​I could fill up a book with awkward questions and statements that I’ve encountered while seeking a new product position. Take this startup, operating in a cool and unique domain: IOT, environment, and data AI. 

Following a good interview with a product manager and a chief officer, I was invited back for a final interview with the VP People and CEO. 

The VP was 45 minutes late. His first comment, while holding my resume, was that he hadn’t read it. He continued by saying that other people thought I was a star and a perfect fit. I thought to myself, ‘This one is going to be easy.’ But then he continued by saying that he had concerns and didn’t think I was a star. 

I started giving my pitch, with passion and focus. He didn’t let me complete my 90-second pitch. Instead, he said, “You should be a teacher, you have a gift for it. Let me call in the CEO.”

Following a quick introduction and a shorter version of my pitch, the CEO asked if I work well with development. I started with an introduction to my answer, that I definitely work well and do so by trust-building, ownership, teamwork, and process/formalities and non-formalities at work. I outlined some recent examples of major product successes. Not even ten minutes after we met, the CEO stopped me. He said that my answers were too vague, that he didn’t understand me, and that he had another meeting.

WTF? You probably don’t want to work for such a company.

I finally found my dream job at AnyClip. In this post, I want to share how I prepare for a product management interview. Specifically, I’ll discuss how I prepare to speak about the main topics that I may be asked about at any company. 

​If you don’t have the time to read the entire post, check out these highlights. You should be prepared to answer and discuss the following in a product management interview. 

I find this useful for any type of interview. Some interviews will be around these questions. Others would cover your work experience. These topics empower to focus on what matters in your work experience.

​Grab a coffee and enjoy the long reading below.

Interviews may vary dramatically from one company to another, as well as from one interviewer to another. However, I found out that set content, prepared in advance, will fit any company and any person. Over the years, I’ve created the following template (“Cheat Sheet”), which I continuously update, practice, and memorize. 

Note that this template is based on keywords, each of which represents a concept in my head about which I can speak briefly or at length.

The order of the following topics doesn’t matter. You should be ready to adapt to any type of interview. 

This is what my template looks like. The handwritten comments are added before I am interviewed by a specific person in the company or by slightly adjusting this content to another company.

​​Sometimes I create a template as per the industry of the target company—for example, a template for business SaaS and a template for e-commerce.

​I prepare a short pitch about myself that starts with my value proposition (why I’d be competitive for the company as compared to other candidates) based on my experience. This means that I speak not about a specific role or achievement but, rather, about the fact that I’ve gained expertise and succeeded with it. This includes markets, products, technologies, and areas of expertise I’ve gained.

The next step is to connect this naturally to my most recent position or couple of positions. Here, I focus solely on achievements. 

This intro story is a good way to break the ice and also to provide a wider overview of yourself. It is also a good opportunity to mention your achievements and related experience if you’re not given the opportunity to do so. 

If your interviewer doesn’t want to hear it, just skip it or do the short version in 90 seconds.

​Each bullet point represents a topic that I can simply mention or that I can speak about, either shortly or in detail, by providing real-life examples.

For example: “I’ve been doing product for over 10 years now in addition to being an entrepreneur, either on my own or leading innovation in startups. I have worked for various industries from … to … Every few years, I like to enter a new industry … It's challenging to get hired but the process allows me to bring wide expertise as well as remain highly motivated … In all my jobs, my products demonstrated hundreds or thousands of annual growth in revenue....”

​Good interviewers will ask why you are looking to work for their company. This is an opportunity to show both passion and product management expertise.

This is a good opportunity to complement the company for something they are proud of. It’s also a great opportunity to demonstrate market sense by explaining the company’s market and how it could expand based on trending and growing market segments.

Products you are proud of
Whether or not you are asked about the products that you are proud of, this may be one of the most important topics to discuss. 

Pick up the products that were successful and for which your contribution was instrumental:

• There was high growth in revenue and/or engagement.
• The product was your initiative.
• You identified an opportunity for growth by targeting a new audience, need, or use case.
• You led a transition from one market to another, to a new business model, or to a new user flow.

 
Other products you like
Talk about one (or a maximum of two) products you love, so that you will be passionate about them. This is another opportunity to demonstrate your product thinking: Explain how the product solves a pain point or creates a new opportunity, growth, market sense, and product design.

What to improve on the target company’s product
You are not expected to be an expert in the company's products. You are expected to think like a product manager. Analyze the product users, including what makes them tick, and connect it to the business model. Bring up the challenges that the company faces: market, trends, and competition. Explain your methodology for tackling these challenges or growth opportunities from current products.

​Prepare yourself to be asked about how you handle dilemmas, whether they involve products or are interpersonal in nature. It is essential that you explain the situation, the conflict, the data, the key people, the alternatives, your actions, and the results. 

This is another opportunity to demonstrate your ability to analyze and plan as well as your leadership. 

You may be asked about failures. Prepare examples of failures for both product and organizational aspects. Specifically, explain what you have learnt and how you are implementing these lessons.

A difficult situation may be to make the decision to kill a product after a major investment or getting management to buy into a new direction.

Simulate, with yourself or with another person, how you handle these questions.

Another type of difficult question involves handling a situation in which there is a sudden drop in one of your product metrics, with no explanation. Prepare to ask questions and create a methodology to get to the root of the issue.

And, of course, there are the good-old questions about your strengths and weaknesses.

These may be the core of many product interviews. It’s recommended that you practice the answers again and again, with different products. On Glassdoor, you can find plenty of questions about “define a product for…”.

First, you may be asked what you believe product management is. It is critical to state what should drive you as a product manager and to describe the wide scope of your position.
​
In many interviews, you will be asked to design a product—for example, an SaaS-driven smart bus service. Prepare a methodology to tackle such questions. Start with questions that clarify the product, need, market landscape, and constraints to consider. Many interviewers will say that there is no additional information. Next, state your assumptions regarding the existing situation without the new product, market, competition, users, or data that will back up your reasoning. Define the product’s goal, how it differs from others, how it solves a pain point or creates a new opportunity, and how you measure it. Explain the fit to the company, utilizing technological, user base, and organizational assets. Summarize by explaining the plan for the product roadmap, the KPIs, and your projection.

​Many applicants forget to prepare their questions for the interviewer. There won’t be a situation in which a product manager doesn’t have questions. You should always ask questions of users, market players, development, data analysts, management, and anyone else.

Prepare questions that will demonstrate your passion for working for the company and that indicate you are ready to take ownership. Show your interest in the company’s culture. Ask a question that connects to one of the company values.

Ask questions at the end of the interview if you are given the chance to do so. Don’t ask too many questions. Three should be fine.

In addition to the generic prep, before the first interview with a company, I learn about the company’s products, business model, market, and competition.

Prepare a short pitch for the company’s products. You’d be surprised at how amazed the interviewer will be about your knowledge and ability to describe the products in a straightforward manner. 

Remember that because you are being interviewed by different companies, your view of the market and technology is wider than the view of your interviewers. That’s your added value. 


Good luck with your next interview..


Click here for a sample interview preparation.

See also: 5 Tips for Product Management Resumes that Stand Out

​It’s great to start a hiring process by getting a phone call from a top company’s recruiter, saying, “Your resume is awesome. It’s the best I’ve seen so far,” or, after you directly approach a CEO, getting a reply email with, “Love your resume, simple and informative. I have forwarded it to … We will be in touch.”

That’s the way to start: with a first good impression.

Writing product management resumes is challenging. The resume of a product management professional has unique characteristics and focus areas that resumes for other positions don’t have. That’s because product managers have many expectations, from market strategy to technology and data, up to leadership. Also, each company has different expectations ranging from product ownership responsibility to product marketing.

I help other product managers boost their resumes. I also help others get into product management and find their first PM position. Many of the resumes I see are missing the point, or they neglect the target audience: the first person (or machine) to read it.

Let’s see some basic tips.

Check out Toptal's most comprehensive guide to hiring product managers

Let’s start by looking at the challenges of our “end-users”: the people at the company that is hiring a product manager. Unlike with other positions, such as development or marketing, product management hiring is risky. In other positions, evaluations of previous experience with a hands-on interview or short assignment will do. 

Product management is different. Experience is important but doesn’t necessarily lead to success in the new company. The reason is that success in product means more than performing a single, well-defined task. Product managers are expected to research, lead, deliver and generate revenue in uncertain conditions, without managing anyone and usually with no clear boundaries of responsibility.

If you worked for a well-known giant company or for a company that was acquired for a substantial amount or that went public, a new company wouldn’t consider it risky to hire you. In other cases, you must build confidence using your previous achievements.

Many of the resumes I have seen don’t focus on – or don’t mention – achievement. For example, they’ll include a long list of bullets:

“planned, designed and executed a SaaS platform, from concept to launch, including mobile and web apps”, or

 “led UI/UX, creating flows, wireframes and working closely with UX department”. 

You can assume that other applicants have done the same.

Instead, take the time to list all your achievements and things you are proud of. There are many of them. Quantify each achievement with a well-known and easy-to-understand measure.

For example, “revenue increase of 1,000%” or “increased user engagement by 80% in less than ...”. Now prioritize those achievements you would like to mention and build your resume around them. 

Finally, add the right keywords to each achievement description. These may be technologies, business terms (such as CPM and CTR), well-known clients (such as Apple and AT&T) and methodologies (such as agile terminology).

For example: “Development from idea to 50,000 active users’ acquisition and initial paying users, including team buildup, delivery & online marketing”, and

“Building & designing disruptive B2C social loyalty program and app, dramatically increasing reward programs' engagement by over 500%”.

​This may be the most challenging task in positioning yourself, building your personal pitch and resume. Think about yourself as a product competing against hundreds of other good products. The person reading your resume should understand the benefits of hiring you instead of others. 

Don’t fall into the obvious, like mentioning “team player”, “hard-working”, “self-learning”, “analytical”, “creative” and “problem solver”. A head hunter once told me: “Well, everybody says they are … Tell me something unique about yourself.”

Highlight your own value proposition and how an employer can benefit from it. For example, if you have experience in entrepreneurship, mention it and how an employer would benefit from it. Alternatively, connect your achievements to your unique expertise – for example, how you can deliver successful products from your own invention up to growth, while drilling down to technology, user experience, onboarding, analytics and revenue. If this is the case, I would refer to it in two ways. First, for each of three recent jobs, include a separate description of invention, hands-on and growth. Second, create a section in your resume for “most proud of” and describe it there.

​Personalize your resume to the company, the direct manager and/or the recruiter. Start by carefully reading the job description. Then focus your resume on the stated requirements. Even more importantly, try to understand the company culture and the background of the people you would meet. You can do this by reading about the company and looking at the profiles of key people – specifically, those who would be interviewing you – in articles and YouTube clips. This will allow you to fine-tune your achievements and value proposition to their past experiences as well as to the culture and what the company is looking for.

It’s critical to estimate who will be the first to screen your resume. I found that I had to adjust the resume format when I would first be approaching a CEO or VP as opposed to a hiring manager. For example, I found that there is an 80% probability of getting an interview when I approach an executive directly, following a post on LinkedIn (even if we’re not connected and if one of my contacts had only liked it). In this case, a single-page resume that is focused and has only the last three jobs will work best, like many of the examples on Enhancv. If the contact person for the position is a hiring manager, a standard resume would work better, listing all experience, education and details about each position.

In the case of automatic screening by software, I assume it would be best to stick to the job description and use as many relevant keywords as possible.

I like to tackle this as a product analytics challenge. I have a spreadsheet in which I collect data, including: resume format, company type, target audience (first screening), whether I get a response, getting-an-interview success rate and whether it is a company I’d like to work for. Following some job applications, I can optimize the resume by the target company and audience.

​Each manager and company has a different understanding of what product management is. While writing your resume, you will want to show your practical experience and success in leadership, market strategy (being market-driven and data-driven), product design and specification as well as being creative. 

It’s best to mention the specifics of these characteristics for every past job you’ve had. 

For example: “Product innovation using automation / ML resulting in 100s times faster user flow & lower friction”. This demonstrates leadership because you can get management buying for new products. In addition it demonstrates technology sense, data-driven capabilities and being creative.

​You are a product manager. The people who read your resume, as well as those interviewing you, would like to assess your product skills. 

Consider your resume to be the best product you own and the one you are most proud of. Design this product to your target audience by giving its readers what they need at a glance: achievements, value proposition, skills, product measures and the names of well-known brands/companies you worked for as well as those using your products. 

Tell an interesting story. It may be about your entrepreneurship skills, being an inventor, creating products for millions of daily users or anything else that represents you. Product managers are expected to think methodologically, analyzing the need, understanding the users and the market landscape, evaluating alternatives and hacking growth. Build your resume (and your interview pitch) this way: your highlights; overall experience, achievements and value proposition; experience, focused on the audience; and fit to the job (the summary), connecting your experience and advantages to the open position.

If you were a backend developer, the look and feel of your resume wouldn’t matter. However, your resume must look great, like any of your products. It must also be well-written and easy to navigate. The reader must be able to quickly find the information he or she seeks.

​I would be happy to hear what you think about this post. I would also like to help others improve their resumes or get their first product positions.

About the author: Gal is an experienced product manager and entrepreneur with a passion for breaking complexity by using disruptive technology, business models and/or user experience. 

Recommended further readings and resources from the author of this blog:

• ​​​Check out Toptal's most comprehensive guide to hiring product managers