Interviews are an important part of understanding between job seekers and companies, but for product managers (PMs), interviews are not only an opportunity to showcase their abilities, but also an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the industry and their own positioning. From the perspective of a senior interviewer, this article analyzes in detail the thinking logic and focus of the interviewer when interviewing product managers.
This year, some friends around me came to me to ask about the opportunity to enter a large factory, and I also saw many netizens sharing product experiences in various places, most of which are interview questions and personal experience as interviewers, just recently came out of a universe factory, plus hundreds of people have been frequently interviewed in recent years to accumulate some experience, so I will share with PMs in need how to prepare for the interview as an interviewer, I hope that for those students who want to enter a large factory to engage in product work, they can know themselves and their opponents, and have more references. Help them have the opportunity to take on new challenges on their own path to growth.
Before the interview: Draw a portrait of the candidate and prepare a list of questions
Interview is one of the important channels for me to understand industry information and contact the way of thinking of young product people, and I often follow these three steps to prepare before each interview, responsible for the position, and more responsible for the candidate.
The first is to interpret the needs of the position and form a preliminary candidate portrait.It will take about 5-10 minutes for social recruitment positions to understand which fields of project experience are required for the job content, whether it is C-end experience growth, or B-end supply chain and platform design; Understand the challenges encountered in the process of upstream and downstream collaboration, whether the operation is stronger or the technical middle office transformation needs to be greater; Understand what stage the product is responsible for, whether it is growing rapidly or seeking innovation. For school recruitment positions, more attention will be paid to the enthusiasm and basic qualities of the product, such as communication/structural thinking and pressure resistance.
The next step is to read the candidate’s resume and look for points of doubt。 Generally, from similar project experience, whether there are important breakthroughs, whether the time to change jobs is too frequent, whether there is continuity in work experience, etc.
B-end product manager’s ability model and learning improvement
The first challenge faced by B-end product managers is how to correctly analyze and diagnose business problems. This is also the most difficult part, product design knowledge is basically not helpful for this part of the work, if you want to do a good job in business analysis and diagnosis, you must have a solid …
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Finally, we will prepare about 3 open questions related to the business, which basically comes from essays on problems encountered in daily thinking, including: business strategy questions (most of them are highly related to the platform, such as how to choose zero-sum games in closed scenarios of online car-hailing dispatch); Product design questions (most of which are related to candidates’ life scenarios, such as how to transform the existing library reservation system, how to optimize the elevator waiting experience on weekdays, etc.); Teamwork issues (such as operational needs, boss needs, and what to do if there is a conflict between your value judgment)
Interview process: Focus on thinking methods rather than answers
Self-introduction reflects how well you know yourself
The interview often starts with a self-introduction, and the usual practice is to introduce the name and several representative product projects that have been done. From my perspective, what you introduce yourself represents the candidate’s first impression:
Whether the representative product/project can explain the content and results in simple words shows the level of complexity of the candidate’s past experience, as well as the ability to generalize abstraction and a sense of purpose。 About 30% of the candidates in the social recruitment interview will tell each project they have experienced like a running account, and about 60% of the candidates will very briefly describe where they have worked or what projects they have done, but forget to say the results. For school admissions, the project experience is not rich enough, but you can also use competition experience/school practice/internship projects to prepare for the corresponding content. Generally, I will also use these projects as an important anchor point for extended interviews for subsequent projects, and try to ask about the difficulties/challenges/gains/reflections of these projects.
Whether there are simple keywords that summarize personal characteristics.I usually use it for school recruitment interviews, hoping to observe whether the candidate has a cognition of his own characteristics, the answer itself is not important, what matters is whether these words are quickly and directly conveyed to me and whether there are specific examples to reflect each word, if you can use examples to prove that you are different from the students around you in some aspects, it is even better. The reason for this question is that the long-term development of product managers is inseparable from the change of personal self-knowledge.The earlier you have a cognition of your own characteristics, the more likely you are to take fewer detours in your future career development and improve yourself through project experience and reflection.
What is the mission/motivation for the individual to choose this career as a product manager.A clear mission will make many career choices simpler, reduce detours, and also give me a clear understanding of the candidate’s achievement factors, which will be an important input factor in the evaluation of future and business/team fit. I usually ask the social recruitment candidate at the beginning or end to understand his career choices and achievement factors, and then make some correlation and matching with his career route to see what the degree of unity of knowledge and action is. School admissions will be relatively rare, except for those students who show great enthusiasm for the position of product manager~
Project experience: Why -> What ->How
Normally, I will ask about the most challenging project, or the most fulfilling project, or the project that is highly relevant to the specific position, and ask the candidate to talk about the project. But most candidates will talk about what they have done and what kind of business results they have obtained from the project background, and they will finish in orderIn this process, what kind of decision-making judgment have you experienced as a product manager: how to do or not to do, how to think about doing first and doing later. In my experience, the quality of this decision-making judgment is also a key point to distinguish the PM’s ability level。 It is recommended that you follow the why-what-how thinking logic and discuss the project experience in a different way:
- First of all, let’s talk about why we are doing this, what the project goals are, and the relevance and importance of business strategy.It is generally used as an information input item in junior and senior PM interviews, focusing on the dismantling process from business goals – project level 1 goals to level 2 goals. For expert PMs, they will pay attention to how the goals are defined, how the goal system (first-level goals, second-level goals, observation goals) are designed and iterated, and how the goals change after the business strategy changes.
- Second, in the scheme design stage, how does it compare with market competitors, and what kind of conflicts and trade-offs have been experienced in the process.Generally, in the junior and senior PM interviews, we will pay attention to the details of the process plan selection, and the judgment process of whether it is biased towards user A or user B. Through this question, observe the dimensions from which the PM’s solution selection is considered, whether it is logical, and whether the trade-offs can be made around the project goals. Expert PMs will focus on the design of other players in the industry, why there are differences, how similar problems in other industries are solved, and what are the similarities and differences. Through this question, observe whether the PM’s industry perspective is complete and whether he is willing to input and think by analogy across industries.
- Finally, describe the business results. Most of the candidates choose projects with good business results, but they are generally extended based on the initial stem questions。 For example, if the question at the beginning is what is the most challenging project, then this part will ask the candidate where the most challenging part of the entire project is (depending on the complexity of the project and possible shortcomings of the candidate), whether there are any regrets, and how to avoid it next time (see the candidate’s reflection). For example, if the question at the beginning is the most fulfilling project, then I will ask what the specific points of the candidate’s achievements are, so as to preliminarily judge whether the candidate’s motivational factors are suitable for the needs of the current organizational development.
Open question: Is the user’s thinking your intuitive response?
Most interviews, especially on the second and third sides, will have a variety of open-ended questions. Some are strongly related to the business of the interview company, and some will be an open question, how to answer in this situation where there is no standard answer and the information is highly asymmetrical? From my experience,Each open question is a way to see the candidate’s judgment and validation under constraints and goals.Because of the lack of clarity of information and goals, most of the answers do not have reference value.Therefore, what is more important in the interview process is your way of thinking, that is, when encountering new problems, whether you can always start from the positioning of users and scenarios, think about how to meet the needs of users and old experiences, analyze constraints under the goal, find new elements or learn from other solutions in the industry to change the old experience and create new value, then define key milestones and design an MVP program to verify feasibility. Sometimes, I will add some constraints, such as time and cost, and observe how the candidate chooses the plan under different constraints, and test his logical ability. If it is an interview with management experience, I will generally prepare some simulation scenarios before the interview, observe how the candidate motivates the problem members, observe how the candidate communicates with his superiors, observe how the candidate responds to conflicts with the organization’s collaborative department, etc
Career Planning: Evaluate the fit between your demands and the platform’s development
After the previous questions, the last question is related to the candidate’s career planning.
The core of this type of question is to understand the candidate’s level of cognition, whether they understand their own strengths and weaknesses, whether they have a sense of self-development, whether their preferences in career choices are based on personal needs, external pressure or public tendencies。
Most of the candidates I have contacted have little clear path for their career planning, most of them give an abstract answer, it is difficult to explain the reason rationally if you continue to ask deeply, it is more of an emotional description, most of the candidates expressed their hope to better understand the business and industry in the future, but this goal is difficult to relate to their own advantages and disadvantages, motivational factors, and there are few specific actions to help them achieve this goal. In fact, it also reflects what can be improved in our education system.Solve open-minded or even self-proposed assumptions, define the criteria by which things are done, rather than being motivated to solve those identified problems.
When the candidate roughly describes these contents, the match between the candidate and the position can be basically judged according to the platform development stage of the current position.
If the business is competing in the incremental market and is ready to seize the opportunity, I will prefer to look for candidates with better future hobby challenges and short-term incentives, a sense of purpose, execution and focus; If the business seeks a breakthrough in the stock market and needs to change the balance of interests of all parties in the old model, I will prefer to look for candidates who are good at systematic thinking and multi-party games, and have a tendency to delay gratification; If the business is just starting out and is still in the verification mode stage, I will prefer to look for candidates who are passionate and want to participate in industry changes, reflect on better iterations, etc.
End of interview: There is no level of ability, only suitability
After the interview, a comprehensive evaluation will be given within an hour based on the product manager’s competency model and my recorded interview performance. Referring to the product manager’s evaluation system defined by Mr. Yu in the previous company, it is basically divided into four dimensions: as shown in the figure below
However, the ability evaluation of the PM itself is difficult to standardize, superimposed on the irreproducibility of many project experiences, the on-the-spot state of candidates and interviewers, the value choice of interviewers, and the evaluation of different interviewers in the same company may vary greatly.But in any case, the interviewer always judges not whether the candidate’s ability or experience is good or not, but whether it is suitable or not: whether it is suitable for the current business development stage, whether it is suitable for the current team culture, whether it is suitable for the candidate’s personal development stage, etc.
If we only look at it from the perspective of ability (which is also what we can control best), I will make relevant judgments based on the content and state of expression during the interview process, and the focus of product inspection for different years is slightly different.Interns will focus on curiosity and execution, formal positions (including school recruitment) within 1 year will focus on curiosity, basic logical ability and expression and achievement factors (why choose this industry/field/position), and 2-6 years of social recruitment executive positions will focus on experience matching/reflection ability and inductive deduction ability; Team managers will focus on the depth and transferability of industry experience, management experience (managing affairs, people or goals), and achievement factors (why choose to be a manager).
No matter what kind of interview results you get, it’s important to treat each interview as an opportunity to look in the mirror, calm down, and enjoy the process.
