Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to check out the UBC PMC PM interview resource guide. This is a organically sourced guide from our executive team's adventures in preparing for PM interviews to help you in your journey into the world of PM interviews! All the resources here have helped some of us personally in securing PM internship positions and doing well in interviews so we hope it is helpful for you. Please leave any feedback in the #feedback channel on slack so we can tweak this resource so it is more beneficial for you all! If you want to contribute to this guide feel free to message any of the exec team members on slack (we all have the UBC PM club logo beside our name).

A quick disclaimer before we give you the resources and tips: this methodology is what has helped one of our exec team members (Rachit) in preparing for his PM interviews that ultimately landed him a PM internship at Microsoft. UBC PMC is not sponsored by any of the organizations that provide these resources and these solely represents what our exec team has found to be most helpful in our own PM prep journey. We are so happy to share it with you!

What does a typical Product Manager interview look like?

PM Interviews do not have a standard format. However, there are certain core skills which every PM should have and the interviewer is constantly trying to gauge whether or not you possess those skills.

Given this, the questions that are asked on interview typically fall into different categories each of which try to test different skills. You should expect to see questions asked from some or all of these categories. They include:

• Product Design Questions: These questions typically assess your ability to reason about designing products/product features. Since this is one of the primary roles of a PM it is important to familiarize yourself with different products. Examples of these types of questions are: How would you design product X for Y people?, What is your favorite product and how will you improve it? How would you improve Netflix/Facebook/Dropbox/ Zoom/ any product you use?
• Behavioral Questions: This is not unique to PM interviews and as with most interviews, these questions are designed for interviewers to get to know you better. This includes questions about, but not limited to, your past experience, your interest in the role, your interest in the company. The goal of the interviewee should be to highlight their past experience which is relevant to Product Management even if they haven't worked as a PM before.
• Strategy Questions: Product strategies outline a vision for product offerings. As a PM it is your responsibility to set clear goals, expectations and roadmaps for the final product. These questions test your ability to think about the different factors which influence products.
• Estimation Questions: These questions usually involve a more mathematical approach to product analysis. You could be asked questions like estimate the amount of data google photos needs in a year. These questions are not so much asked because of the interviewer's interest in your ability to predict numbers, but rather to understand how you think about and contextualize the problem at hand.
• Technical Questions (for tech focused PM roles): Technical coding questions typically test your understanding of theoretical questions and/or understanding of data structures and algorithms and how to apply them in the context of a coding problem. Be prepared to answer questions about computer science concepts but to explain it at a very high level (for eg: explain recursion to a grandma). This is one of the key competencies of a PM, to explain complex technical concepts to people with varying levels of technical knowledge.
• Success Metrics: These questions focus on what KPI (Key Performance Indicators) you can use to measure success of your product. Some examples of common KPIs in Product Management are DAU (Daily Active Users), MAU (Monthly Active Users). An example of this type of question could be: What are the things Netflix should measure every day?

Where to Start?

If you look up recommended resources for PM interview prep online, chances are you would have seen Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle McDowell on top of a lot of lists, and with good reason. The book walks you through a number of problems ranging in different question types including behavioral, estimation, product, case and coding questions. In addition, you are given numerous practice questions with solutions for each of these subtypes. We highly recommend this book.

Another book that is often recommended is Decode and Conquer. This book provides great insights into interview approaches and is easily understandable even if you don't have a formal computer science background. There is also no shortage of questions and answers to practice for the interview :).

There are plenty of online resources as well that you can use to practice questions. We have posted links to a number of websites we think are helpful.

Here is a compiled list of resources that we have found helpful in preparing for PM interviews:

Question banks for past interview questions