How to crack PM interviews? Sharing the learnings I had in my own product management journey, reading books, following product leaders across the globe and sheer experience.
Starting with the most common question of all times —
Tell me about yourself?
How to answer:
About you — 1–2 min
- Education (eg: engineer — MBA who passed out in 2020)
- How interest in Product management started (eg: books read / workshops attended / events participated, etc)
Tip: Good idea to include side projects done, awards won, etc all in relation to product management
Experience — 3–4 mins (speak about latest 2 experiences if too many)
- Job description
- Impact created
- Successful project (couple of lines)
- Skills learnt
- Why wanted to transition
Repeat for all work experience, generally in interest of time it is more than sufficient to include last 2–3 alone.
Tip: Include awards, appreciation received, any great appraisals, etc. Also relate the skills learnt with product management. And when you speak about reason for switch, make sure the points are valid and transition seamless
Closure — 30 seconds
- Why this company
- How you would fit here
Tip: End with ‘I am delighted to be here’ / ‘Would be happy to field any questions you might have’ kind closing statements
Guidelines
The answer shouldn’t take any more than 5 mins.
It always works to practice multiple times before your actual process with a stop clock.This will help you refine the answer in consecutive iterations and also ensure you don’t end up rambling in the interview.
Writing down beforehand has also helped me a lot whereby i found it easy to weed out repetitive phrases and non-value-adding points
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