8 Non-Useless Interview Questions for Product Managers
Whether it ended in a job offer or a “no thanks”, when is the last time you had a job interview for a Product Management role that you felt actually addressed your ability to do the job?
Asking about past accomplishments doesn’t separate out your role from the environment (could you do it again in a different team, in a different industry?). Asking for PRD writing samples proves that you’re literate, but doesn’t tell you anything about how well those requirements were understood or implemented.
As Eric Ries writes in a recent VentureBeat post:
I’m not interviewing for the right answer to the questions I ask. Instead, I want to see how the candidate thinks on their feet, and whether they can engage in collaborative problem solving. So I always frame interview questions as if we were solving a real-life problem, even if the rules are a little far-fetched.
These 8 questions are things I’d want to know if I were hiring a product manager.
They are biased towards smaller companies/more startup-like environments – they assume a breadth of responsibilities that may not be relevant for a big-company Product Manager. But since there are no “right answers”, and since I’d expect any capable Product Manager to be able to think on their feet, I’d say they’re all fair game.
Popularity: 100% [?]


For all articles over a certain “popularity threshold”, we added an X People Viewed This annotation.
How do you respond to the questions, comments, issues, and complaints of thousands or millions of customers who have gotten used to Internet-speed responses? And make it feel genuine and personal?