Main Takeaways: - How I went from "strong no hire" to "strong hire" - Why generalists PM interviews are about structure - The hacks to be creative under pressure - Make sure you maximize your points on the rubric

1. www.productschool.com
Hacking Your Product Management
Interview by Google PM

2. CERTIFICATES
Your Product Management Certificate Path
Product Leadership
Certificate™
Full Stack Product
Management Certificate™
Product Management
Certificate™
20 HOURS40 HOURS40 HOURS

3. Corporate
Training
Level up your team’s Product
Management skills

4. Free Product Management Resources
BOOKS
EVENTS
JOB PORTAL
COMMUNITIES
bit.ly/product_resources
COURSES

6. HACKING THE
PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
INTERVIEW
Jeremy Lewallen

7. About Me.
EXPERIENCE
• Product Manager
• Founder of 2 Start Ups
- Both were acquired
EDUCATION
•
•

8. GAME PLAN
Read Product books/blogs
Read all of Lewis Lin’s PM books
and Cracking the PM Interview
Completed over 30 in-person
mock interviews (50+ self
interviews)
Dove into any type of material that
could help me (podcasts, engineering
books, blogs)
My first 3 PM
interviews were
disasters
My first PM interviews were:
Embarrassing
Disastrous
Made me think about doing some other
type of career

9. It doesn’t matter if you know today’s technology,
you’re building tomorrow’s technology.
Interviewers want to know if they can drop you into a
product space that you are totally unfamiliar with, and
you are able to work your way to a real viable
solution/MVP.
Realization #1
Tech companies hire for PM
Generalists

10. Realization #2
Most of the questions were the
same with slight variations and
different ‘products’
01
Most common types of questions you get in
a PM interview
Strategy
02 Product design
03 Go to market
04 Estimation
05
Metrics
a. Types of metrics
b. Something is wrong with the metrics
06 Design an algorithm

11. Frameworks are the only
way to consistently work
through problems on the
fly
Realization #3

12. Competition
Customer
Collaborators (Any
strategic partners?)
Context (Trends)
Company (What are we
good at)
Strategy
Questions
What they’re looking for:
Are you able to take messy problems and come
up with a SOLID/LOGICAL direction?
5Cs & 1T
Framework
Technology

13. Product Design
Questions
1. Clarify
2. Why are we doing this? Do we have a goal?
3. Who are our users? (prioritize)
4. What are their needs? (prioritize)
5. State your Vision
6. Solutions (prioritize)
7. Critique your idea
Personas
1. List at least 3
2. Find something to segment (age, experience level)
Use Cases
1. Before, @, What’s Next

14. Machine learning / AI01
Virtual reality / AR02
Social03
Mobile04
Privacy05
Autonomous06
Drones07
Crypto08
How do you come up with
really creative answers in just
a few minutes?
If nothing creative comes to mind, start
working through these ideas:
Mass customization09

15. Metric Questions: “You’ve built
the product, now what are you
doing to do?”
Example Questions:
“How do you measure the success of the app you just built?”
“How do you know if your feature is performing well?”
15
There are 3 types of metrics that I like to look at:
Feature related Growth related Money related.

16. 01 02
Books
Product
1. Cracking the PM Interview
2. Bulletproof problem solving
03
Blogs:
1. Stratechery
2. McKinsey insights app
04
Podcasts:
a. The verge podcast: great product
reviews
b. A16z
Technical:
1. Cracking the coding interview
2. Designing data intensive
applications
3. 7 Databases in 7 Days
Resources
Highest recommendations

17. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
Corporate Training