5 Interview Questions for Hiring the Best Product Managers
And advice on which questions you should skip
We often think of Steve Jobs as the ideal Product Manager. He seemed to have an intuitive gift for setting monumental goals and knowing just how to achieve them.
In our search for the perfect PM candidate, we’re often looking for a reincarnation of the turtleneck-wearing superhero. But before you set out on that quest, know that great product leaders don’t all look the same. So how do you identify them?
Here are the 5 questions I’ve found to be popular, but counterproductive. Many of these questions are asked with the right intention of testing for product sense. So in addition to explaining why some of this popular advice is flawed, at the end of the post I’ve also included a list of questions you should ask every PM candidate.
Flawed popular advice on interview questions for PMs:
- “What is your favorite product and why?”: This question is contraindicated if you’re trying to build diversity in your team. Our unconscious biases are such that if the answer to this question is very different from what you expect you’ll lose enthusiasm over the candidate. What if your candidate’s favorite app were Khan Academy for their kids? This question biases you towards hiring someone who looks and thinks like you and maybe is even a similar user persona. High performing teams are shown to have diversity in thinking — if you bias your questions towards finding people who think like you, you’re not setting yourself up to create the best performing team.
- “How would you improve your favorite product?” A PM can only make improvements to a product if he is intimately familiar with that company’s vision and product strategy. So this question only tests someone’s ability to bull$h^t with confidence. You really want a product manager who asks the right questions and validates assumptions — so this trait runs counter to what you need. But a good variation on this question would be to ask the candidate about the product that they built and how they would improve it.
- “Show me the apps on your phone”: The assumption behind this question is that if you’re a product junkie and an avid reader of Product Hunt you’re curious and have seen enough products to be a good product manager. Unfortunately, this is analogous to assuming that watching a lot of NFL will make you a better football player…
- “What are some trends you’re seeing in <your specific> market”: The goal of this question is to test for market expertise. Subject matter expertise (SME) is helpful in building product intuition faster — it reduces the learning curve. But it also makes it easier for the person to fall into the trap of active inertia, i.e. “this is how it was always done” in the industry. I’ve found that when you hire a good product manager who is not an SME but is a quick study, her learning curve actually exposes you to fresh perspectives you might not have had otherwise.
- “What are some ideas you have for our product?”: Product management is not about idea generation. Your customers, your CEO, the sales person and your team will all have ideas for features. Great product leaders make them feel heard. But then they pick wisely in deciding what to work on and make difficult decisions on which shiny opportunities to walk away from.
Here is a list of what you should ask instead:
1. What was the product vision for your team? Even a junior candidate who didn’t necessarily set the vision should be able to articulate a vision for the product. Your company may or may not have a vision, but every PM should have a vision for his product. Here’s how to create a compelling vision.
2. How would you describe your product strategy? Here’s a comprehensive approach to thinking about product strategy. The more senior your candidate, the more comprehensive you should expect their thought process to be. Use the following prompts if you need to, to get more info on their strategic thinking in specific areas:
- What was the target market of the last product you worked on?
- What was the customers’ pain point?
- How did your product/ solution address it?
- What were the key features or key elements of look and feel, brand, voice, etc. (depending on the product)
- What were your products unique capabilities/ differentiators?
- What was your pricing strategy?
3. How did you validate your assumptions and separate your biases as you were figuring out what to build? You want to hear about the user research and a more analytical approach. My pet peeve is when I hear an analytical process dismissed because of the revolutionary nature of their product. Even Steve Jobs did not build the iPhone based on a gut feel.
4. How did you prioritize features? You should be looking for a thoughtful approach to prioritization, evaluating vision fit while balancing business goals, dealing with tech-debt and vision debt and communicating priorities to the team. Here’s a simple visual approach to prioritization.
5. In hindsight what was a product mistake and what did you learn from it? What would you do differently? As a Product Manager, you often don’t have perfect data and yet you have to make decisions. Mistakes happen — you just try to make them infrequently (and inexpensively). Self-aware candidates should be able to articulate a product mistake and their learnings.
If you are scheduling interviews in rounds, for the 2nd round ask them to create a presentation about your market or a specific area of the product that you want them to think about — make sure you’ve clearly articulated your vision and a product strategy for this to be a worthwhile exercise.
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Radhika Dutt is a product leader and entrepreneur who has participated in 4 exits, 2 of which were companies she founded. She is the author of Radical Product on Medium.
