The polite refusal of an interview hides the “common problem” that countless product people have repeatedly stepped on. It’s not that I don’t work hard, but that I don’t step on the right rhythm; It’s not that I don’t have experience, but that I ignore the underlying logic. This article starts from a real interview story and restores those seemingly “hard but ineffective” product behaviors to help you identify blind spots on the road to growth. If you have also been confused and struggling on the career path, this article may save you a few detours.
Recently, I interviewed a product manager candidate, and his resume looks good, almost ten years of experience, and he has a lot of project experience. I was looking forward to the interview, thinking that I might meet oneThe perspective is mature and the expression has depth of thinkingof peers.
After the official chat, I don’t know why, the more I talked, the more I felt a sense of “powerlessness” –
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I asked her to choose the most representative project to talk about, and she began to talk about how she met the needs, how to confirm the demand points with customers, how to hold review meetings, how to promote the development and launch… Every step is smooth, and it can even be said to be a bit “standardized”, but it always feels like something is wrong.
So I changed my question and wanted to introduce her to talkBackground and decision-making logic——For example, why is this product made? Have you made any trade-offs in design? Is there anything you insist on or give up? She was a little stuck, and the impression was that her reply was “this is a very important need for customers” and “our goal is to try to meet customer demands and go online as scheduled”…
In the middle, I also tried to talk about some relaxed things, such as whether there are other product skills and learning habits in daily life, whether there are any apps that I particularly like, and whether there is any small functional design that impresses her in life. She said that she would watch 36Kr and Tiger Sniff and pay attention to industry news, but she couldn’t seem to tell which specific product she found interesting.
After the whole conversation, I really didn’t feel what she did in the product work”choose——It is more of a kind of “step by step”, which makes each link smooth and pushes things forward. She did not really answer these key questions about why the project itself was done, how it was done, and what it was done.
At that moment, I was a little in a trance. Because I suddenly remembered myself a few years ago –
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At that time, I had just entered the industry not long ago, working as a product manager in a project-oriented Party B company. The process is heavy, and we do what the customer says. At that time, I felt that I was quite capable – I could independently connect with customers, write requirements documents, manage project progress, and directly help customers solve many problems without using external forces.
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In this context, once I went out for an interview, and the interviewer said calmly after listening to my work: “It sounds like your job is more like a project manager.” ”
I was actually quite confused at the time – I am a product manager, why not?
Later, I didn’t have a sudden epiphany, but in the process of hitting a wall and reflecting in the next few years, I slowly realized that that evaluation was not denying what I had done, but reminding me that I hadn’t really figured out what a “product manager” did.
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I really started to realize the difference between a “product manager and a project manager” (or “process product manager” and “value product manager”) when I was working on a multi-center coupled system. In the early days, the way I received the demand was actually very intuitive: the business said to do a “sharing and receiving coupon” activity, and I thought about how the business seemed to really need it, so I began to think about how to disassemble the module, how to connect with the coupon system, and how to expose the smoothest way at the front end.
But the leaders at that time asked from time to time about the needs of our plan: “What is the specific impact of this thing on users? What is the value of this feature?“Sometimes he asks directly,”What is the difference between this event and our last month? What about the data?”
Slowly, I began to get used to looking back and asking myself before dismantling the requirements:Why exactly is this feature done, and does it have a clear help to users? Is this scene real?For example, is it possible to achieve the same goal in other ways, but at a lower cost or with a shorter path?
Sometimes I will be more sensitive to the existing data of similar functions, and think about whether the similar modules I made before were really used in the end? Can I borrow my original abilities? Is the structure made this time the basis for a variety of subsequent activities?
I have to admit that at first I was indeed trying to cope with the leader (hhh), and then I became my own combing and planning productshabitual anticipation。
Although these questions may not be answered every time, if you ask them habitually, your way of thinking will slowly become different.
Below I have listed a table to help you distinguish the differences between these two different perspectives:
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I’ve seen too many product people (including me back then) fall into oneProcess inertia——Receiving demand, opening review, pulling manpower, and finishing online, every step is done very skillfully. But in the whole process, it is missingThink, judge, choose。 It seems that everything has already been decided and we just need to “get it done”. But in fact,The value of a product is hidden in what has not yet been defined and is not yet certain.
Sometimes, I hear “I usually look at 36Kr” during interviews, and I understand that this is an expression that I want to show that I “pay attention to the industry”. But in the final analysis, reading information is only information input, and if there is no output and structured thinking, it is difficult to precipitate into real judgment. For a while, a few product friends and I would choose a product every month to do “anatomy” exercises, from target users to functional design, from business model to competitive product analysis, and then to “what would you do if it were you”. The analysis written out may not be very profound, but as long as it is dismantled and judged by oneself, it is much more real than “brushing a few news”.
Another way to help me shift my consciousness isReview。 It’s not the kind of review that talks about whether the process went smoothly, but the partition time will look back at the key decisions made before: Why did we choose that way at that time? Is there any other possibility? What information do we value and what do we ignore? This way of thinking, after a long time, you will find that a lot of “experience” is not accumulated by doing more projects, but by constantly “looking back”.
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Looking back at that interview now, I didn’t actually judge the candidate, but I felt a little sorry in my heart. I know she works hard and must have done a lot, but I know even more that if she doesn’t realize the difference between this “process-based product and value-based product” earlier, she is likely to go down on a highly skilled but low-growth track, or even be misunderstood and replaced.
Of course, there is no standard answer to the growth path of a product, and everyone’s pace is different. I just hope that we can get used to completing tasks and processing processesAsk more “why”, make more choices, and understand the essence of the problem.It may be from a certain moment, from a function iteration, an answer to an inner question, and an interview, we quietly step out of the comfort zone of the “process-based product manager” and begin to truly grow into oneProduct people with judgment and a sense of value。
