I’ve interviewed for countless product management roles in my career and have personally interviewed PM candidates over the past couple of years. Product interviews come in all shapes and forms — some with case studies, some with tricky logic questions, some that happen over a cup of coffee, some that look for something completely in contrast to the job description, some that happen over Skype, some that don’t transcend the intricacies of product management and so on.

However, I recently had an epiphany of the kind of conversation I always have and want to have in all of my product management interviews, as an interviewer and as an interviewee. In a nutshell, Product people want to talk to you about three main things —

1. Know your product and domain

• Have an in-depth understanding of your product or the product of the company you’re interviewing for. You may have dealt with SaaS based, mobile or hardware products in the past, or may have an intricate understanding of cryptocurrency trading platforms.
• The more you can talk about the users’ jobs to be done, new use cases, user pain points, or consumer psychology, it becomes easier for the interviewer to evaluate your product mindset and the kinds of challenges you’ve encountered in the product arena.
• If you have expertise in the domain of a product, come prepared to discuss recent trends eg. the emergence of security tokens in the financial domain or the application of AI in the eCommerce & healthcare domain. This helps the interviewer to assess your forward thinking skills or your visionary mindset.

2. Know the principles of product management

• Principles such as prioritization, leadership style, agile, user research, the 5 whys, hypothesis, evangelism, stakeholder management, analytics, growth hacking etc. should be at the top of your tongue as a Product Manager. Interviewers might even skip going through these questions if you’re a veteran of product management (been there, done that!) because these are some primary skills that you need to possess intrinsically as a Product Manager.
• Also, don’t forget to include insights about creating a product culture within an organization. This can include topics such as collaborative environments, servant leadership, cross-functional teams, colocation, voice of the customer, data driven decision making, empowered teams and so on. Product leaders and hiring managers want to tease your brains on how you’ve solved complex “people issues” in the past and want to appraise how viable would it be if they build a product team around you.

3. Know the business and industry

• This is my favourite part of the product conversation. Study and research about the business you’re trying to get a foot into. You should be able to talk about the business model of the company you’re interviewing with or at the very least the kinds of business models your current or previous companies have constructed.
• Talking and questioning about the pricing models, expansion strategies, business lines, mergers and acquisitions, competitors, GDPR, risk and compliance rules, marketing and advertising and so on will help the interviewer peg your appetite for knowledge and your hunger to assimilate esoteric and complex world problems.
• If you’re applying for a job in a completely new industry, fear not! You have all the literature right at your fingertips (read: the Internet!).

As you can see from above, being an all-rounder (read: jack of all trades) helps as a Product Manager.