Interviewing Product Managers

• Does the candidate understand the role? has she done the research to take the application seriously?
• How does the candidate frame the role? Does the role feel important and ambitious? 
• Does the candidate remember to answer the second part of the question? Many don’t, even though the second half is more important! 
• Is this the type of person you want on your team now and in the future?
• Is this candidate interested in product management because she’s a user-centered builder, or because she wants to add a Product Manager to her resume? 

Other ways product leaders ask this question: 

• VP Product at Target.com, Sean Murphy asks about what people believe are their greatest professional accomplishments and then uses those examples to dig deeper into the candidate’s ways of working, judgment and product principles.
• Matt from Workframe asks: “walk me through a time where you figured out what to build.”
• The candidate led a project on Reddit. He covers Prioritization, Resourcing, Stakeholder management, conflict management.

I recently interviewed a candidate for a senior product manager role that needs a lot of user discovery for a Whitespace product. The candidate wanted to (and did) demonstrate strong execution, but missed the strategic thinking and User-Research elements of modern product management. He never once mentioned bringing users into the product discovery, development, and release process.

Reviewing responses from other senior product leaders about their top Product Manager interview questions, most questions fell into three buckets: 

• “Why are you interested in the job/company/industry” to understand a candidate’s interests and ambitions. 
• “Walk me through your accomplishment” to understand a candidate’s displayed competencies. 
• "the conflict example" is either a hypothetical or historical example. Evaluators look for collaboration skills and use of user data.