google maps and provide an API that Ride Share, taxis, shuttle drivers and the rest of the drivers using google maps can navigate much easier and smoother in and around the airport.
After that, develop the next set of features to help manage traffic in other areas like in waiting/cell lots. At every airport, the cell lots are stuffed, hard to get to, hard to get out of, and as a result people park on the sides of the road, creating traffic jams, etc. Airport does not allow it, but cannot police it either. Its a mess.
1 major concern in the solution provided is security and border control, the governments are one of the biggest stakeholder in a solution like this. A lot of the current processes are done so that the travel is secure and consolidated in a single location. The key takeaway here is the user segmenting and narrowing down process. So the focus is correct but the solution is not thought of in depth, considering security has to be the biggest factor to take into picture during air travel, in my opinion.
Good point! Interviews like this though aren't actually how things would work in the "real world." Your interviewer is curious about HOW you think through a problem, not necessarily the nuts and bolts of the solution. Security and oversight are definitely concerns in the real world but may be beyond the scope of an interview.
I believe more time is required to think through the process, pinpoint the pain points and brainstorm solutions. The industry is highly regulated like you rightly said.
Sorry, but this could have been better If the Interviewer had data and the problem statement were well defined.
As a fellow PM who has been in the field for more than 6 years. I found his thought process to be very random. He stated certain facts and then never came back on them. He might be up his aces when he cracked his interview in Google, but has clearly lost it now.
I thought the question was about Perception and not Experience…
sorry but how is this a product manager case study question. this seems textbook consulting. stop blurring the lines.
What is the name of the interviewer? @exponent
I think the interviewer’s frequent questions on his segmentation hints that maybe he took the wrong approach here.
Segmenting between long and short flights in my opinion is not that effective. At the end of the day, the user journey and pain points are pretty similar if it’s a long flight vs a short flight, only thing that changes is that the pain points are more painful on a long flight. 😅
He completely missed the aspect of user feedback and went on to choose a segment to focus, based on his personal experience.
I am sure there be tons of feedback available already across the Internet (people tweeting about their bad experiences or good experiences right after their flights), etc and even at offline touch points.
I think it’s wise to organise these feedbacks, extract insights and operate on it to avoid spending time and energy on solving wrong problems.
Even in case of absence of all of these - we could gather a lot of value insights by just talking to 100 travelers who took a flight in the last 30 days.
Expected better quality given the years of experience the of interviewe. No practical ideas, just lot of words and far beyond reality assumption.
Didnt ask why do this? Why now? Didnt segment or consider a particular demographic? Entire US market is still too big and would pilot at a selective few travel hubs.
The interviewee spoke a lot about his own perceptions rather than talking about collecting data to learn or disapprove his own theory.
very verbose, the interviewer too was largely adding any value till the 13th min when decided to drop off watching this, thanks
All the commenters have Indian names. Has product management been taken over by Indians? Just asking - I am indian myself
He got roasted 😂😂😂😂
There is no way that this is a good answer
Another travel challenge 🥲
Interviewer clearly knows nothing, just repeating yeah😂😊
How awful how about you tell about other stakeholders are part of this😆?