Pratique du Shadowing: Top 5 Product Manager Interview Questions & How to Answer - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

If you're trying to get a job as a product manager,

⏸ En pause

Vitesse :

218 phrases

Si les phrases sont trop courtes ou trop longues, cliquez sur Edit pour les ajuster.

If you're trying to get a job as a product manager,

you must have prepared for these top five most asked questions.

In this video, I'm going to share some tips with you on the framework on how to tackle these questions,

some sample questions, and mistakes that you want to avoid.

So these are specifically product case interview type questions.

So the first of most commonly asked question is the favorite product question.

And that sounds like, what is your favorite product and how would you improve it?

And here's the six step framework you want to use to tackle this question.

The first, you want to identify a software product,

a hardware product, or a physical product.

So some examples of my favorite for software are apps like Too Good To Go for You Foodies,

or hardware products like my robo-vac or the dishwasher

because i cook a lot and the dishwasher has saved me

so many times or a physical product like the back scratcher

so you can choose any of those three products you can

even ask the interviewer to specify do they want you to

choose one in any of the three domains a common question

that i get from my clients is what What product should I pick?

I would say pick a product that you actively told friends about,

because that means you've loved it enough to tell other people.

And this can either be a product that's more well known like Uber,

maybe you are obsessed with the Uber app,

or one that's a bit more niche.

So for example, my favorite product as someone who's really into fitness

that I've told tons of friends about is one called FitOn,

a fitness app that was just saved me during COVID.

So step number two, talk about the main goal of this product.

What is it trying to accomplish?

Step three, you want to talk about the users.

Usually most products have two sides of the ecosystem or more.

Step four, you want to talk about how this product specifically helps users accomplish the product goal.

Step five is talking about pain points.

And here you want to start actively answering the second part of the question,

how would you improve this?

And it starts with identifying,

well, what are things that suck with the product today?

So talk about some things that are really painful.

And the last step is to come up with solutions that solve for those pain points.

I covered this question in much more depth in this video that I'll link above,

covering, I told you, my favorite product,

the Too Good To Go app.

Mistakes that you want to avoid.

I remember in college when I got this question interviewing with Yahoo,

I started blabbing on about the product that I liked

and things that I random assortment of things that I think they should fix.

That is not what a great answer sounds like.

They're not asking you to rant about your favorite product.

Instead, they're asking for a structured and strategic viewpoint on the product.

So you might be wondering,

well, what are they actually testing for?

two things.

Number one, they're testing your strategic thinking.

Things like, can you think big picture?

Can you understand goals?

Can you discuss trade-offs?

When making decisions, do you start with a criteria that's logical?

The second thing they're testing for is product design.

Can you empathize with users and design a great user experience with minimum friction?

Can you create delightful experiences that users feel like there's a wow factor to your product?

The second most asked question is the product improvement question.

And it sounds something like,

how would you improve a product like Spotify?

How would you improve Google Maps?

And the framework for this is kind of similar to the one we just talked about,

except they're giving you a specific product rather than asking you to think about a product.

So here, I actually recommend using the same framework as the one we just talked about above.

So what are some mistakes to avoid?

So some common questions I get about this question is,

well, what if I'm not familiar with the product that they're asking me about?

Your first attempt is to try to take a best guess.

Sometimes the name of the product is exactly what it is.

Other times it's not super clear.

For example, if someone was in a country where Spotify was not well known,

it'd be hard to guess that it was a music app.

So for those, you have no choice but to ask the interviewer,

can you tell me a little bit more about the product?

I'm not super familiar.

But note, if you're in the US and you're not familiar or had never heard of a product like Spotify,

I don't know how well that's going to look on your behalf.

So make sure to study up the top 10,

20 most downloaded apps out there.

You might even ask the interviewer,

can I take a look at the product in real time on my phone?

What should you avoid for these questions?

Avoid, similar to the last one,

ranting about features that you would wish this product has.

Instead you want to think strategically about what the product is trying to accomplish for its target users

and solutions given those pain points make sure that those pain points are generalizable to a larger population than just yourself.

This video was originally going to cover the top 10 most asked questions,

but that would probably take more than 30 minutes.

So I'm going to cover the next set of five questions in an upcoming video.

So subscribe to make sure you don't miss that video.

Question number three that's most commonly asked is the product design question.

And it sounds like What product would you build for X?

So some example questions that have been asked by companies like Google,

Facebook, etc. What product would you build in the travel space?

What product would you build to help people find roommates?

So the structure for this is quite simple,

but answering this question is not easy.

100

So don't get fooled by the simple framework.

101

It's a four-part framework.

102

And the first part starts with why do we want to build for this problem?

103

So for example, why do you want to build in the travel space?

104

Why would a company want to invest in this?

105

The second, who are the users in this space?

106

So ecosystem-wide, but also who are the subset of users?

107

Step number three is think of pain points

108

that these users might be suffering with in the travel space

109

that you could build for and make sure to prioritize which pain points you're going to go for.

110

And step number four is to think of solutions for the prioritized target segment

111

and the pain points for those user segments that you identified.

112

Here's a link to an example question where I answer,

113

what product would you build to help people buy and sell antiques?

114

Funny side story

115

that a friend told me was one time for his company

116

he asked an interviewee the question what product would you build to help people get more pizza

117

and the candidate goes I would build a pizza canyon.

118

I thought that was pretty hilarious

119

so don't be afraid to infuse some humor in there because technically Pizza Canyon could get people more pizza.

120

What are common mistakes to avoid for these type of questions is starting with a solution rather than the problem.

121

I see a lot of candidates fall into this trap where they think oh travel space something

122

that I've always wanted to build

123

or I think is cool would be a travel app to help people meet each other locally

124

and then they work backwards from the solution?

125

Note for this question, it's never about the idea,

126

rather the process that you walk through to show the interviewer that you can think logically,

127

structurally, and that you have user empathy.

128

They're not just looking for creative ideas.

129

You can have the most creative ideas,

130

but if you can't identify who the user segments are or their pain points,

131

you're not going to succeed in this interview.

132

The fourth most asked question in product interviews is a success metric question

133

and it sounds like what success metrics would you set for product X

134

or it sounds something like what goals would you set for product X

135

so for example some questions

136

that have been asked in real interviews are what metrics would

137

you set for the ubereats app what metrics do you think Airbnb goals against

138

so how would you tackle this here's a five step framework to tackle this.

139

The first one starting with understanding the product.

140

So what does the product do?

141

Who are the users?

142

What are the users trying to accomplish?

143

Step two is then qualitatively.

144

What do we want to measure to help us get a sense

145

that this product is helping those users accomplish their goals and helping the business accomplish their goals?

146

Step three is then translating those qualitative things into quantitative metrics.

147

Step four is identifying, let's say two to three North Star top metrics that you care about,

148

that you want to prioritize.

149

And step five is to think of counter metrics and downstream metrics.

150

If you're wondering, how do I actually tackle this question?

151

Here's a link to one of my most popular videos answering what metrics would you set for Airbnb?

152

A common mistake that you want to avoid is listing a bunch of very generic metrics.

153

So a lot of people tend to use certain metric frameworks like the Pirates framework R,

154

which stands for acquisition, retention,

155

revenue, etc. So they're not necessarily wrong,

156

but they're a pretty generic framework that people use to tackle any question,

157

which more so shows memorization than it actually shows thinking about the product.

158

For example, some common metrics I hear all the time when I interview clients is,

159

oh, the key metric for this product is DAO,

160

daily active users or monthly active users or time spent.

161

So again, it's not wrong.

162

Like at companies, we do measure those things,

163

but you want to show a bit more thought than just throwing the most commonly measured metrics.

164

And even if you do call on metrics that are more often cited than not,

165

explain your thinking why now is important.

166

So you might say something like,

167

for example, for an app like Airbnb,

168

I might expect people to book travel somewhere around once a month

169

or once every quarter and hence i want to measure something like monthly active users

170

so make it specific to the product you're talking about

171

and not just throwing out generic metrics

172

that show you know how to memorize versus think through the

173

question question number five is the debugging root cause analysis question

174

that sounds something like we're seeing metric y go down for product x what's going on and how would you fix it?

175

An example question for this is we're seeing the number of riders go down on Uber.

176

What's going on and how would you fix it?

177

Here is your six-part framework to tackle this type of question.

178

You first start off with qualified questions like this metric went down in what time span?

179

Was it the last couple of days?

180

Was it a month?

181

Are we seeing these metrics localized to just a specific region or globally?

182

These questions are important

183

because they help you understand what issues might be more likely to contribute towards this drop versus less likely.

184

So you can eliminate options.

185

Step number two is talking about the product.

186

Basically what does the product do?

187

What is it?

188

Step number three is then talking about the user flow.

189

How do people experience this product?

190

How does this metric reflect a step in the user flow for users?

191

And what are the steps that are attributed to this metric.

192

Number four is talking about hypotheses on why you think this metric might have dropped.

193

Number five is answering the question how would you validate or invalidate certain hypotheses that you have.

194

And step number six based on your prioritized list of hypotheses

195

that you would go try to understand first

196

or validate invalidate first what are some solutions to solve for some of those hypotheses.

197

I will link an example question in the video above answering

198

we're seeing uber cancellations go up what's going on now what are common mistakes

199

that you want to avoid so commonly

200

when i ask this question most people go through a checklist of things they memorize of things

201

that could go wrong

202

and you'll see a video where i cover a skit of the most common type of interaction

203

that i see when i ask these questions in an interview This isn't high school,

204

so you're not going to impress them by memorizing things.

205

So think thoughtfully through the question,

206

and the framework I just shared above will almost force you to think versus memorize.

207

So we have the five most commonly asked questions.

208

The first one is the favorite product.

209

Second is product improvement.

210

Third is product design.

211

Fourth is success metric.

212

And number five is debugging root cause analysis.

213

A common question I get all the time is,

214

which is the toughest out of these five questions?

215

I would say probably the toughest is the product design question.

216

If you want to see an example where a real candidate that got an offer at Facebook tackle this question,

217

take a look at this video to see what is needed to pass these interviews.

218

And I will see you guys in the next video.

TRENDING

Populaires

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.

☕ Offrez-nous un café

ShadowingEnglish reste 100% gratuit grâce à votre soutien. Les coûts des serveurs et de l'IA sont élevés — votre café nous aide à continuer ! 🙏

Faire un don via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – Pratique du Shadowing en Anglais

Parlez anglais couramment grâce au Shadowing. Écoutez des vidéos YouTube de locuteurs natifs, répétez phrase par phrase et développez une vraie prononciation et fluidité — utilisé par les candidats IELTS du monde entier.

Pratique du Shadowing: Top 5 Product Manager Interview Questions & How to Answer - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

Populaires

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Pratique du Shadowing: Top 5 Product Manager Interview Questions & How to Answer - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

Télécharger l'application

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?