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Part-time management interview questions become harder and harder every single year and it was because the competition was so severe
For each job application, less than 1% of the candidates can actually pass the interview and land a job offer and most of them failed miserably even in the first round of interview
They not only ask you those typical questions such as what's your favorite product but also change the interview type to make it extremely hard to predict an answer
In this video, I'm going to reveal the top 6 most challenging part-time management interview questions and tell you the framework and how to answer them effectively
Stay until the end of this video where I share with you the interview type that most people spend most of the time to work on but failed miserably
Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Li, I direct a product and feature in Forbes
I've helped 100 people land the dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startups and continue to get promoted as a product leader
In this channel, we talk about free product management training and tech trends
Like and subscribe and watch our new video every Tuesday
The product management interview questions actually happen in all type of industries
In the past couple years, I've helped thousands of people land jobs in fan companies, fintech, healthcare, AI, and different kind of unicorn startups
They all ask the following top 6 product management interview questions
Let's go through them one by one based on the difficulty level
Question number one, product design type interview questions
This is the most common interview questions for product management
However, most candidates fail
You will frequently ask this kind of question
Design an app for museum
Design an Uber app for blind people
The reason this kind of question is very difficult was because it's open-ended question
Lots of candidates start to create any feature design without thinking about different type of customer segmentations and pain point
And most of them do not have the empathy to understand the true pain point of customers
The best way to answer those kind of open-ended interview questions is by using the modified Circles framework
Now, let me emphasize on the modified part
Because the Circles framework was invented over 10 years ago
It doesn't work for today's environment
Because interview questions has become harder and harder every single day
Now, the modified Circles framework, what I recommend everyone to follow is mission and why
For example, if you want to design Uber app for blind people
You need to think about different kind of missions
How it's related to Uber
Why Uber want to design for blind people
And connect it with the current environment
In this case, it's post-COVID environment
And then you can ask some clarifying questions in terms of the scope of the design
Do they want to launch internationally
Or they want to focus on certain locations to start with
The next step is customer segmentation
Most candidates fail the customer segmentation
Because when they think about design Uber app for blind people
They only think about the blind people
But they forgot to think about the drivers
Because Uber app is a two-sided marketplace
You must have drivers and riders to keep it even and balanced
And then you continue to do sub-customer segmentation for blind people and also drivers
After that, you prioritize what type of customer segmentation you need to prioritize
For this 45-minute product design case interview
Then list different kind of pain point for prioritize user segmentation
And then you prioritize again to think about the most important pain point to solve right now
Then list top three solutions
And then prioritize again to figure out what type of solution is the best at this moment
For Uber to work on in order to solve the problem for blind people
I have a specific sample answer and training to teach you
How to solve this very complex product design interview questions
Make sure to watch this video right here
And use my framework and follow into the details
A lot of people also make this big mistake at the beginning of the interview
By asking the wrong clarifying questions
For the sake of time, I'm going to describe more in this video
Regarding the type of wrong clarifying questions
You can watch it right here
But you should definitely go to this website to download the top 10 clarifying questions
So that you can avoid those mistakes
I'm going to link it in the description of this video
The second hardest interview question is part of strategy question
Part of strategy question sounds like this
Should Lyft enter the Indian market or not?
What should Google do in the space of AI?
If you are the CEO of Uber, what's in your mind right now?
All of those are very strategic long-term thinkers
Those kind of 10-year thinking methodology
You cannot use a strategic consulting framework to solve this problem
Because most consultants will start with
How can we make the most money in the coming few years?
That's literally the wrong question to think about and wrong question to ask
Because as a product manager
We need to think about how to solve problems for customers
And how to tackle the market in the long run
And without the right problem to solve
You're not able to make money anyway
And if you only focus on money in the short run
You're not going to become a great successful tech company in the long run
Because majority of the tech companies
They raise VC funding
Knowing they're not making money in the near term
But they're going to solve big problems
Impact millions of people's lives
To make billions of money in the 10 years
So therefore kill all the consulting framework
Without product strategy
So what framework should we use in the product strategy question?
I recommend using the GUCCI framework I invented
So GUCCI framework stands for goals and mission
Why we're solving this problem
Why Google even thinking about entering the AI space
And U stands for unmet customer needs
This is very different from product design question
We emphasize on big unmet customer needs
Not a small incremental improvement
C stands for customer segmentation
And the second C stands for competition
Because it's very important to understand
Which competitor is doing
Before you design a long-term strategic roadmap
And I stands for integrated ecosystem
Because this I is very critical
How Uber react to AI
It's very different from how Google react to AI
Even if the unmet customer needs and competitors
Customer segmentation are quite similar
But their internal systems are different
And their partnership inside the integrated ecosystem
Is also very different
I made an in-depth analysis regarding
How to use a GUCCI framework
To answer any type of product strategy interview questions
You should watch this video right here
I'm also going to link it in the description of this video
So that you can take lots of notes
And nail those product strategy interview questions
The third hardest product management interview question is
Execution and metrics question
For example, people ask you this question
What set the goal for Facebook event?
Set the success metrics for YouTube live
When we solve those product metrics interview question
A lot of candidates made some mistakes
By mixing it with product design
Because they thought
Well, I can just give one or two metrics
And thinking about how to combine with design
Is 100% incorrect
Because in the product metrics interview questions
You really need to think about maybe 10
Or up to 20 different kind of metrics
You need to measure for the success of the product
And then you also need to have
Very important north star metrics
North star metrics is the most important metric
For the entire product
Most people do not understand
What is the most important one
They're able to tell us different type of metrics to measure
But they pick the wrong north star
Which is going to kill them immediately in the interview
So what is the right way to answer
Those kind of interview questions
Is to use my computer science PhD framework
Invited by Dr. Z Li
By the way, my PhD was in material science
Not computer science
But what is my computer science PhD framework?
It stands for why and mission
Why Facebook want to have a Facebook event product
How it's related to the mission of the company
CS stands for customer segmentation
Facebook event has event organizer and event attendees
P stands for prioritization and mission-related metrics
Over there you're going to pick
The most important prioritized mission-related metrics
That became the north star metrics
That's the number one thing you need to measure
As a successful product manager
H stands for product health metrics
Over there you're going to have 10 and 20 different product health metrics
To have a list of comprehensive answers
D stands for D risk
What kind of potential risks you can involve
If you want to have A plus answer
You can talk about CC
Stands for cannibalization and countermetrics
So towards the end
You're definitely going to impress the interviewer
By using my computer science PhD framework
I have a specific training
Where I teach you how exactly to use this framework
With a sample answer
You can put it right here
Which is going to help you to pass
Meta product execution and product metrics
Interview questions right here
I'm also going to link it
In the description of this video
When you prepare for those interview questions
Make sure to use the latest product management
Interview questions database
And you can go to this website
And download all the top 50 interview questions database
To get ready for your upcoming interviews
Regardless if it's for fan companies
Or healthcare or startup
They all ask very similar questions
I'm going to link it in the description of this video
The hardest product management interview question number four
Problem solving
Problem solving questions is quite typical
And it's going to see how well
You're able to analyze the product situation
And execute your vision
For example
If you ask this kind of real-life interview questions
Wayfair's furniture return rate increased from 15% to 20%
What should you do?
When you hear this kind of interview questions
The hardest part is actually understand
How to think strategically
So that you're able to complete the entire answer
Instead of thinking about random ideas
Unorganized idea is very forbidden
Within the product management interview process
So how to organize the answer correctly
Here's a way to do
Number one
You must understand the end-to-end customer journey
Of people going to Wayfair
Purchasing couches or any furnitures
And return it
Once you lay out the end-to-end customer journey map
Then you analyze using the CPTE framework
Which stands for
C. Customers
P. Product
T. Technology
E. External factors
So within each steps of customer journey
There must be something wrong
Such as could be customer
Changed their opinion regarding not buying couches anymore
Could also there's some product issue
Product failure or website issue
Wrong description of the couches
Could also be technology issue
And E stands for external factors
And maybe some competitors have furniture sell
So people start to return the furnitures
So once you put CPTE framework
Against the user journey map
It's very easy for you to understand
What steps went wrong
The fifth-hardest interview question
For product management is
System design interview
Not all of the companies
Are going to ask you system design
However, it's becoming more and more popular
And extremely hard
What type of company will ask you
This kind of questions
Depends on how technical the role is
For example, if you work for Amazon Web Services
They will ask you system design questions
No problem for sure
Because you're going to work on
Very complex situation
So they will ask you questions like this
How would you design Twitter using AWS?
And please design the system architecture of Netflix
And design Zelle for payment transfer
When you think about system design
Even if you don't know how to code
Here is a trick to use system thinking methodology
Which I learned from MIT to solve this problem
I personally don't know how to code
But system design methodology
Actually helped me significantly
Solving any kind of technical interview questions
First of all, when you solve
These kind of interview questions
You must lay out different kind of
High level functions that the system needs to perform
To solve problems for customers
For example, Netflix
The different type of functions
In terms of delivering content
Transcoding, video storage
And all those are important functions
That Netflix needs to have
And then you further decompose
Each of the key functions into sub functions
And all those functions
You just can't think about it
Through the user perspective
From system high level
You don't need to know how to code at all
And then next step
You start to lay out the specific requirement
Performance requirement
Functional requirement
Scalability requirement
Reliability requirement
For this specific system
The next step is
Lay out different kind of data structures
That you think is important
For this specific case
And finally, you can lay out
The system architecture diagram
Based on the functional diagram
All different kind of requirements
And constraints
Here comes our last
Which is also the hardest
Most time consumer product management
Interview question type
Which is take-home exam
This becomes more and more common
In all the interview questions
And especially for most competitive positions out there
And usually even in the first round interview
The recruiter is going to have you
To do a take-home exam
To see how good you are
Understanding the concept of product management
And this is a real-life take-home exam
Here's an example of a real-life take-home exam
Take a product feature for sub-hub
To help company to grow their business
The feature could be brand new
Or improving an existing product
Tell us the revenue projection
And business model of the new feature
This kind of take-home exam is harder
Than any kind of above
Product management interview questions
Was because it has your product management knowledge
And including
Investigating the unmet customer needs
Creating customer persona
Writing product requirements
And evaluating existing product features
And create a long-term strategy product roadmap
And then also need to create a business model
Everything end-to-end about product management
Is being asked in this take-home exam
And what's harder is that
You may not be your end user for any of the product
So sometimes you're missing the customer empathy
When you create those new features
In this situation, what should you do?
You must really treat it as
This is a real-life product management case
That you are the product manager working for the company
You can start from customer interviews
Do some research about what they need
And then start to imagine what the future problem
You want to solve for the customers
And create solutions for it
And then run the go-to-market strategy campaign
To figure out what's a real business model you can build
I have the end-to-end training
That teaches you how to solve the take-home exam
In this specific video
Where I give you the DoorDash take-home exam as an example
So make sure to watch this video right there
And apply the same framework I just taught you
If you're actively preparing for an upcoming product management interview
You must use the latest interview questions database
To get ready for your upcoming interviews
Make sure to go to this website
And download the 50 product management interview questions database
So that you can use it for any fan companies, startups, and healthcare
Any kind of industries out there
Make sure to watch this video right here
Where I give you the sample answers
How to solve the take-home exam for product management interviews
This is Dr. Nancy Li from pmxerator.io
I'm gonna see you in my next video right here