Everyone always says in the comments of these various product sense interviews "this is the best one I've seen" - but having watched a ton of these videos now, I'm sure that this truly is the best one out there. This was a total masterclass by Abhishek. I'm kind of shocked how well he did that, how well he structured the interview and just the flow of conversation, how he came up with such unique insights about user pains and creative solution ideas, and how methodically he prioritised them. Truly the best product sense video on RUclips and I learned a ton.
But you have to think if this is the level that is expected to get a hire recommendation ? This was just too smooth and I think just surprisingly being given a completely new topic to wrap around in 30 mins, difficult to get this smooth. But I could be wrong.
Thanks Dianna and Abhishek for recording this session. Great product sense interview! I love the structure and prioritization I have two concerns: 1. The time it took to do the entire mock was too long as compared to the time you usually get 2. In the value chain section - we talked about deciding the 'itinerary' has unmet needs and then we basically prioritized the same problem under pain-points section. It feels like we could gotten to the pain-point early on without doing the entire exercise. 3. The solution don't solve for the problems of families. It applies to all user segments which defeats the purpose of doing the user segmentation exercise Would love to hear more thoughts!
I agree with the first 2 points although second point was a fresh direction for me to think upon. Third point: imo we shouldnt think about whether the solution is applicable to only 1 user segment or more while building the solution. If that user’s biggest pain point is something generic, then also we should solve for that. And the added segments are just added bonus to the metric.
Hi Dianna, This is a great interview and Abhishek has done fantastic job in creativity. My Question - Do you have a suggestion how to time bound the solution to 27-30 minutes please (other than service provider point)? My concern is with timing which is where I was burned in my prior meta interviews. The answer ended at around 40 min in the video and it does not include the time he took to write the text on the doc which might potentially take it north of 45 min. From my experience at interviews at Meta, Lyft and Google, interviewees get 25 to 30 min to fully finalize the solution.
Exactly what I was typing.these videos are unrealistic and candidates are already handed out questions and come well prepared.Also the interviewer is rarely so smiling and jolly lol
Same for me. I over prepared for my loop especially when I sailed through in screening round. I had so much content for my design interview topic - that I messed up on time management and when I was thrown a curveball I panicked a bit because I was running out of time. I think these mocks are perfect to brush up and exercise your creative muscles, as well as breadth of your thinking. Most of the time it’s good to keep it simple and basic, with a good chain of thoughts and a decent solution in the end.
I don’t think the long list of solutions is necessary, he could have saved time with just one idea that solves the problem for the user segment he selected
Diana. This is very good example. But have you seen candidates do this thorough of a job in real-time in interviews. While the interviewee might know all these things, doing this while writing on the doc + actually taking time to think as travel is something not everyone does + thinking through solutions and also putting this in clear communication is tough to do in 30 mins. Seems thr individual had written the structure already, plus all the time he might take to write down the text is also skipped. Plus time building table is also skipped. Plus thinking time is also skipped. This seems like too picture perfect. We need to see a good enough interview that would get you in that way we know what the threshold is.
This was so insightful. Loved the way he explained every single aspect of the structure and his decisions.I would have loved to hear his gtm strategy at the end.
I think that the segmentation- family,solo,friends, is demo segmentation which recommended to avoid, wouldn’t it be better to do motivational - travel enthusiasts, etc.?
In practicality you have only 25-30 mins. Does this seem too polished. Not sure even experienced PMs can think this way in 30 mins. The topic is very new.
Another solid interview! Thank you Dianna and Abishek. Quick question - under what scenarios would it make sense to solve for monetization as the business goal for a startup question like this? I understand the rationale here but another consideration is business viability risk. We could build a product that gets significant adoption but users aren’t willing to pay 10:20
Fair question! Usually these questions are testing your ability to build a product consumers love assuming that’ll lend itself to the business being able to monetize hence why adoption/engagement is usually the first step. You could totally do extra credit and give some ideas on how to monetize the product even if they don’t explicitly ask for it.
@diannayau - I have feedback for your videos. While the answers are good, it's not clear for what levels this level of detail is acceptable. For example if you were interviewing for a Level 7 PM at Meta. Would the above answer still make the interviewer go Wow? How would you do this differently if you were interviewing for a Level 7 PM as opposed to a Level 5 PM?
Very good interview but it could have been called out if we are looking at b2b or b2c as in b2b space it’s a quite different with different players like Amadeus, Sabre , Travelport etc
This is a great interview, but this seems unrealistic to think this quickly on your feet and deliver naturally. Im assuming since hes head of product hes had alot of mock interviews or he prepared for this before hand.
On the TAM, Frequency of Use, ARPU section, how often does one find themselves not using quant data? As intuitive as things may sound, it def. still is subjective, and if encountering another strong willed, informed person, there might be pushback nonstop at this step where nothing moves forward (understandably so) Can you do a mock interview where this back and fourth nudge is showcased, both parties are using their own "intuition" but arriving at different answers. Create a scenario where the conversation lasts several meets, with the camera turning on and off, a title at the start of the scene highlighting 5 days later" or something nice like that, very interactive experience IMO
great as always. It would be helpful to have the guest introduce themselves before the mock starts. Otherwise I keep asking myself who this person is that I'm listening to.
Yup, like other commenters have mentioned, definitely rehearsed, prepared beforehand and NOT a mock interview. At no point, he stumbles/takes time to think deeply. It's not like it's technical knowledge that you either know or you don't, it's an art. However, looking at the response (which is really good BTW), it feels polished. We need to see the un-edited version 🙂 I believe at some point I could see his eyes L-->R moving which may imply he's reading off of some notes
Is it typical to define such a specific business goal before walking through pain points and solutions? In other words did he converge too quickly in this process?
Thank you for this @diannayau and Abishak I was thinking on crunching the families cohort even further. I think that there's a big difference between traveling with kids and teenagers, vs traveling with babies and toddlers. What do you think?
Also, the brainstorming silent moments were wisely cut off, but could you say how long in average it took to come up with an answer after each break? Feels to me like a minute and a half is not enough to come up with such brilliant ideas. How do you recommend to behave in interviews ?
@@diannayauDiana. This is exactly what you can help with. What is realistic and good enough. The content here seems to be too polished. In interview we only have 25 or 30 mins. 5 min clarify and structure. 5 min strategy. 5 min segments. 5 min problems. 5 mins solutions. And we are done. What we have above seems like an hour long answer with methodical writing.
@@diannayau I was puzzled too because the solution could apply to all user segments. What do you think of simply segmenting by (1) tour groups led, (2) non-guided travelers. is that sufficient? Do we always have to segment the user groups if the pain point cut across all users?
I think user segmentation was fine. The issue is the pain-point "Building the itinerary requires a lot of research and effort" applies to all segments - solo travelers, groups, families. He should have picked a pain-point uniquely faced by families, and a solution to solve that pain-point. At no point after picking "Families" as the user segment did he go back and try to tie the solution to families pain-point. It was a generic solution. On a humorous note: I often find people who are ex-Meta or received Meta offers delivering less than ideal responses. I wonder if they just got lucky with a different questions, or whether I'm judging too strictly, or maybe its all a matter of luck and one just does a lot of mocks, tries to listen to feedback and improve, then roll the dice on interview day and see what happens. :)
Went too much in breadth for the interview. a typical interview should be done in half the time. This needs to be brought up, you would not have this much time to give an answer and interviewer will run out of patience and or push you for faster solutioning, hurrying you up. might be more of a downside than an upside.
🤩Comment below: ✍what other mock interviews do you want to see?
🥴Struggling with product interviews? 🚀Book 1:1 COACHING @ superpeer.com/dyau
Everyone always says in the comments of these various product sense interviews "this is the best one I've seen" - but having watched a ton of these videos now, I'm sure that this truly is the best one out there. This was a total masterclass by Abhishek. I'm kind of shocked how well he did that, how well he structured the interview and just the flow of conversation, how he came up with such unique insights about user pains and creative solution ideas, and how methodically he prioritised them. Truly the best product sense video on RUclips and I learned a ton.
Wow, so happy to hear this! I’ll make sure to screenshot this and share with Abhishek, he’d be elated to hear this
But you have to think if this is the level that is expected to get a hire recommendation ? This was just too smooth and I think just surprisingly being given a completely new topic to wrap around in 30 mins, difficult to get this smooth. But I could be wrong.
Was Abhishek aware of the question. His answers looks like he has thought through them prior to the mock..true?
Even as an SME on this topic on the strategy side it's hard for me to smoothly come up with all these aspects within 5 mins
Abhishek was awesome! Really helped me think through. And some good tips. Thanks Dianna, ❤ your channel
This guy is on next level. He has so much clarity on topic and a great great product sense
Thanks Dianna and Abhishek for recording this session. Great product sense interview! I love the structure and prioritization
I have two concerns:
1. The time it took to do the entire mock was too long as compared to the time you usually get
2. In the value chain section - we talked about deciding the 'itinerary' has unmet needs and then we basically prioritized the same problem under pain-points section. It feels like we could gotten to the pain-point early on without doing the entire exercise.
3. The solution don't solve for the problems of families. It applies to all user segments which defeats the purpose of doing the user segmentation exercise
Would love to hear more thoughts!
I agree with the first 2 points although second point was a fresh direction for me to think upon.
Third point: imo we shouldnt think about whether the solution is applicable to only 1 user segment or more while building the solution. If that user’s biggest pain point is something generic, then also we should solve for that. And the added segments are just added bonus to the metric.
Hi Dianna, This is a great interview and Abhishek has done fantastic job in creativity.
My Question - Do you have a suggestion how to time bound the solution to 27-30 minutes please (other than service provider point)?
My concern is with timing which is where I was burned in my prior meta interviews. The answer ended at around 40 min in the video and it does not include the time he took to write the text on the doc which might potentially take it north of 45 min. From my experience at interviews at Meta, Lyft and Google, interviewees get 25 to 30 min to fully finalize the solution.
Exactly what I was typing.these videos are unrealistic and candidates are already handed out questions and come well prepared.Also the interviewer is rarely so smiling and jolly lol
Same for me. I over prepared for my loop especially when I sailed through in screening round.
I had so much content for my design interview topic - that I messed up on time management and when I was thrown a curveball I panicked a bit because I was running out of time.
I think these mocks are perfect to brush up and exercise your creative muscles, as well as breadth of your thinking. Most of the time it’s good to keep it simple and basic, with a good chain of thoughts and a decent solution in the end.
I don’t think the long list of solutions is necessary, he could have saved time with just one idea that solves the problem for the user segment he selected
How is the product specifically focussing on family?
The solution described applies more or less to all leisure travelers.
Diana. This is very good example. But have you seen candidates do this thorough of a job in real-time in interviews. While the interviewee might know all these things, doing this while writing on the doc + actually taking time to think as travel is something not everyone does + thinking through solutions and also putting this in clear communication is tough to do in 30 mins. Seems thr individual had written the structure already, plus all the time he might take to write down the text is also skipped. Plus time building table is also skipped. Plus thinking time is also skipped.
This seems like too picture perfect. We need to see a good enough interview that would get you in that way we know what the threshold is.
This was so insightful. Loved the way he explained every single aspect of the structure and his decisions.I would have loved to hear his gtm strategy at the end.
Best video I have seen in a very long time, great strategy and clarity on what is being built and why. Solutions were very creative. Awesome.
Great interview! Would love to see more of this. Thank you Dianna for taking he time and effort to do these, there is so much to learn here.
One of the best product sense interviews I have ever seen. Kudos to Abhishek for driving a very powerful discussion!
One of the best Product Sense interviews I have seen! Superb work!
Thanks!
I think that the segmentation- family,solo,friends, is demo segmentation which recommended to avoid, wouldn’t it be better to do motivational - travel enthusiasts, etc.?
AWESOME content. I have two final interviews for two different Sr. Product Mgr positions next week. THANK YOU!
Good luck and let us know how it goes!
it would be really hard to cover all of this in a 45 min interview.
In practicality you have only 25-30 mins. Does this seem too polished. Not sure even experienced PMs can think this way in 30 mins. The topic is very new.
Another solid interview! Thank you Dianna and Abishek.
Quick question - under what scenarios would it make sense to solve for monetization as the business goal for a startup question like this?
I understand the rationale here but another consideration is business viability risk. We could build a product that gets significant adoption but users aren’t willing to pay 10:20
Fair question! Usually these questions are testing your ability to build a product consumers love assuming that’ll lend itself to the business being able to monetize hence why adoption/engagement is usually the first step. You could totally do extra credit and give some ideas on how to monetize the product even if they don’t explicitly ask for it.
@@diannayau Makes sense, many thanks!
theres no way this is being done in 40 mins in an actual interview setting without knowing the prompt beforehand
@diannayau - I have feedback for your videos. While the answers are good, it's not clear for what levels this level of detail is acceptable. For example if you were interviewing for a Level 7 PM at Meta. Would the above answer still make the interviewer go Wow? How would you do this differently if you were interviewing for a Level 7 PM as opposed to a Level 5 PM?
Very good interview but it could have been called out if we are looking at b2b or b2c as in b2b space it’s a quite different with different players like Amadeus, Sabre , Travelport etc
This is a great interview, but this seems unrealistic to think this quickly on your feet and deliver naturally. Im assuming since hes head of product hes had alot of mock interviews or he prepared for this before hand.
Thank you Dianna , this was very helpful please upload more videos like this
Thank you!
I think a video of how would you improve a product would be great. Like "How would you improve a Instagram Reels?"
Great suggestion! That’s true, I haven’t done an improve x product video…will add it to the suggested list!
On the TAM, Frequency of Use, ARPU section, how often does one find themselves not using quant data? As intuitive as things may sound, it def. still is subjective, and if encountering another strong willed, informed person, there might be pushback nonstop at this step where nothing moves forward (understandably so) Can you do a mock interview where this back and fourth nudge is showcased, both parties are using their own "intuition" but arriving at different answers. Create a scenario where the conversation lasts several meets, with the camera turning on and off, a title at the start of the scene highlighting
5 days later" or something nice like that, very interactive experience IMO
dont trust these videos, they are pre-prepped. In real life you have to make assumptions.
great as always. It would be helpful to have the guest introduce themselves before the mock starts. Otherwise I keep asking myself who this person is that I'm listening to.
Very likely Abishek was given the question before the mock. I've found this to be generally true of all the mock interviews posted on youtube.
Definitely one of the better ones!!!
Yup, like other commenters have mentioned, definitely rehearsed, prepared beforehand and NOT a mock interview. At no point, he stumbles/takes time to think deeply. It's not like it's technical knowledge that you either know or you don't, it's an art. However, looking at the response (which is really good BTW), it feels polished. We need to see the un-edited version 🙂 I believe at some point I could see his eyes L-->R moving which may imply he's reading off of some notes
Is it typical to define such a specific business goal before walking through pain points and solutions? In other words did he converge too quickly in this process?
I was wondering the same. I would only do product vision after looking at the pain points that we decide to address.
Thank you for this @diannayau and Abishak
I was thinking on crunching the families cohort even further. I think that there's a big difference between traveling with kids and teenagers, vs traveling with babies and toddlers. What do you think?
Also, the brainstorming silent moments were wisely cut off, but could you say how long in average it took to come up with an answer after each break? Feels to me like a minute and a half is not enough to come up with such brilliant ideas. How do you recommend to behave in interviews ?
@TheJerusTeam it was ~2ish mins, agree with you it’s a struggle to come up with the best ideas under such a tight time crunch
@@diannayauDiana. This is exactly what you can help with. What is realistic and good enough. The content here seems to be too polished. In interview we only have 25 or 30 mins. 5 min clarify and structure. 5 min strategy. 5 min segments. 5 min problems. 5 mins solutions. And we are done. What we have above seems like an hour long answer with methodical writing.
Really well done
How do you share screen like that?
this was via Zoom!
Seems researched and prepared, not capturing a true example of a mock interview. I appreciate sharing the thought process and framework though.
get your guide solves for what is discussed here
I think the user segmentation was not great. The solutions proposed did not have any impact on the type of solution to be developed
thanks for the thought, what do you think could be an alternative user segmentation?
@@diannayau I was puzzled too because the solution could apply to all user segments. What do you think of simply segmenting by (1) tour groups led, (2) non-guided travelers. is that sufficient? Do we always have to segment the user groups if the pain point cut across all users?
@@Sweetdigithis is a good point. Diana do we really need to have 3+ segments ? Can I just roll with the ?
I think user segmentation was fine. The issue is the pain-point "Building the itinerary requires a lot of research and effort" applies to all segments - solo travelers, groups, families. He should have picked a pain-point uniquely faced by families, and a solution to solve that pain-point. At no point after picking "Families" as the user segment did he go back and try to tie the solution to families pain-point. It was a generic solution. On a humorous note: I often find people who are ex-Meta or received Meta offers delivering less than ideal responses. I wonder if they just got lucky with a different questions, or whether I'm judging too strictly, or maybe its all a matter of luck and one just does a lot of mocks, tries to listen to feedback and improve, then roll the dice on interview day and see what happens. :)
this is another rehearsed interview
Went too much in breadth for the interview. a typical interview should be done in half the time. This needs to be brought up, you would not have this much time to give an answer and interviewer will run out of patience and or push you for faster solutioning, hurrying you up. might be more of a downside than an upside.