I won't leave my product career to chance but could you advise me on my career path. I currently have years of experience in development and leading the team, at this point in my career would it be wise to switch to a PM role..?
@@abhirb12 Answering that would require an understanding of what type of job you're looking for or what's important to you, what you excel at, and where you want to go career-wise long-term.
really appreciated her point about ambiguity and her mindset to partner with the customer to identify their pain points or work around solutions to get ideas in triaging to resolve with a painless solution
This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing! Is there a set of general guidelines to follow for the design interview? I've taken some notes here but will appreciate a more robust version. My notes: Product Interview: 1. Take notes about the problem stated from the Interviewer. State the problem. Clarify the question for market segment and details about it. Establish top KPIs and goals of the company producing the product. 2. List all assumptions and summarize the problem and assumptions 3. Explore ideas that could be considered when making the product (high level concerns) 4. Select one of the ideas to pursue Generic Steps: 1. Start with generic idea from interviewer 2. Clarify the issue with questions 3. Get user segment 4. Get pang points to address 5. Decide what product you will design 6. Decide what features the product will have 7. Introduce product ideas and how they will work 8. Explain the business/monetization side of the idea - how much does it cost? who will pay for it? how will it be paid for? how often? 9. Give additional features for 10x product 10. Talk about potential friction points and how you can mitigate them 11. Talk about potential points of failure and how you can avoid them 12. For follow-up questions, state what information you’re using to inform your answers. Could be additional features.
There's a video by Diego (PM from Microsoft) that goes over a flowchart based "framework" that will answer your question. Diego also was featured on Exponent in one of these mock interviews where he spoke about pros and cons of such a framework.
I liked the fact that she chose a problem and solution that was not social media related. Now-a-days questions to all answers tend to go towards use of social media. Enjoyed the interview and learned a lot in the process.
I am not a product manager and have no experience in this field, but it is my career pursuit. I think this is a good product management question, but her answer is truly a bit loose. My answer would be like: moving into a new city is the thing that related to people's life. We can basically divide this big piece into four small segments such as clothing, eating, living, and transportation, of course socialization is a big deal and we can add it later. For clothing, finding clothes with good deals and high qualities is what we need the most. Go and do some research on service like Groupon to get some percents off and go and browse the stores or outlets. For living, renting apartments is a big stuff for everyone who wants to move to another city. There are lots of things to do in this part. Finding appropriate apartments, equipping the space with furnitures, utensils, etc. are a big headache. Think of what you can do and where you can go in each section, and compare and contrast the style, the price, and the quality, etc. Same thing with eating and transportation. If the company wants to design a product for movers, I personally recommend a module-based app. Design the module based on different kinds of needs. This will be easy for movers to figure out and to select. Due to time issue, I just stop here. I hope this helps.
Well the best way to address the question is to think about what the job is being done here and also defining the market. E.g. JTBD = New graduates moving to a new city. Then dive deep into the set of job step and associated outcomes to derive the customer needs that matter to them. E.g. Job step = Find an apartment. Set of outcome statements = Apartment that is 500square feet. Apartment allows pets. Apartment has X, Y, Z appliances. and so on... once you have built out this entire map, then you are able to define a solution that addresses the needs best.
Surprisingly no one spoke about the partnership required between the app & furniture retailers in the interview. The App has to onboard apartment complex holding companies + interior designers + furniture retailers to provide this customised turnkey experience. And instead of a standalone app, I believe existing apps which support brokerage / agent services for finding an apartment are well suited to launch this service as a premium feature in those apps.
Thanks for sharing this interview. Highly structured with great details and clear response. I really liked how she broke the whole problem in small pieces :)
Personally I feel the interviewee didn't structure her answer in a very neat way and one can see the interviewer Stephen jumping in to bring structure and informing the flow of her thoughts. A structured approach in answering these case questions is valued more than the quality of solutions themselves.
@@BonfireQueenie Well a Product manager has to cut through lot of noise and open ended problems in day to day product management. Structured approach to problem solving and product thinking is the backbone of building great products. Anyone can up with creative ideas - Designers, Customer support teams, Sales teams, even CEOs or End-users themselves. Its harder to do 1st principle thinking and conclude the what, why, how, when & where. From my years of being a product manager, and interviewing (on both sides of the table), I have learnt that structure is valued more than substance. Hope this helps
I don’t think it’s okay to choose a segment because “I know most about this segment”. A PM should pick a segment based on strategic value for the company, NOT personal bias.
Right, that's kind of what I struggle with with those mock interviews. They seem to follow some cookie cutter pattern of hitting a certain number of (supposedly) must-have points (user segments, pain points, product features, flows, ...) but with very little thought behind them. I realise it's kind of an artifical exercise by nature, but interviewees hardly ever question why they're building that product in the first place, what the vision is, and so on, and just rattle through some bullet points. That contributes a lot to making PM look like a cargo cult management thing instead of something that actually creates value.
@@puneeification its a 30 min case study on a bullshit hypothetical product not your actual job. the fact one even has to go through this dog and pony show when they have years of PM experience is a joke in and of itself.
@@puneeification YES THEY ARE ALL FOLLOWING THE SAME PLAYBOOK. BE UNIQUE FOLKS, as a hiring manager i would REJECT you following this shit. honestly guys, just be yourself.
The PM candidate proposes a furniture rental product with different tiers and pre-clustered themes to ease the burden of furnishing a new apartment for new grads moving to urban cities. Here are the key takeaways: * Users: New graduates moving to urban cities for new jobs * Pain Points: Finding housing, feeling isolated, furnishing the apartment * Proposed Product: Furniture rental service with various themes users can choose from. Renting furniture eliminates the need to worry about buying furniture, assembling it, or disposing of it when moving out. * Key Features: * Partnership with apartment complexes to offer bundled furniture rental with rent payment * Different tiers of furniture quality at different price points * Pre-clustered themes to simplify furniture selection * Option to customize the pre-selected furniture * Monetization: Rental fees with tiers based on furniture quality * Risks: * Reliant on establishing partnerships with apartment complexes * Negotiating with apartment complexes on maintenance and damage policy
Why would a person buy furniture right away!. They r moving from cities to countries .. Qs is why they are facing problems and what kind of problems that it needs to be improved? Are those users visiting city centres or tourist info or libraries to find details...also They need to get ID and lease done which is most imp part before buying furniture? I think she should mention such things for anyone internationals, and how those can be streamlined and then move to ikea or things like that? One stop all information kinda product
I think this sounds more like a lunch time chat with a line manager than an interview response. I am also a bit 'chatty' in interviews and in my experience it doesn't get you the job. Not a criticism of Jen because I am very similar and I like what she is saying but it normally pays to be more focussed and blunt in the way you answer questions. More like your Facebook PM interview with Celena. Just my 2p
At the start, the host mentioned that engagement would be the key goal. I think the furniture feature isn't capable of hooking the user. If anyone has a thought, please help me understand better.
Engagement is not something where one size fits all. If you're something like facebook, Netflix or youtube where you want people on every day, engagement is measured in daily usage. If you run a monthly email, engagement means that every month people look at and click on your email. If you're airbnb, engagement on one side means people check airbnb when they're going to travel. If you're running a furniture rental service that pre-furnishes an apartment- engagement means every time people move to a new place they use your service. Even better engagement could be something like someone seasonally or yearly changing out their furniture with your service.
The user segment that the furniture feature is solving for are millenials. The task of creating a home set up with as little friction as possible and allowing the convenience of refurbishing or refurnishing seasonally which is a key pain point for these set of users hooks them to coming back to the same product for either replacement of an exisiting subscription or extension of the subscription. Also the feature to transfer lease component from one complex to another which is super convenient to millenials who switch locations or jobs more frequently.
Ok I am not sure I am asking the right question here. I believe what Stephen asked in between was two fold. And I had the exact same doubt (atleast one of them): 1. My doubt too: If I was a customer, why will I rent a furniture for say $5 for 12 months = $60 when I can just buy it for $50 or less in the market 2. I think he also meant to ask what will happen if it breaks, how we can handle that. I may be naïve to this model in the US but I am not sure how lease will protect that? I was thinking that maybe we should have an agreement on who will pay for damage and have some rules there(eg: if the quality was already bad and it was worn out the owner will have to replace and if it wasnt maintained well the tenant has to pay). I think it can get complex and nasty when there is a damage. The other solution I came up with for the furniture is Maybe there can be an insurance sort of an approach here that is shared by both the owner and the tenant.. but that was a good and difficult problem to think over (if furniture is damaged)
These are all really long interviews. Typically companies do not provide that much time to crack a PM situation based question and there's only about 15 minutes for each question. How do you go over so much material in that short time frame?
Microsoft has vast product portfolio for Mac and other Apple ecosystem products. Even otherwise, Employees should be encouraged to use and learn from best of the world and bring those insights to the workplace. Microsoft hating Apple and vice versa is so 1990's
This was great! Loved how Jen added a lot of data points from her own experience as part of her solutioning. Question: I know she picked the user base she is most familiar with, but she didn't pick the one with the highest market opportunity. Did I miss something?
I found that a little odd too. However, Jen did ask a question in the beginning about the goal of this product and Stephen clarified that it was to bring the highest improvement in the user's experience of moving to a new city. I would interpret that as choosing a segment that has the worst problems and trying to fix them, as opposed to choosing the largest segment that may not have the strongest problems and trying to fix them.
What technology skills are applied in designing this product and how will this be implemented? Furthermore, what KPI or business metric is being used to track the success of this product and features? How does a product manager/owner calculate that this worth building and releasing?
I think the KPI/Metric question was answered at the beginning of the interview. The coy is focused on User engagement. This also answers the question about what the PM/PO tracks to know what is worth building. In terms of Technology, that will be a decision of the larger team or the Solutions architect (i.e if the Coy doesn't already have a standard Tech Stack).
Good answer but I think it's clear that she had thought about the answer prior to the interview and there was very little thinking time that felt unrealistic for how we can see ourselves in a real interview. I also felt like the structure was sometimes unclear and/or she wasn't checking in with the interviewer enough to help establish where they were at in the process.
No word about the logistics of the business: owning, storing, and delivering the furnishings. Risk of carrying too much inventory. Idea of negotiating with apartment complexes to send their repairmen to fix a broken chair..? Stephen actually leads her to some pricing options with his comment on depreciation, but she does not pick up the clue: one model, for example, if you rented the furniture for X years, then it is yours. Overall, Jen's answers are not very structured - some good ideas/features here or there, e.g. themes for furnishing, customization, influencers, but one does not get a cohesive idea of the business.
This interview felt really erratic in terms of the user flow and mvp. There was some structure, but the solution was confusing and there was no talk about how to test it, is it what users actually want, the risk mitigation strategies, scalability, etc.
She is talking good but her answers are very very confusing and unstructured. She is wandering aimlessly with her thoughts instead of talking about product she'd design. Pouring all of it together and being slightly unrealistic. No go for me.
If that is all I have to do at Microsoft then how do I apply for a PM job at Microsoft. The positive is that she can speak good English that I am able to understand. Thank you for speaking good and understandable English. 90% of the battle is understanding people’s English.
Overall great great response for a unique problem statement. Would love to see few interview including designs and other metrics on white board and managing the interview f2f.
great insightful interview videos. I also conduct mock interviews to help people prepare for their actual interview.. I specifically have Indian context incorporated in my questions and suited for Indian Product Managers
Is it applicable to product designer/ UX designer? Also, is there a definite structure to answer Qs? As most ppl comment abt structure in the answer? What is it .? Oh..I think there can be users such as people relocating in general...doesn’t matter if they r married or not..Lol Does this q not require more clarification as in experience after they have moved or when they are planning of moving that experience?
To be honest, if you think this is a good answer it's very misleading for people who are preparing for the interview. Obviously a prepared answer. it goes too deep. I easily lost track as the listener. should lay out the structure first, one sentence to hit each point and then explain a bit. it's easier for interviewer to follow and take notes. when i was listening, i was struggling to capture what's the segment? what's the pain points? what's the solution? The interviewee picked new grad as the target user segment because she's knowledgable about this group, this is a common mistake. you are not designing for your own use. no criteria for how to prioritize segment or pain points. the final solution including all the details is less important than how you methodically and logically get there.
One of the major pain points of a person moving into a city can be language barrier. I took that road down and ideated around the same. We can leverage this opportunity to integrate with Bing translate
@@harshilrastogi yeah given its US. I was thinking of international tourists, high diversity regions etc. But multi language support won't come in MVP I think.
Her train of thoughts are impeccable, however, if we rule out this product in real world then it'd be unsustainable if organisations KPI is engagement at a first place.
I don't understand the point of this kind of interview. Does the interviewer require the interviewee design a new feature on the spot? I mean it takes time and brainstorming to come up with good ideas and designs...it sounds strange that she designed the rent furniture feature on the spot.
This is a great example of an interview that tests the candidates ability to deal with a large ambiguous problem. Jen did that well with the customer segmentation and pain point identification. To test actual feature development, personally, I would switch out the question and ask something else that was more focused on a single problem.
Sarosh, thank for your reply but what is the actual answer. Poison ☠️ pills are just a delay tactic that only tells me not to have you on my team. Have fun
Good attempt but a lot can be improved. This is half baked solution so, PM aspirants should not follow the template as it is. 1. More clarifying questions needed to scope the problem statement such as if the product exist? what are the specific need of the target users etc? what type of product users may need - physical, digital, self-serve etc? what industry the company operate? 2. Choosing target users should NOT be dependent on what you feel/know but which persona has the highest impact on the target KPI 3. She barely talked about data/KPI to make decisions. The decision at any step cannot be based on what you are feeling but what is optimum solution for customer, product and business and then conducting experiments to validate
I think that's what Stephen was alluding to when he asked for "trade-offs". Jen din't actually speak about that and instead spoke about "challenges" you would encounter while building this kind of a product, which is also a good insight by the way.
honestly, her answer was boring and mediocre. she was just revamping on what is already there like the furniture renting services. she didnt even talk about these competitions in the tradeoffs (Stephen had to ask her about any concerns with her idea). At least mention that you might be facing competitions with lower prices from similar services
@@tryexponent not to say she didn't do good overall. I'm sure my response would not be as detailed or as good as hers, but comparing to other mock interviews you have on the channel, her answer seems boring. one solution I have would target the new family moving to a new state. one of their pain points is shipping their belongings and furniture taking a long time. and one solution might be to use drones (AMZN, GOOGL, TSLA have all acquired a license from FAA to use drones for goods delivery). there could be a potential partnership with these companies to modify some of their drones and use them for shipping the belongings and furniture over to the new state so that the users wouldn't need to live in a hotel and wait for their stuff to arrive before moving in to their new home. By having their belongings and furniture arrive sooner than using trucks that most moving companies do, we could make the moving process smoother and thus improve the moving experience for the users i admit the answer seems wild, and I skipped a lot of details
I think she spoke way too much. She missed elements such as understanding clearly what the user's journey is (lifecycle), from the time of consideration until the time of having settled in. It was not a collaborative effort or a 2-way discussion. The PM did not try to get much information from the interviewer and based all of her decisions on personal experience and perception. She did not confirm anything with the interviewer. In my humble opinion, a really poor interview and product building process.
So basically to crack the product manager interview you have to be a fake robot memorizing how to replay a bunch of questions. There is no even the need for an explanation of why these kind of interviews are a non-sense, but everything became clear when you start to work for an actual company...Poor society.
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I won't leave my product career to chance but could you advise me on my career path. I currently have years of experience in development and leading the team, at this point in my career would it be wise to switch to a PM role..?
@@abhirb12 Answering that would require an understanding of what type of job you're looking for or what's important to you, what you excel at, and where you want to go career-wise long-term.
really appreciated her point about ambiguity and her mindset to partner with the customer to identify their pain points or work around solutions to get ideas in triaging to resolve with a painless solution
This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing! Is there a set of general guidelines to follow for the design interview? I've taken some notes here but will appreciate a more robust version. My notes:
Product Interview:
1. Take notes about the problem stated from the Interviewer. State the problem. Clarify the question for market segment and details about it. Establish top KPIs and goals of the company producing the product.
2. List all assumptions and summarize the problem and assumptions
3. Explore ideas that could be considered when making the product (high level concerns)
4. Select one of the ideas to pursue
Generic Steps:
1. Start with generic idea from interviewer
2. Clarify the issue with questions
3. Get user segment
4. Get pang points to address
5. Decide what product you will design
6. Decide what features the product will have
7. Introduce product ideas and how they will work
8. Explain the business/monetization side of the idea - how much does it cost? who will pay for it? how will it be paid for? how often?
9. Give additional features for 10x product
10. Talk about potential friction points and how you can mitigate them
11. Talk about potential points of failure and how you can avoid them
12. For follow-up questions, state what information you’re using to inform your answers. Could be additional features.
Hey Khalil! We have a complete breakdown of acing the PM product design interview in our course at www.tryexponent.com/courses/pm
Wow thanks for your sharing. It really helps me a lot.
There's a video by Diego (PM from Microsoft) that goes over a flowchart based "framework" that will answer your question. Diego also was featured on Exponent in one of these mock interviews where he spoke about pros and cons of such a framework.
I liked the fact that she chose a problem and solution that was not social media related. Now-a-days questions to all answers tend to go towards use of social media. Enjoyed the interview and learned a lot in the process.
I am not a product manager and have no experience in this field, but it is my career pursuit. I think this is a good product management question, but her answer is truly a bit loose. My answer would be like: moving into a new city is the thing that related to people's life. We can basically divide this big piece into four small segments such as clothing, eating, living, and transportation, of course socialization is a big deal and we can add it later. For clothing, finding clothes with good deals and high qualities is what we need the most. Go and do some research on service like Groupon to get some percents off and go and browse the stores or outlets. For living, renting apartments is a big stuff for everyone who wants to move to another city. There are lots of things to do in this part. Finding appropriate apartments, equipping the space with furnitures, utensils, etc. are a big headache. Think of what you can do and where you can go in each section, and compare and contrast the style, the price, and the quality, etc. Same thing with eating and transportation. If the company wants to design a product for movers, I personally recommend a module-based app. Design the module based on different kinds of needs. This will be easy for movers to figure out and to select. Due to time issue, I just stop here. I hope this helps.
Well the best way to address the question is to think about what the job is being done here and also defining the market.
E.g. JTBD = New graduates moving to a new city.
Then dive deep into the set of job step and associated outcomes to derive the customer needs that matter to them.
E.g. Job step = Find an apartment.
Set of outcome statements = Apartment that is 500square feet. Apartment allows pets. Apartment has X, Y, Z appliances.
and so on... once you have built out this entire map, then you are able to define a solution that addresses the needs best.
Surprisingly no one spoke about the partnership required between the app & furniture retailers in the interview. The App has to onboard apartment complex holding companies + interior designers + furniture retailers to provide this customised turnkey experience. And instead of a standalone app, I believe existing apps which support brokerage / agent services for finding an apartment are well suited to launch this service as a premium feature in those apps.
Thanks for sharing this interview. Highly structured with great details and clear response. I really liked how she broke the whole problem in small pieces :)
Personally I feel the interviewee didn't structure her answer in a very neat way and one can see the interviewer Stephen jumping in to bring structure and informing the flow of her thoughts. A structured approach in answering these case questions is valued more than the quality of solutions themselves.
Can you expound on why the structure matters more than substance? Thank you.
@@BonfireQueenie Well a Product manager has to cut through lot of noise and open ended problems in day to day product management. Structured approach to problem solving and product thinking is the backbone of building great products.
Anyone can up with creative ideas - Designers, Customer support teams, Sales teams, even CEOs or End-users themselves.
Its harder to do 1st principle thinking and conclude the what, why, how, when & where.
From my years of being a product manager, and interviewing (on both sides of the table), I have learnt that structure is valued more than substance.
Hope this helps
I don’t think it’s okay to choose a segment because “I know most about this segment”. A PM should pick a segment based on strategic value for the company, NOT personal bias.
Right, that's kind of what I struggle with with those mock interviews. They seem to follow some cookie cutter pattern of hitting a certain number of (supposedly) must-have points (user segments, pain points, product features, flows, ...) but with very little thought behind them. I realise it's kind of an artifical exercise by nature, but interviewees hardly ever question why they're building that product in the first place, what the vision is, and so on, and just rattle through some bullet points. That contributes a lot to making PM look like a cargo cult management thing instead of something that actually creates value.
@@puneeification its a 30 min case study on a bullshit hypothetical product not your actual job. the fact one even has to go through this dog and pony show when they have years of PM experience is a joke in and of itself.
@@puneeification YES THEY ARE ALL FOLLOWING THE SAME PLAYBOOK. BE UNIQUE FOLKS, as a hiring manager i would REJECT you following this shit. honestly guys, just be yourself.
The PM candidate proposes a furniture rental product with different tiers and pre-clustered themes to ease the burden of furnishing a new apartment for new grads moving to urban cities.
Here are the key takeaways:
* Users: New graduates moving to urban cities for new jobs
* Pain Points: Finding housing, feeling isolated, furnishing the apartment
* Proposed Product: Furniture rental service with various themes users can choose from. Renting furniture eliminates the need to worry about buying furniture, assembling it, or disposing of it when moving out.
* Key Features:
* Partnership with apartment complexes to offer bundled furniture rental with rent payment
* Different tiers of furniture quality at different price points
* Pre-clustered themes to simplify furniture selection
* Option to customize the pre-selected furniture
* Monetization: Rental fees with tiers based on furniture quality
* Risks:
* Reliant on establishing partnerships with apartment complexes
* Negotiating with apartment complexes on maintenance and damage policy
great interview lesson. one of the best so far. Love how she structured her answers, made it so easy to grasp everything in detail.
Thanks denzel. That means a lot! :)
Why would a person buy furniture right away!. They r moving from cities to countries .. Qs is why they are facing problems and what kind of problems that it needs to be improved? Are those users visiting city centres or tourist info or libraries to find details...also They need to get ID and lease done which is most imp part before buying furniture? I think she should mention such things for anyone internationals, and how those can be streamlined and then move to ikea or things like that? One stop all information kinda product
This is a great problem statement - something new and unique; and Jen did a great job at nailing down the specifics.
Y’all did Jen dirty with that thumbnail
I think this sounds more like a lunch time chat with a line manager than an interview response. I am also a bit 'chatty' in interviews and in my experience it doesn't get you the job. Not a criticism of Jen because I am very similar and I like what she is saying but it normally pays to be more focussed and blunt in the way you answer questions. More like your Facebook PM interview with Celena. Just my 2p
At the start, the host mentioned that engagement would be the key goal. I think the furniture feature isn't capable of hooking the user. If anyone has a thought, please help me understand better.
Engagement is not something where one size fits all. If you're something like facebook, Netflix or youtube where you want people on every day, engagement is measured in daily usage. If you run a monthly email, engagement means that every month people look at and click on your email. If you're airbnb, engagement on one side means people check airbnb when they're going to travel.
If you're running a furniture rental service that pre-furnishes an apartment- engagement means every time people move to a new place they use your service. Even better engagement could be something like someone seasonally or yearly changing out their furniture with your service.
The user segment that the furniture feature is solving for are millenials. The task of creating a home set up with as little friction as possible and allowing the convenience of refurbishing or refurnishing seasonally which is a key pain point for these set of users hooks them to coming back to the same product for either replacement of an exisiting subscription or extension of the subscription. Also the feature to transfer lease component from one complex to another which is super convenient to millenials who switch locations or jobs more frequently.
the interviewee danced around what engagement really means. its best to actually define what this is in respect to the business upfront.
Ok I am not sure I am asking the right question here. I believe what Stephen asked in between was two fold. And I had the exact same doubt (atleast one of them):
1. My doubt too: If I was a customer, why will I rent a furniture for say $5 for 12 months = $60 when I can just buy it for $50 or less in the market
2. I think he also meant to ask what will happen if it breaks, how we can handle that. I may be naïve to this model in the US but I am not sure how lease will protect that?
I was thinking that maybe we should have an agreement on who will pay for damage and have some rules there(eg: if the quality was already bad and it was worn out the owner will have to replace and if it wasnt maintained well the tenant has to pay). I think it can get complex and nasty when there is a damage.
The other solution I came up with for the furniture is Maybe there can be an insurance sort of an approach here that is shared by both the owner and the tenant.. but that was a good and difficult problem to think over (if furniture is damaged)
These are all really long interviews. Typically companies do not provide that much time to crack a PM situation based question and there's only about 15 minutes for each question. How do you go over so much material in that short time frame?
@15:00 Microsoft PM uses a Macbook!
Microsoft has vast product portfolio for Mac and other Apple ecosystem products. Even otherwise, Employees should be encouraged to use and learn from best of the world and bring those insights to the workplace. Microsoft hating Apple and vice versa is so 1990's
Lol.
I wish McDonald’s would allow the employees to bring in Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and other fast food.
Good point.
Did she give the 5 pointers in the end or did i miss it somehow?
great video, also Stephen I like your glasses.
Great job Jen & Stephen !!
Jen rocked !
This was great! Loved how Jen added a lot of data points from her own experience as part of her solutioning. Question: I know she picked the user base she is most familiar with, but she didn't pick the one with the highest market opportunity. Did I miss something?
I found that a little odd too. However, Jen did ask a question in the beginning about the goal of this product and Stephen clarified that it was to bring the highest improvement in the user's experience of moving to a new city. I would interpret that as choosing a segment that has the worst problems and trying to fix them, as opposed to choosing the largest segment that may not have the strongest problems and trying to fix them.
Thanks!
I got my job at Microsoft because of that video, so I thought "Thanks" are in order
Did you get the same question?
Very helpful... Please keep making more such videos
Thanks Anuradha!
What technology skills are applied in designing this product and how will this be implemented? Furthermore, what KPI or business metric is being used to track the success of this product and features? How does a product manager/owner calculate that this worth building and releasing?
I think the KPI/Metric question was answered at the beginning of the interview. The coy is focused on User engagement. This also answers the question about what the PM/PO tracks to know what is worth building.
In terms of Technology, that will be a decision of the larger team or the Solutions architect (i.e if the Coy doesn't already have a standard Tech Stack).
What a great and well rounded answer.
Good answer but I think it's clear that she had thought about the answer prior to the interview and there was very little thinking time that felt unrealistic for how we can see ourselves in a real interview. I also felt like the structure was sometimes unclear and/or she wasn't checking in with the interviewer enough to help establish where they were at in the process.
Thanks for the great interview, Stephen and Jen. As someone looking to start my career in Product Management, this really helps! Loved it. :)
If you have any product owner jobs please let me know.
what are the 5 tips that she was talking about
No word about the logistics of the business: owning, storing, and delivering the furnishings. Risk of carrying too much inventory. Idea of negotiating with apartment complexes to send their repairmen to fix a broken chair..? Stephen actually leads her to some pricing options with his comment on depreciation, but she does not pick up the clue: one model, for example, if you rented the furniture for X years, then it is yours. Overall, Jen's answers are not very structured - some good ideas/features here or there, e.g. themes for furnishing, customization, influencers, but one does not get a cohesive idea of the business.
Second that totally.
She's didn't answer the question. How do you calculate depreciation?
This interview felt really erratic in terms of the user flow and mvp. There was some structure, but the solution was confusing and there was no talk about how to test it, is it what users actually want, the risk mitigation strategies, scalability, etc.
Hey SNAFU- thanks for the thoughts. How would you structure it if you could?
Enjoyed this. Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it
She is talking good but her answers are very very confusing and unstructured. She is wandering aimlessly with her thoughts instead of talking about product she'd design.
Pouring all of it together and being slightly unrealistic. No go for me.
I agree
If that is all I have to do at Microsoft then how do I apply for a PM job at Microsoft.
The positive is that she can speak good English that I am able to understand. Thank you for speaking good and understandable English.
90% of the battle is understanding people’s English.
I agree. She wasn't MECE and it was very difficult to follow her ideas. Not structured at all.
I like the MECE. I will use that next time. Thanks
Great job Jen!
Overall great great response for a unique problem statement. Would love to see few interview including designs and other metrics on white board and managing the interview f2f.
Thanks Deepak! We actually include exactly what you mention (whiteboarding and face to face interviews) in our online course at PMLesson.com/course
great insightful interview videos. I also conduct mock interviews to help people prepare for their actual interview.. I specifically have Indian context incorporated in my questions and suited for Indian Product Managers
Can we connect?
Is it applicable to product designer/ UX designer? Also, is there a definite structure to answer Qs? As most ppl comment abt structure in the answer? What is it .? Oh..I think there can be users such as people relocating in general...doesn’t matter if they r married or not..Lol Does this q not require more clarification as in experience after they have moved or when they are planning of moving that experience?
To be honest, if you think this is a good answer it's very misleading for people who are preparing for the interview. Obviously a prepared answer. it goes too deep. I easily lost track as the listener. should lay out the structure first, one sentence to hit each point and then explain a bit. it's easier for interviewer to follow and take notes. when i was listening, i was struggling to capture what's the segment? what's the pain points? what's the solution? The interviewee picked new grad as the target user segment because she's knowledgable about this group, this is a common mistake. you are not designing for your own use. no criteria for how to prioritize segment or pain points. the final solution including all the details is less important than how you methodically and logically get there.
One of the major pain points of a person moving into a city can be language barrier. I took that road down and ideated around the same. We can leverage this opportunity to integrate with Bing translate
Don;t think so it would be the case for new grads and especially in the US. where majorly (>88%) everyone speaks English.
@@harshilrastogi yeah given its US. I was thinking of international tourists, high diversity regions etc. But multi language support won't come in MVP I think.
what about the MVP for the product
Very good question. Now you are assuming she is taking about Agile. In this interview the strategy for methodology is not covered?
Her train of thoughts are impeccable, however, if we rule out this product in real world then it'd be unsustainable if organisations KPI is engagement at a first place.
loved!!!!
Good Job Jen. thank yo
Didn't like this one! Too much extra information. I was curious about the strategy rather than the market study
I found her rambling. There is nothing concrete for the first 16 minutes
I don't understand the point of this kind of interview. Does the interviewer require the interviewee design a new feature on the spot? I mean it takes time and brainstorming to come up with good ideas and designs...it sounds strange that she designed the rent furniture feature on the spot.
This is a great example of an interview that tests the candidates ability to deal with a large ambiguous problem. Jen did that well with the customer segmentation and pain point identification. To test actual feature development, personally, I would switch out the question and ask something else that was more focused on a single problem.
Yes it sounded over prepared
How does a product owner at Microsoft determine which tools should be evaluated such as open source vs licensed?
That is typically a much later conversation to be had when coming up with dev designs and a PM's role in it could be smaller.
Sarosh, thank for your reply but what is the actual answer. Poison ☠️ pills are just a delay tactic that only tells me not to have you on my team. Have fun
cracking the coding interview, every coder liked that
Good attempt but a lot can be improved. This is half baked solution so, PM aspirants should not follow the template as it is.
1. More clarifying questions needed to scope the problem statement such as if the product exist? what are the specific need of the target users etc? what type of product users may need - physical, digital, self-serve etc? what industry the company operate?
2. Choosing target users should NOT be dependent on what you feel/know but which persona has the highest impact on the target KPI
3. She barely talked about data/KPI to make decisions. The decision at any step cannot be based on what you are feeling but what is optimum solution for customer, product and business and then conducting experiments to validate
Thanks for the feedback!
I don't think coming up with a different pricing scheme is really a very creative idea that you want to discuss in product design interview.
Can you please suggest an alternative?
Hi - great content.. is there any material/mock interview for behavioral interview preparation ? Can you please point me there, thanks !
Hey Sanket! Yes, you can check out our behavioral interview podcast here: blog.tryexponent.com/prepare-product-management-behavioral-interviews/
@@tryexponent Thanks !
place make more video like this
How people with no experience become product managers?
She didn't give other ideas and just went with one. Is that okay?
I think that's what Stephen was alluding to when he asked for "trade-offs". Jen din't actually speak about that and instead spoke about "challenges" you would encounter while building this kind of a product, which is also a good insight by the way.
ok
honestly, her answer was boring and mediocre. she was just revamping on what is already there like the furniture renting services. she didnt even talk about these competitions in the tradeoffs (Stephen had to ask her about any concerns with her idea). At least mention that you might be facing competitions with lower prices from similar services
Thanks for the feedback Shing! How might you have structured it differently?
@@tryexponent not to say she didn't do good overall. I'm sure my response would not be as detailed or as good as hers, but comparing to other mock interviews you have on the channel, her answer seems boring.
one solution I have would target the new family moving to a new state. one of their pain points is shipping their belongings and furniture taking a long time. and one solution might be to use drones (AMZN, GOOGL, TSLA have all acquired a license from FAA to use drones for goods delivery). there could be a potential partnership with these companies to modify some of their drones and use them for shipping the belongings and furniture over to the new state so that the users wouldn't need to live in a hotel and wait for their stuff to arrive before moving in to their new home. By having their belongings and furniture arrive sooner than using trucks that most moving companies do, we could make the moving process smoother and thus improve the moving experience for the users
i admit the answer seems wild, and I skipped a lot of details
I think she spoke way too much. She missed elements such as understanding clearly what the user's journey is (lifecycle), from the time of consideration until the time of having settled in. It was not a collaborative effort or a 2-way discussion. The PM did not try to get much information from the interviewer and based all of her decisions on personal experience and perception. She did not confirm anything with the interviewer. In my humble opinion, a really poor interview and product building process.
haha. the title definitely needs to be changed
So basically to crack the product manager interview you have to be a fake robot memorizing how to replay a bunch of questions. There is no even the need for an explanation of why these kind of interviews are a non-sense, but everything became clear when you start to work for an actual company...Poor society.
haha yes exactly.
nothing technical
Thanks!