How to prepare for Product Management Campus Interviews
Product management is a cross-functional role in tech or tech-first companies (such as Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Flipkart, Uber, PayTM, etc.). To oversimplify, Product Managers work on understanding customers problems, business problems, market dynamics, etc.; identify the most important problems to solve and when to solve them (prioritization); create a compelling story for all stakeholders (tech team, UX design, etc.) to believe that they need to solve this problem; and work with these stakeholders to arrive at the right solution for the customer and the company.
About the Role:
- What is the typical job-hierarchy?
The job hierarchy for PM roles differ across companies and for entry-points. Some companies hire fresh engg graduates from premier engg colleges into PM roles. However, the career track is slightly different. Also, larger MNCs have a relatively flat PM-role hierarchy. Following are some of the popular hierarchies:
Type 1 — Followed by early-stage and mid-stage startups
Associate Product Manager [entry-level for engg and MBA graduates]
Product Manager
Senior Product Manager
Director Product Management
VP Product Management
Type 2 — Followed by Flipkart and other Indian startups-turned-enterprises
Associate Product Manager — 1 [entry-level for engg graduates]
Associate Product Manager — 2
Product Manager — 1 [entry-level for MBA graduates]
Product Manager — 2
Senior Product Manager
Group Product Manager
Sr. Group Product Manager
Director Product Management
Senior Director Product Management
VP Product Management
Type 3 — Followed by Amazon
Product Manager [entry-level for MBA graduates or laterals with some experience]
Senior Product Manager
Senior Manager — Product Management
2. Is having an engineering degree a prerequisite?
Short answer — No. However it is usually preferred by a lot of companies. Having said that, most companies look for PMs who are either engineers or MBAs or both. However, some startups allow their non-engg, non-MBA team members to become PMs, under the following circumstances:
- You work for a really young startup
- You work for a SaaS startup in an inside-sales, pre-sales, client-partnering role; which has substantial customer exposure and requires you to know in depth about both your company’s products and your customers’ needs
- What does a Product Management role mean for an MBA graduate with no pre-MBA experience?
PMs work on a variety of things in the process of building good products. For entry-level PMs, the first few weeks or months will typically revolve around understanding the various products that your team owns, understanding the business of the company, reading past user-research, understanding key metrics. You will then be required to work along with a relatively senior PM on one of their product-pieces, where they share a part of the work with you. You could be asked to write specifications/ PRDs (Product Requirement Docs) for a feature that is already planned for and validated. You will be helped to work with the engineering and UX teams, so that you get comfortable with the entire product building process. You might be made owners of specific metrics and be asked to prepare weekly reports, find anomalies in metrics, etc. Gradually, you will start owning parts of a larger product and full-fledged product (s), all by yourself.
4. What does an MBA role for a lateral (pre-MBA work-ex) mean?
PMs work on a variety of things in the process of building good products. For MBA-lateral hires in their first PM role, the first few weeks or months will typically revolve around understanding the various products that your team owns, understanding the business of the company, reading past user-research, understanding key metrics. You are then expected to work on an independent product piece. You are expected to be self-driven (in most companies, there won’t be an organized program for campus-hires from B-schools) and that entails establishing all aspects of your product from a first-principles point of view.
5. What is the short-term (2–3 years) career path in this role?
In most medium to large businesses, you can be expected to move from one level to another in ~2 years. Obviously the time increases as you go beyond the Group PM level (since these are considered to be leadership roles at most companies). These numbers might not apply at young, fast-growing startups.
6. What is the long-term (5+ years) career path in this role?
As shown in the hierarchy above, in 5+ years, depending on where you begin, you could be heading multiple products under a Sr. PM/ GPM role. You might also start getting people-reporting of junior PMs around the same time.
7. Can I move to any similar roles, after taking this role?
Product management is an extremely coveted role. It requires cross-functional thinking, customer-backwards approach, stakeholder management and many other critical business skills. Generally, people do not want to move away from product roles. However, based on interest and ability to adapt to the fast-paced business environment, some people choose alternative paths after staying in product management for a while:
- Enterprise sales (Pre-sales)/ Business development (typical at SaaS companies)
- Technology Consulting
- Management Consulting
Interview Preparations:
- What is the typical interview structure? What are skills / behaviors/ traits are being tested?
PM interviews are fun due to the nature of questions and how they challenge your analytical and reasoning skills. At campus interviews, companies do 2–3 rounds of interviews. Typical structure is below:
- A case is provided beforehand and you are expected to prepare a ppt and send over, before the company arrives at your campus. Thus, the first round is usually around your PPT. Here, the key focus is on clearly identifying the problem, breaking it down into smaller, logical problems and then addressing these problems one by one (problem-solving skills)
- PM interviews often have a round on guesstimates. As PMs, you are required to guesstimate size of market opportunity, impact of business problem, probable impact of a solution/ feature you are building, market-sizing, etc. Guesstimate questions are fun. You might want to look at the following brief guide on how to approach guesstimate questions, along with some interesting samples Q&As
- Another set of questions may try to assess your communication skills, problem-articulation skills, ability to sell an idea to your internal stakeholders, etc. You might also be asked to talk about your favorite products, your understanding of product management and why you are pursuing that role
2. What are the common types of interview questions?
Following are some popular types of questions for entry-level PM interviews, apart from guesstimate and product-case questions. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list and you should refer glassdoor page of that company for a better idea of the questions asked by them:
- What is a product? How is it different from a project?
- Name your favorite product you use presently. It could be anything — a software or a physical product. List three things you like about it? List 3 things you would change about it?
- How would you decide if those 3 things should be built or not? How would you prioritize them?
- How would you measure success when launching a new product?
- Give an occasion when you had to stand your ground in a team-scenario, when everyone was against your opinion. How did you/ would you bring more people on your side?
- What customer problem(s) is the product x trying to solve?
Breaking Myths and Stereotypes
- Myth: Product Managers build products and features
Fact: Product Managers identify, validate, prioritize customer problems and then iteratively build solutions to them
2. Myth: Product Managers need to code
Fact: Product management is a generalist role and PMs are often expected to wear many hats in order to best represent the interests of their customers. However, PMs are almost never expected to write code themselves. However, understanding tech at high-level might aid in better conversations with your tech-team and hence help you build products with relative ease
3. Myth: Product Managers have engineering teams reporting to them
Fact: At almost all companies, product and engineering orgs are managed separately and PMs do not have engineering teams reporting into them. In fact, entry-level PMs are almost always Individual Contributors (ICs) and do not have any reporting.
