Main takeaways: -Structure of a good answer for a PE-style question. -Defining the right success metrics for your product. -Is a North Star metric really required?

1. Acing the Product Execution (PE)
Interview
by Amazon Sr PM
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6. My Background
● Undergrad in IT from NIT Jaipur & MBA from Booth School of Business in Chicago, IL
● 8+ years of Product Experience Across Amazon, SurveyMonkey, EAB & eBay
● 5+ years in Business Consulting with TCS with leading clients like- GE Capital. GE
Healthcare & Charles Schwab
● Worked in 3 Continents- India (Bangalore), US (Stamford & San Francisco) & now in
Canada (Toronto)

7. Agenda
▪ Typical PM Interview types
▪ What does typical Product Execution Questions look like?
▪ Key Insights before you start
▪ Anatomy of a Good Answer for PE Question
▪ Conclusion

8. Typical PM Interviews types
Pic Credit: Anand Avivukkarasu

9. Welcome to Product Execution ☺

10. What does typical Product Execution Questions look
like?
● Type 1- "How would you set goals and measure success of Facebook
Newsfeed?”
● Type 2 – “Facebook groups usage dropped by 10% — what do you do?
● Type 3-”You are the PM for Facebook Reactions. Reactions are up 20%
but comments are down 10%. What would you do?
Our Focus
for today

11. Key Insights before you Start
● Firstly, you need to understand what’s the essence of PM Execution question? Where does it
come up in the life of a Product Manager 💡? This comes up after you have defined what
your Product is and now you need to determine how to measure its success after launch.
● Secondly, Product Execution questions are not about listing all possible metrics for the
Product, that’s not the focus of the question. It is more about how best do you understand
which Product metrics (AARM/AARRR metrics) will be applicable & why. It’s best to have
discussion about 4-5 main metrics than go into a laundry list
● Thirdly, think of the interview as if you are co-creating the answer with your interviewer. Its
about how can you bring the interviewer along your line of thinking about the question by
checking in periodically while you are answering. Practicing often with peers is the key

12. Anatomy of a Good Answer for PE Question
Type 1- "How would you set goals and measure success of Facebook Newsfeed ?”
Here is a 5-step process to best answer the PM execution type question:
1) C&A (Clarifications & Assumptions)
2) Product Goal
3) Users & Actions
4) Metrics & Evaluation
5) Summarize

13. Step 1
● Clarifications & Alignment
Clarify the Product as to how it works if you are not sure. No harm is asking that. It’s best than realizing
later that you didn’t fully understand how it worked. It could also be any other assumptions that you want
to make about the Product- e.g. Product only exists as an App & no desktop version, it is available only
within US & not internationally as yet.
-- What is Newsfeed? How does it work?
“The Newsfeed is one of Facebook’s main features once you login, check updates from your friends/family/others and it
fulfills many objectives for the business. It’s a primary driver of user engagement, a strong revenue generator, and the
main place where Facebook can test new personalization features”

14. ● Product Goal
What’s the goal of the Product or why the product exists and how does it align with
company’s mission? Next you need to align with your interviewer what is the right area to
focus on for metrics- is it acquisition (for early stage products), is it engagement or
retention ( for mature products) or is it about monetization (assuming product has high
engagement). Or you can make an assumption and let the interviewer which metric you
want to focus on & why.
---"My understanding is that there are several use cases for the Newsfeed including engaging users,
generating ad revenue, and testing new personalization features. To stay healthy, Facebook needs
strong user engagement, so I would assume that this is the primary Product goal. Is that what you
have in mind too?”
Step 2

15. Step 3
● Users & Actions
Identify the users of the Product & actions they can perform. Because identifying actions will
help you with the right metrics to focus on.
-- Users of Newsfeed are- Creators & Viewers. The easiest way to do this is to think about what it really
means for a user to be “engaged.” Creators: creating a newsfeed post ; Viewers: viewing a post, commenting,
liking, sharing the post. However, it’s also a good idea to avoid going into too much detail. For example,
simply list “liking” as a category of action instead of “liking a friend’s post, liking a group’s post, liking an
event, liking a comment etc.
-- Next, you need to prioritize your list of actions. There are a number of user actions which reflect
engagement but I think the three most important ones are likely to be posting, commenting, and sharing

16. Step 4
● Metrics & Evaluation
The idea is to not to list all kinds of metrics but to focus on different types of metrics that would be
most relevant to your product goal & discuss the pro’s & con’s of each metric.
Metric types could be-Topline metrics, AAREM metrics, Counter metrics, NorthStar metric
--- Topline metrics:
• Avg. Revenue per active user
Engagement Metrics:
• Avg. Time spent, DAU/MAU’s (Generic metrics, doesn’t help product goal for newsfeed)
• Deep Engagement: Comments & Sharing (Comments per thousand sessions, Shares per thousand sessions)
• Shallow Engagement: # of likes per day, # of likes per user
North Star Metric:
• Comment to share ratio (the ratio should keep moving up from baseline to track improving Engagement)
Counter Metrics:
• Sentiment of comments & sharing (make sure its not –ve)

17. Step 5
● Summarize
The last step is to summarize what the question was & what was your proposed way to solve for
it. You don't want to assume that the interviewer got everything that you explained perfectly.
--- “So, in order to increase Newsfeed engagement, I would first look at comments and shares per thousand
sessions. These metrics would give us an idea of meaningful engagement for the average user.”

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