How to prepare for a Product Management Interview?
Product management interviews tries to understand how can you structure problem solving, breaking ideas down and laying out the steps for building a solution.
Below are the resources which I used:
Cracking the PM Interview & decode and conquer books
Read and solves all the problems in these books. I revised these books 2–3 times just to be sure.
It can sound like an overkill at this point but remember problem solving thought process is very difficult to master. You need to alter your unstructured thoughts into structured framework lead thoughts. During an interview when you’re under stress and have limited amount of time, to be really good at solving problems you need to be fluent at this. Hence, practice practice practice.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ExponentTV
Listen to the problem statement on YouTube, pause the video, imagine yourself being in a real interview, solve the question on a google sheet and watch the video & compare notes.
Remember to record yourself on camera while solving problem, speak by looking into the camera like it’s a real interview, wherever you have follow ups questions you can act like the interviewer and solve for it.
I use to solve 2 video on weekdays 4 videos on weekends. I tried solving all the questions present on the channel so I was ready when interview actually came. It’s actually very hard to do all the videos but remember your A game comes from practice. I made around 200 pages of problem statement solving alone.
Remember to practice a lot, give yourself feedback post questions, write down your weaknesses and strengths from each question otherwise you won’t know how to improve.
Manas’ Random Document on Product Management
I read this document 2–3 times and whatever terminology you don’t understand google it and read blogs on it. Add notes from these blogs in your product management interview prep.
PRD Format
Sample PRD format: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1sUX-sm5qZ474PCQQUpvdi3lvvmWPluqHOyfXz3xKL2M/edit
Remember
- Research companies well, know and use their products.
- You might fail at interviews early on, it’s okay to be disappointed but do ask for feedback and work on it. After couple of interviews when you’ve learned and filled your knowledge gaps, you’ll succeed.
- Practice practice practice
