AMA: Shopify Senior Product Lead, Lizzy Masotta on PM Interviews

1. They teach you something in the interview I once interviewed a woman who had extensive experience working for a telecommunications company. I have zero experience in telco – aside from being a customer of Verizon Wireless. I walked out of that interview having learned so much about telco companies, their business model, what they optimize for, how they segment their customers, etc. In the stories the candidate told about her work experiences she concisely weaved in the basics of the telco in a digestible way and was very aware of the learnings and insights she had from her product launch successes and failures. As a product manager you’re responsible for the “what” and the “why.” What should we build and why should we build it? If you’re able to succinctly describe the what and the why of your current or previous roles -- no mater the industry -- that’s a great indication of a strong PM. 2. They make it a two-way conversation. (See answer to “What are the most common mistakes you see candidates make” question above)

1. Tell the interviewee what they want to hear up front Who are you? What type of interview is this? How long will this last? Will I be able to ask questions? What's the next step after this? 2. Don’t ask leading questions. For example: “How do you work with engineering” gives away that you’re interested in their collaboration style with engineering. They will always answer this question with something like “I am really communicative with them and do all the right things!” To get the real answer here you want to ask an open-ended question like “tell me about x product you launched” and in their response see how they naturally bring up engineering. Or, they may not bring them up at all and you may have your answer or something to dig into more. 3. Dig deep in 1-2 areas. With a product case I like to dig deep in 1-2 ideas on their roadmap or challenge the metric they’ve come up with. The purpose of doing this is to see how the candidate reacts to being challenged and to see how deep their thinking was behind something. I’m looking for density of thought when I dig. In a behavioral interview, I dig deep on 1 past experience or feature they built. Why did they build x feature? How did they come up with the idea to build it? What was the launch strategy? How did it do? What was the design process?

Interview Red Flags 1. During a Product Case Interview – If your interviewer is having to guide you through each section or prompt you with several follow up questions, that’s not a good thing. 2. If a candidate clearly has never used the product (hint: always sign up for the product, do the free trial, or watch YouTube videos / demos). 3. If one of the candidates questions at the end is something along the lines of “how do promotions work here?” 4. If a candidate is unable to draw connections between their past experiences and the current role / company More specifically, in a Product Case Interview: 1. Forgetting about Product Discovery If you are given a prompt like “design a product that does X” you must always question if X is worthwhile. Many candidates will just immediately dive in without doing the Product Discovery to find out - is there a problem here? Is this worth building? What are the pain points today? Why build this? A more tangible example: “Design a personal shopping assistant.” You must first ask: What do people use today for shopping? What do we currently offer? Is it frustrating? Would people use this? What problems would it solve? Would this help our business? 2. Lacking Opinions Continuing with the case example above (“Design a personal shopping assistant”), candidates need to assert their assumptions and hypotheses throughout the case. For example, “Launching a personal shopping assistant will increase sales” → this is a hypothesis - state it aloud. “The personal shopping assistant must be digital, not a physical human being” → this is an assumption - state it aloud. 3. Random Ideation When you get to the part of the case where you're coming up with product solutions (ie: roadmap) it’s important to flex your creativity but also your strategic thinking. Your ideas should always be rooted in solving the problem you identified from the beginning of the case. They should be focused on the things that are most painful for customers today. 4. Forgets about metrics Your metrics should always be tied to the question “why should we build this?” In other words, what metric will tell you that this was a worthwhile investment? I like to call this ‘the north star metric’. There are also ‘counter metrics’ or 'trip wire metrics', which are the metrics that indicate this is going in the wrong direction or not worth building. And then there are ‘leading indicator metrics’ like adoption or usage that tell you if it’s headed in the right direction or not. 5. Asks cookie cutter questions When an interviewer asks “do you have any questions” it’s an opportunity to showcase your strategic thinking (by asking questions that show you understand the product / company / business model) but it’s also an opportunity for you to gauge if you want to work for this company. If you were about to make a billion dollar investment in this company and you were given 1 question to ask, would you ask, “what’s your favorite part about working here?” No. You’d ask something like “why can’t x, y or z competitors replicate what you have?”

There are 2 main types of interviews for Product Management roles: 1. Product case interviews 2. Behavioral interviews (by cross functional partners like UX or Engineering, or by the hiring manager) With either interview type, the surest path to failure is when a candidate shows up and waits to be asked questions. A one-way dialogue doesn’t expose enough about a candidate to make a strong impression. Engaging in an interactive, two-way dialogue helps the interviewer get to know what it would be like to work with you – it exposes how you think and communicate in a real world context. The most impressive interviews I’ve conducted are ones when a candidate can interweave their experiences throughout the conversation and have a two-way conversation with me. The purpose of an interview for the candidate is to tell their story, share their product learnings, and expose who they are in order for the interviewer to assess their candidacy. The purpose of an interview for the interviewer is to assess if the candidate is qualified for the job and if they would be successful in the role. You make the interviewer's job much easier the more you open up and engage. And, the more you engage, the more memorable this interview will be for the interviewer when they have to write up their recommendation and discuss it in a meeting with the other interviewers weeks later. To avoid this common pitfall, you can do two things: 1. Put yourself in the shoes of your interviewer 2. Come up with a list of 2-3 things you want to make sure the interviewer knows about you For #1 - Who is your interviewer? What role do they have? What do they care about? If you had to guess - what are they trying to get out of this interview? Use these insights to better connect with them live. For #2 - How does your current work connect to the work of the role you’re interviewing for? What success have you had that you want to make sure is known?

What are your greatest hits? You really can’t avoid the “tell me about yourself” question in any interview you do and every candidate should be prepared for this question. I like to put a twist on this question and ask “What are the greatest hits of your resume?” Translation: Instead of giving me a chronological detail of your career experiences, tell me about the most impactful things you’ve done. It’s a great way to test how candidates synthesize information on the fly. Surely they prepared for the full “tell me about yourself” story - now, the challenge is condensing that and picking out the most important parts. It’s also a great way to test if candidates actually listen to and think critically about the questions you’re asking. There’s a number of times when I’ve asked this question and the candidate still gives me their rehearsed “tell me about yourself” full answer. What type of PM are you? Any PM should know that the job varies greatly by company, product type, customer type, use case, company maturity, etc. It’s important that every candidate knows the types of PM roles they’re good at and have experience in. Here are the different dimensions and categories I use to think about this : ‘Type’ of Product Manager 1. Core / App PM 2. Platform PM 3. Growth PM Stage of Product Development 1. 0 → 1 PM 2. 1 → 100 PM Operating Environment 1. Big company PM 2. Start up PM Customer Type 1. B2B PM 2. B2C PM Specialty 1. Business PM 2. Technical PM What’s something about you I can’t glean from your resume? Many candidates tend to be nervous and therefore robotic during interviews. It’s important to find ways to quickly disarm them and make them comfortable. I like to ask this question towards the beginning of an interview for that reason. It lets them open up and tell their story outside from the “on paper” qualifications. I’m always surprised and impressed by what I learn through this question. Tell me about the product and team you work on currently. This question is open-ended by design. I’m trying to understand how they talk about their current team dynamics. Do they include engineering when they talk about their team? Do they just focus on the hierarchy of the team? Do they talk about the mission of their team? As an individual contributor, the best way to answer this question is to: 1. Succinctly state the mission of your product team 2. State what part of that mission you’re focused on achieving and what phase you're currently in 3. Talk about the people you work with on this mission (eng, UX, data, etc) As a people leader, the same answers apply, but include how your PMs are focused and why you believe it makes sense to split focus areas in that particular way for them. Tell me about something you shipped. Product Management is all about building things. If a candidate doesn’t have a rolodex of stories about shipping products, it’s a huge red flag. Asking this question in an open-ended manner can be very overwhelming for the candidate. But, again, it’s a great test to see how they synthesize information and boil it down to the key parts. The areas they choose to focus on in the shipping process will show you what they value. The parts they omit may be a sign of a weakness or lack of focus there that you can dig into later in the interview.

There’s a ton of literature published on PM interviewing - frameworks, types of questions, types of interviews, etc. Your time is best spent introspecting, not obsessing over all the interviewing content. Memorizing frameworks won’t help you ace an interview. The more you know yourself, your strengths, and the takeaways from your prior experiences, the better you will do. Make sure you have answers to the following questions: * Why do you want to leave your current role / company? Why do you want to join this role / company? * Explain what you do now in a way that any stranger on the street could understand. * What were your biggest learnings from your current role? * How have your past experiences set you up for success at this new role / company? You should have a base understanding of the case interview framework and what they look for - but my advice is to not overdo it. For individual contributor PMs - If you were to read one book, I’d recommend “Inspired” by Marty Cagan. For people leader PMs - I’d recommend “Empowered” by Marty Cagan.