How I Prepped for my PM Interviews

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I’ve recently been getting a lot of questions on how to best prep for interviews. (Apologies if I can’t get to you all individually!)

I’ll likely write something more detailed soon, but, on a high level:

  1. P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E. Read all the books, sure, but the best best best way is to do mock interviews as an interviewee AND an interviewer (so you know how it feels like on the other side). Go to StellarPeers now! Kudos to Malena for building a spectacular platform.
  2. Strong Opinions, Weakly Held. Come in with an opinion or hypothesis about user behavior. If new data comes in from your interviewer (maybe they challenge a metric you proposed, maybe they give info about user behavior), don’t be afraid to change your hypothesis if you can back it up with solid reasoning. There’s no right answer here, much like in real life! But give a reasoning as to why you decided to stick to your first opinion or switched.
  3. Ask questions. As a PM, you challenge assumptions & reasons why you build things. If you are given a question and don’t prob deeper with more questions, your interviewer might question how well you actually try to understand a problem. Also, at the very end, be prepared with questions to your interviewer you won’t easily find online. One of my interviewers gave me feedback that she liked me because I asked thoughtful questions. (I work for her now!)

Lastly, here are some of my cheat sheets for my Facebook & LinkedIn interviews. Quite messy, but helped me organize all the frameworks in my head. Hope it helps!

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