A product manager (or as McKinsey calls them: “the mini-CEO of the product”) oversees every area of the product lifecycle — from engineering, design, sales, and marketing to customer experience, finance, legal, operations, and more. They are the ones who make sure that a company creates and sells products that people want to buy, which is crucial for hitting the bottom line.
It’s a role product-based companies take very seriously. So no wonder a product manager commands top-of-the-line salaries at companies like Google, Microsoft, Uber, and Slack.
Given the high demand and complex nature of this role, product management interview questions are often tough to crack. Interviewers aim to test candidates against a broad range of aspects — from experience and technical know-how to strategic thinking, team management, decision-making abilities, and more.
If you want to ace your product manager interview, knowing the frequently asked PM interview questions and the best ways to answer them can give you an advantage. With that aim, let’s dive into some of the most common product manager interview questions and how to answer them.
PM Interview Questions: The Most Popular Topics
Background/ Experience
Most interviews will start with general questions about your background in product management. This is an opportunity for you to highlight your experiences, such as previous roles you’ve held, the products you’ve worked on, and your accomplishments. This is also when you mention any relevant education or training you’ve received, such as a product management certification.
Prioritization
A critical skill for a product manager is how well they can prioritize. So you may get asked a question or two on your prioritization process and criteria. By this, the interviewer will test how clear and logical your approach is.
You can tackle this question by discussing the methods and techniques you use, demonstrating how you might have solved a prioritization concern in your team. You can also mention the tools you use to prioritize features, such as user story mapping or impact-effort matrices.
Customer Feedback
You can always expect questions about customer feedback.
What was your process for collecting feedback? How did you implement this feedback? How do you measure user satisfaction? These are some popular questions among recruiters. The answer you provide will help them decide if you’re someone who can improve their product through feedback.
When answering this product manager interview question, you should talk about how you conduct user research and collect and analyze data. Also, describe your methods for weaving feedback into the product development process.
Product Launch
A successful product launch can make or break a product. The interviewer may ask about a particularly successful launch you’ve been a part of. Your answer should clearly state your role in the launch and what made it successful. It’s also good to mention key metrics or achievements, such as increased sales or customer satisfaction.
Balancing Stakeholders
Product management involves balancing the needs of various stakeholders, such as customers, sales, and the company. It’s key for recruiters to want to know how you balance these needs when making product decisions. They might ask how you manage stakeholder expectations without compromising product quality. Or they might also give you an imaginary situation and ask how you will handle it.
Problem-Solving
Product management requires solving complex problems. You may be asked about a particularly challenging problem and how you solved it. This is an opportunity to showcase your problem-solving skills and how you approach challenges. Be sure to mention any specific tools or techniques you used to solve the problem, such as brainstorming sessions or root cause analysis.
Product Success
Various metrics, such as sales, customer satisfaction, or usage, are used to measure product success. Recruiters will want to know how you measure the success of a product and what metrics you use. Your answer should demonstrate your understanding of the product’s goals and objectives and how you use various metrics to measure success and use them to steer future product decisions.
Industry Trends
Staying up to date on industry trends and competitor activity is an important part of product management. You may be asked how you stay informed and how it informs your product decisions. It’s essential to have a regular process for researching industry trends and monitoring competitors, such as through online sources, industry events, or competitor analysis.
Cross-Functional Teams
Product management involves working closely with cross-functional teams, such as engineering, design, and marketing. You may be asked how you work with these teams and handle conflicts that may arise. It’s a favorite product manager behavioral interview question of interviewers to gauge your interpersonal capabilities.
Your answer should reflect your strong communication and collaboration skills and the ability to lead and inspire a team toward a common goal. You must also state your understanding of each team’s role in product development. Support your answer with examples of how you’ve worked closely with several teams, kept everyone aligned, and achieved the project goals.
Technical Concepts
Because a product manager acts as a glue that binds the technical and business side of productd development, technical know-how is a prized quality for this role. Technical product manager interview questions assess the candidate’s understanding of technical concepts and their ability to make complex ideas simple and digestible for non-technical audiences.
Product Manager Interview Questions and Answers
Here is our list of some of the most widely-asked product management interview questions.
1. What is your experience with product management?
Your answer should tell not only the years you’ve spent working in a product manager role, but also some of the milestones you may have achieved during your tenure in various companies. If you’re interviewing for an entry-level or junior role, you might not have many launches under your belt, but make sure to talk about at least one accomplishment.
2. How would you prioritize between task A and task B?
This is a common prioritization and trade-off PM interview question that is meant to evaluate how well you can identify the urgency of task, sequence them, and build a product roadmap with an eye on the end goal.
Answer such questions by defining the business objective and applying a framework, like the RICE or Kano models, to the problem. Work it out logically and present your answer based on the framework scores.
3. How do you manage and prioritize competing projects and priorities?
This question is slightly different from the previous one. It aims to evaluate the strategies, tools, and techniques a candidate uses to set priorities and build the product roadmap. This is where you’ll be tested on your knowledge of frameworks and familiarity with the PM tools. The interviewer can ask follow-up questions to gauge your organization, delegation, and team management skills.
4. Can you give an example of a successful product launch you have been a part of?
This product manager interview question requires you to speak from experience. Make sure to use numbers to drive home the point and describe the metrics you used to evaluate success. Talking about the relevant marketing, sales, and PR strategies and how you worked with those teams to achieve the feat is a great way to showcase your collaboration skills.
5. How do you stay up-to-date on industry trends?
This question calls for things that might be outside your day-to-day tasks as a product manager. It tries to gauge your commitment, interest, and passion in this field. An impressive answer would talk about the various ways a candidate might have their ears on the ground — internet communities, forums, social media, industry publications, conferences, networking events, etc.
6. Can you think of a difficult situation in a project and how you solved it?
By asking this product management interview question, the interviewer doesn’t really want to know what the candidate did but how they responded to a negative situation. The way to answer this is to describe the context and scenario and discuss how you navigated through it. For instance:
“We faced a challenge when presenting our product’s price point to the marketing team. They believed it was way higher than the competition, and the price needed to drop for it to be launched. So, we rallied key stakeholders and gathered customer feedback through a focus group. With the insights we gained, we could adjust the product’s features and meet the marketing team in the middle ground while keeping our customers happy.”
This answer demonstrates the candidate’s ability to identify the root cause of the conflict and then bring the conflicting parties together to discuss and find a solution. It tells the interviewer they possess skills in mediation, teamwork, the openness to listen to differing perspectives, and the willingness to find a workaround to achieve the big-picture goals.
7. How do you measure the success of a product?
While answering this question, mention the various metrics and KPIs you use to determine product success. Explain how you track and analyze these metrics and how they tie in with your product decisions.
8. How would you handle negative feedback on a product your team is working on?
Your answer to this question should be based on the technical nature of the product. You must include points about understanding feedback, identifying the issues raised through the feedback, conducting user research to gather more data, and your action plan to address the issues.
Pro tip: Ask a clarifying question to the interviewer to gain a better insight into the scenario they might have in mind. Then proceed to answer.
9. Can you describe how you conduct market research and how it informs your product decisions?
One of the best ways to answer this PM interview question would be to describe your market research process in steps. Talk about research methods, metrics, and statistical and qualitative data that you use to identify and analyze competition, trends, market growth, etc.
To answer the second part of the question, it’s a good idea to provide an example demonstrating how you apply your research insights to drive decisions. For instance,
“While conducting research for a new grocery delivery app, we found out that customers would love to have a delivery app with a more seamless ordering and delivery process than existing ones. Many would even be willing to pay a premium for same-day delivery. This information allowed us to put special focus on the UI and UX design. It also helped us get the teams and stakeholders on our side when we proposed not same-day but 2-hour delivery. It ended up being one of the biggest USPs of the brand, and they’ve been running many successful campaigns around it.”
This answer highlights the candidate’s ability to apply market research to really move the needle.
Practice Tips to Ace Product Manager Interview Questions
The secret to nailing product management interview questions lies in practice. Here are a few tips that will help you get the most out of your practice time.
1) Practice answering several types of product management interview questions.
2) Prepare for behavioral-based questions with a focus on your past experiences. Make a note of concrete examples of your past experience, including what you did, how you did it, the outcome, etc.
3) Answer questions out loud so you can hear yourself. This is a great way to spot mistakes and correct them. Having friends or peers who can do mock interviews with you is another great way to test-run your answers.
4) Set aside extra time to practice answering difficult questions around conflict resolution and other tricky situations. Think about the best responses and ask your peers for advice.
5) Finally, practice staying calm. You don’t want to rush through your answers during the interview. When your nerves are in control, you’ll find it easier to stop, think, and come up with the most logical answers.
Upskill to Land Your Dream Product Manager Job
Product managers are prized assets for companies looking to build winning products. Innovation-centric brands and high-growth tech startups are top recruiters of this role, and they leave no stone unturned to look for the most promising talent.
Top employers of this position are highly selective in their process, which shows in the product management interview questions they ask their candidates. We hope you’ll find this guide on product manager interview questions and answers helpful while preparing to land your next product manager role.
Besides brushing up your interview skills, what can also help you get noticed by top hiring companies is a professional certification from a globally recognized university. That’s exactly what the Product Management Bootcamp is! This industry-led online program from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management is designed to help you master product management in six months. Get hands-on training through live masterclasses by UMN faculty and a chance to work on capstone projects on some of the world’s biggest brands. Enroll now to get started!
