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Senior product manager positions are notoriously competitive, with hiring managers accepting only the candidates who can demonstrate exceptional leadership, project management, and product design skills.
In this article, we’ll discuss the most common questions that you’ll encounter when interviewing for a senior product management role, as well as tried-and-true answers that are sure to impress.
What do you believe is the most important role of a senior product manager? There are a variety of answers that would work here, as long as you provide sufficient reasoning.
A few includes:
Product marketing
Product planning
Consensus-building with stakeholders
Product lifecycle management
Defining a product's vision
Coordinating between design and engineering teams
One of the most important duties of senior product managers is researching and understanding the needs of clients and customers.
A product will ultimately only succeed if it meets the specific needs of consumers, so nothing else matters if the product manager isn't able to specify the research necessary to obtain that market information.
How do you determine what customers desire in a product? This is a common follow-up question that hiring managers give after market research is brought into the discussion.
You need to demonstrate knowledge in how to conduct effective market research, as well as a customer-centric approach.
There are a number of techniques I use to learn more about the needs of consumers.
I use exploratory research first to determine the potential size of a certain type of product's consumer base.
To develop the actual product, I use competitive analysis to see what designs are currently succeeding in the market and which are failing.
Lastly, I take advantage of user insights and feedback to iterate on a design and further improve it to suit consumer tastes.
Tell me about one of your favorite products and what you love about it. Hiring managers ask this question to assess what aspects candidates value in a product, such as usability, endurance, or appearance.
There isn't any correct answer; just make sure to back it up with logical reasoning.
One of my favorite products is the Rubix cube. It's extremely simple yet has sold more units than complex toys, which companies have spent millions of dollars developing.
It shows that there's always a space in the market for simple products that fulfill a specific desire.
What's your method for communicating your product strategies? It's not enough for a senior product manager to have a good understanding of product design. You'll also need excellent communication skills to convey those ideas to stakeholders, other managers, and teammates.
There are a variety of useful communication techniques you could reference in your answer, depending on your personal style.
These include:
Using supporting data
Meeting and persuading individuals on a one-on-one basis
Product roadmaps
Surveys show that only 56% of product managers feel comfortable with their communication skills, so demonstrating expertise in this area will set you apart from much of the competition.
I've always found success in using a data-backed approach to build consensus around my product strategies.
I typically develop my product strategies by doing extensive market research, so I use that same research data to help me persuade others towards my vision.
Assuming you're working on a project with an original scope of several months, then suddenly, senior management tells you that you only have a few weeks. What do you do?
Shifting project deadlines is notorious in the product design industry, so it's critical for product managers to stay flexible and adapt on the fly.
It's also important to demonstrate leadership, decisiveness, and the ability to prioritize during such times.
I would first analyze the feasibility, risks, and overall impact of the deadline shift.
If it's simply impossible, I will communicate that to the relevant parties as soon as possible.
Possible steps that I may take at the point include implementing crunch time and prioritizing the top deliverables.
How do you determine a reasonable turnaround time for any given project?
I would evaluate a number of different factors, such as the:
Client's ability to provide assets
Scope of work
What would you do if you were given conflicting directives from different managers or stakeholders?
I would immediately schedule a meeting with all the relevant parties to communicate the issue and get it straightened out.
It's important to create consensus before moving a project forward, or risk missing requirements and wasting time and resources in the future.
What tools or software do you use to help you become a more effective project manager?
It's becoming common practice in product management to use various software to make your work more efficient and aid your decision-making processes, so it'll be a red flag to hiring managers if you can't demonstrate proficiency with at least a few tools.
For digital products, I use Pendo to track user behavior and analyze their patterns. I'm also proficient with ProductPlan, which I use to draft and maintain product roadmaps.
Gartner gives me access to valuable industry research. Knowing where the market is headed is important when we're developing products for clients.
Describe your process when developing a product's go-to-market (GTM) plan.
I use market research to guide a given product's pricing model.
In terms of marketing and promotion, I look for an advertising approach that aligns with the company's brand and values.
The proper sales and distribution channels will depend on our existing connections and the type of materials required for the product.
How do you decide on a software product's minimum viable product (MVP) stage?
You need to demonstrate the ability to balance the advantages of receiving early user feedback and the disadvantages of revealing an early-stage product.
I believe the best time to release a software product for alpha testing is when it's approximately 70% finished and includes most of its main functionalities.
The unstructured nature of MVP testing allows you to catch many bugs that would be difficult to do during traditional QA processes.
However, you don't want to release a product too early for testing, or it may hurt your brand.
How active are you in project portfolio management, and what role do you think it plays in an organization?
The importance of project portfolio management scales with the size of a business.
For large companies like Chipotle or Home Depot, it's critical for product managers to look at the big picture of how each product fits into their brand and affects the entire portfolio.
For a small business with only a few products, the practice isn't as important.
How active I am in portfolio management depends on these factors.
What are the main components that you would include in a market requirements document?
I use market requirements documents to convey the market's demand for a certain product.
To this end, I tend to include elements such as:
The product vision
Competitive landscape
Business analysis on the viability of the product
Revenue opportunities
List of product features
Suppose a client asks for a feature that wasn't originally planned in the product roadmap and will disrupt the original plan. How do you respond? This is one of the most common occurrences in the product design field, so it's definitely a situation that you need to demonstrate an ability to deal with.
The most important skills to showcase in your answer will be effective communication and flexibility.
I would evaluate the impact that such a change would make on the existing roadmap, and then schedule a meeting with the client to discuss the findings.
I'm very flexible and able to adapt to suit the changing wishes of clients, but I always make sure to communicate the risks as soon as possible, as to avoid trouble in the future when those disruptions occur.
Tell me about a time when you successfully worked with an engineering department to ship a product. As a product manager, you'll often have to use cross-functional leadership skills to coordinate tasks between teams of different disciplines.
As it is with any other situational question, you should use the STAR method to structure your answer in a logical and effective way.
At my previous job as a senior product manager at NextGen LLC, I was in charge of directing the engineering team in bringing the design team's ideas to life.
I did this by using my communication skills to translate those creative designs into technical requirements that the engineering team could understand.
I then used my leadership and product management skills to oversee the engineering team's iterative process until the project was finished.
The end result was an end product that did over $3 million in sales and won over 12 industry product design awards.
Have you ever had a product designer disagree with you? How did you respond? As it is with any other leadership role, product managers need to be open to the ideas of their employees and approach disagreements constructively rather than take them personally.
I value the opinions of all my colleagues highly.
When a designer or any other employee disagrees with my ideas or strategies, I make sure to listen to their point of view and understand their argument.
The only goal that matters is generating value for the organization, so I never shy away from a constructive conversation with designers about which route to take.
What do you like the most about our organization's products? One of the most important aspects of product management is making sure that each product furthers the company's brand and vision.
Do your research ahead of time, and make sure you understand those two elements before heading into the interview.
I've researched your company extensively and am greatly inspired by its commitment to eco-friendliness and sustainability.
I admire how each of your products is specifically designed with those features in mind.
How would you design an ATM for a blind person? Product management and product design interviews will often include a few open-ended questions like this.
The hiring manager isn't expecting you to actually design such a product on the spot, as much as they're trying to understand your general process for how you would approach such a task.
Make sure to demonstrate a few of the main tenets of product design, such as usability and maximizing customer value.
My first step to designing any product is conducting market and customer research.
I would learn the needs of blind customers and survey them to find what features they would want in an ATM.
With these requirements in mind, I would then communicate with the company’s internal engineering and design teams to create a design that maximizes value for the user along with those metrics.