Have you ever wondered what questions get asked in the PM interviews?
You might say ‘Yes’, the internet throws a lot of them and a plethora of PM frameworks when you google. Ok cool.
Have you ever wondered what actual responses real interview candidates responded to questions at top tier product companies?
Thinking..? Difficult? Well, here you go!
This is what the book precisely offers – The actual responses given by the scores of genuine successful & failed interview candidates at top tier product companies. If you wonder why this book includes failed responses, that is where the actual cream is. You stock up more learnings from failed interviews than from successful ones.
Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin
The book’s second edition was published in early 2013 by Microsoft’s Former-Director of Product Management and CEO of Impact interview – a coaching firm.
More about the author here – https://www.impactinterview.com/about/
The book carries the reader through all the core aspects tested in Product Management interviews like Design critiques, Product Design, Technical, Estimation, Metrics, Product strategy & Behavioral factors through practically driven real-world questions and responses given by candidates, followed by an author’s critique at the end of each interview.
The PM frameworks have been logically introduced along the flow to familiarise readers with the framework thinking.
The book’s primary objective seems to get aspiring PMs familiar with the expectations from a PM interview at top tier firms. I believe the aim is perfectly met, if not exceeded. The impressive attribute is that the author fulfils the objective by putting readers through a step-by-step approach to accomplish the goal.
He first begins with how to think about the product, i.e. critiquing design with Dieter Rams (Apple’s Ex design chief) Ten Principles of Good Design using a couple of real-world questions asked in PM interviews.
By the time we appreciate the product critique samples, we slowly get presented to Product design with the CIRCLES framework – A fantastic practical framework that dissects product design questions. The author shows variations in answering patterns by using products ranging from desktop applications, websites, and mobile apps to consumer products.
The exciting part is all the interview narrations are done with two personas – The interviewer and the Interviewee. And carefully crafted in a way that even a non-specialist can effortlessly follow. Your future interview day pictures get painted naturally in your mind while you read through the samples. This narration style makes you feel you are in the interviewee’s shoes.
While you complete digesting the learnings of Product design, you will be puzzled by Technical and Estimation questions like the below:
How to reduce Gmail’s storage size?
Estimate McDonald’s revenue
While these questions appear to be intimidating, the author tries to ingest the process of decomposing the questions through a framework. Again, using the persona narrative.
Up next are the topics on Pricing, Metrics, Strategy & vision that breaks into advanced Product management.
99% of the content in the book is fantastic; however, I would also want to caution on 1% content, mainly in the chapters dealing with ‘Technical’ might go over the head, especially if you don’t enjoy technical stuff.
Not to forget, there are practice questions available in all the chapters, and it is worth attempting them to solidify the learnings.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience reading through all the book chapters. If you wonder what interviewers expect from aspiring PMs, grab this book at the Amazon online store. This is a must-read for aspiring PMs and can be an excellent refresher read for those who broke into the PM career.