How to Prep for Success in Product Interviews by Alteryx PM
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In this presentation, Matt shares his story of how he switched from Enterprise IT to Product Management in a different industry. Matt provides tips and guidance on how to best prepare and best present yourself for Product Manager interviews. Then, just as important, how do you have an impactful first 90 days and set yourself up for a successful Product Management career? The presentation addresses that question and shares details about what makes a great Product Manager.
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How to Prep for Success in Product Interviews by Alteryx PM
- 1. www.productschool.com How to Prep for Success in Product Interviews by Alteryx PM
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 30,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Digital Marketing for Managers Learn how to acquire more users and convert them into clients
- 7. COURSES Blockchain for Managers Learn how to trade cryptocurrencies and build products using the blockchain
- 9. How to Prep for Success in Product Interviews by Alteryx PM Matt Braun October 24, 2018
- 10. Agenda How to get into Product Tips for the Product interview Success in the first 90 days in Product
- 11. “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” - Coleman Cox
- 12. My background Bachelor of Science - Computer Engineering Over 10 years in Information Technology (IT) MBA 2 years at Alteryx as a Product Manager
- 13. How to get into Product
- 14. Understand the space - Informational interviews with PMs - Start with your current company - Reach out to your network - Attend meetups - Colorado Product 1500+ in MeetUp, Slack community - Rocky Mountain Product Camp Next event: Nov 2 in Denver - StartUp in Boulder Next event: Nov 14 - Built In Colorado Next event: Nov 15 - Product School in Boulder & Denver Next event: Nov 14 in Denver - 10.10.10 No upcoming events currently scheduled
- 15. Understand the space - Read, Read, Read - Ken Norton’s “Bring the Donuts” newsletter - Product Manual - Follow Julie Zhou, VP at Facebook - Recommended books, curated by Ken Norton - Product Management Today newsletter - Join Slack communities - Product Manager HQ ($25 lifetime, full refund if you don’t find it valuable) - Product Collective + annual conference Industry + blog - Mind the Product + annual conference #mptcon + blog - Product Coalition + blog
- 16. Understand the space - Podcasts - The Everyday Innovator - NPR: How I Built This
- 17. Build up your resume - Have you played the role of a Product Owner for an internal project or product? - Consider certifications or courses - Certified Scrum Product Owner ~$1k for 2 day course - Pragmatic Marketing $1.2k for 1 day course. Take Foundations, consider Build, then Focus. - Product School $4k for 1 week course + bonuses
- 18. Stay aware of opportunities - LinkedIn - Clean up your profile, set job alerts - Indeed, Glassdoor: register, search, set alerts - Monitor jobs/hiring channels in Slack communities - Account for various Product role names - Product Owner - Associate Product Manager - Technical Product Manager - Program Manager - Leverage your network to get referrals - Goal → Get phone screen with internal recruiter
- 19. Ways to get into Product - Consider roles close to the customer - Dev (Engineering), Customer Support, Customer Success, User Experience (Design)... - Know the user well - Are you already a power user of software? How about working for that company? - Show your passion to make the product even better - Be an active participant in their user community - Pull together feedback - Know the buyer persona well - Dive into details of why people buy the software, buy a competitor’s software, or pass
- 20. Ways to get into Product - Leverage your unique background, target companies that could benefit from that knowledge and experience - Note the difference between B2B and B2C - Your experience may be better suited for one over the other - Lateral moves into Product from within your current company - Lateral moves to another company, then switch into Product
- 21. Tips for the Product Interview
- 22. Preparation - Very valuable resources - Cracking the PM Interview The most common recommendation - The PM Interview Excellent sample questions in a flash card format - StellarPeers Mock interviews with real people - Do exhaustive research on the company - Know at least 5 stories from your experiences in great detail - Understand Porter’s 5 Forces - Helps with Strategy, Marketing, or Launch Questions - Understand 4 Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) - Helps with above questions and pricing and profitability questions
- 23. Preparation - Be able to demonstrate a SWOT analysis for the company’s primary product - Understand 5 Cs (Customers, Collaborators, Company, Competitors, Climate) - Know common numbers to help with estimation questions - 300M people in the US - 3 people per household - 100M+ household in the US - 80 years for life expectancy in the US. 65-70 outside the US. - 7B global population - 9000 hours per year - 500k minutes per year - Company revenue, profit, # users
- 24. Product questions to be ready for - Behavioral questions are still a very key part for at least one of your interviews - Nail “Tell me about yourself” - Practice the typical behavioral questions!! - General Product questions - What is your favorite app and why? - What is your favorite physical product and why? - What is an app you want to love but can’t? Why? - When prioritizing, what are some of the most important factors to consider? - Assume the CEO just called you and wants you to build feature X into your product, how would you deal with this request?
- 25. Product questions to be ready for - Estimation questions - How many tennis balls can fit into a two bedroom apartment?1 - How many iPhones are sold in the US each year? - How many squirrels are on a university campus? - Strategy questions - If you ran YouTube in India, how would you dramatically improve your market share? - If you were director/VP of your Product Org, what would you change and what would you keep doing? - Marketing questions - How would you market Google Docs to schools?1 1 -> Cracking the PM Interview
- 26. Product questions to be ready for - Launch questions - Describe a product you think launched poorly, despite being a good product. What would you have done differently?1 - Brainstorming - How would you improve the shopping experience in a supermarket?1 - Pricing and Profitability - How would you price a membership that allows people to take take unlimited flights on standby?1 - Problem Solving - Two children are running lemonade stands just a few blocks from each other. What might cause one child to do much better than the other?1 1 -> Cracking the PM Interview
- 27. Product questions to be ready for - Design questions - How would you design a ride-sharing app for blind people? 2 -> CIRCLES Method Product Design Framework 2
- 28. During the interview - User, user, user - Demonstrate user empathy - Be confident, not arrogant - Focus on deeply understanding the problem - Don’t jump into solutions too quickly - Demonstrate passion for improving products - Maybe even join their Beta program or submit product ideas “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it” -Albert Einstein
- 29. Questions at the end of the interview - Have at least five questions ready - Add more as number of interviewers increases - Samples - What does your Product roadmap look like for the next 6 months? I noticed <top request in the forums, market pressure, competitor product announcement…> and was curious how that impacts your roadmap. - How do you define success for a Product Manager on your team? - What is the hardest thing about being a Product Manager here? - In the last year, what percentage of your development were bug fixes, maintenance, and new development?3 3 -> 33 Questions Smart Product Managers Ask
- 30. Success in the first 90 days in Product
- 31. Talk to all your stakeholders - Customer Support - You have the power to make their lives easier - Customer Success - Wealth of information from their experience trying to make customers successful - Sales - Happy to talk about the blockers or reasons for prolonged sales cycles - Marketing - Understand messages they are using to attract customers - Product Marketing - Build the partnership
- 32. Talk to all your stakeholders - Development (Engineering) - Get them to love you - Explain the What and Why. Let them own the How - Agile - Understand process and challenges - Program Management - Understand how they run program and what they need from you - Customers - Your most important stakeholder! - Listen, be empathetic, understand the root of their feedback/issues
- 33. Add to your plan - Become the product/feature expert - Read help docs, review past research, talk to stakeholders… - Data driven product decisions are fundamental to succeed as a Product Manager - Find a quick win and carry it through to completion - Get an existing feature across the line - Tackle a small feature that is independent and low-risk that will make customers smile
- 34. Now, go get that Product job! Understand the space Create a strategy to get into Product Thoroughly prepare for the interviews Once in Product, celebrate, then create a killer 90-day plan
- 36. www.productschool.com Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data, Digital Marketing and Blockchain courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, Seattle, Bellevue, Toronto, London and Online
Editor's Notes
- Degree Computer Engineering was 1 of 2 majors I didn’t say No too My degree was one of the reasons a Google PM recruiter reached out to me IT Established technical foundation. Obtained a few certifications. CCNA, ITIL, VMware Certified Professional. Scripted many times to help automate our processes. Help set the foundation to work effectively with developers. Ideally, I would have spent even more time with Dev by working in department such as IT Application Development. A primary reason many recruiters have reached out to me IT Project Management - also helped MBA I hope it helps but have not had a recruiter nor interviewer directly call it out.
- Informational interviews To get a better understanding of the job Also demonstrates your interest and keeps you in mind if an opportunity does arise Meetups: I’ll be at Rocky Mountain next week and then the StartUp one Nov 14. Has anyone attended any of these? Thoughts?
- Ken Norton - currently a partner at Google Ventures. Has been in Product roles since 2000. Well respected. Julie Zhou - posts an article roughly once per month Recommended books - Sprint is one of the most recommended. Lean Startup is a great read to dive deep into product development. Thinking, Fast and Slow is helpful for understanding our thought process. Product Collective - great to hear from industry experts. They have companies targeting Product Managers. Get to network with folks.
- In a recent episode of The Everyday Innovator, Rachel talked about how to interview users with her simple structure of grace, bias, and pivot. How I Built This: more inspirational, perseverance is key, how to be scrappy, how to market, how to get more sales, etc.
- Played the role: Use my self-service portal as an example CSPO 2 day highly interactive course. Highlight: using POP on our mobile phone to build an app and get immediate feedback. Pragmatic Marketing -> reference NIHITO Foundations Build - improved handoffs to Dev, prioritize the backlog, do the market research Focus - talks more about the strategy, market research, vision and plan
- LinkedIn: professional photo, fill out your summary, list out accomplishments. Product roles: Explain the differences
- Consider roles close to the customer: will need to think about what space you want to pursue. For example, if you want to get into the Data Analytics space, consider Alteryx and its competitors. You don’t need to go all-in pursuing one company. Are you already a power user?: Become certified in the product Show your passion: Become an active member in their community. Respond to help other users. Post ideas or feedback. Possibly even co-write an article to demonstrate your use case and a positive outcome. Know the buyer persona well: Don’t forget how important these folks are. They might not be the users. Use Enterprise software as an example with IT as the buyer and data analysts as the user. Maybe you are the buyer and want to switch into Product since you are passionate about the space.
- Use my Enterprise IT background as an example. I was pitched software all the time. An important administration experience was critical. Using a real example, this is where much of my focus is for our next product at Alteryx. B2B vs B2C: difference types of customers so they have different needs. Using SaaS as an example, different expectations from customers.
- Cracking the PM: What is Product like at the big companies, how to advance your Product career, polishing your resume, tackling the different types of interview questions, and more Know at least 5 stories: Use SAR (situation, action, results) for each one. Then, go into what was rewarding, challenging, toughest stakeholder, what did you learn, what would you have changed, what made you proud, etc Porters 5 Forces - use iPhone as example: Competition (Samsung), new entrants (Google Pixel 3), suppliers (Qualcomm, Samsung, ADI), customers (may want to stop paying $1000 or more), substitutes (the light phone, Palm phone) 4 Ps for Marketing: Product, Price (perceived value. Luxury good is an interesting example), Promotion, Place (distribution channels)
- SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. We have hired competitive analysts and intelligence folks just for this reason. QUESTION: How many people in the US? Explain why I don’t put 328M.
- Favorite app: Use Waze as an example. Get me from point A to point B. That is not enough. Why I like it? Crowdsourcing fully embraced Very accurate. When driving home from hikes, the cars on the side of the road was correct every time. Carpool app. Haven’t been able to use it. Choose who to carpool with. Factors in HOV and carpool lanes to reduce commute time. Should reduce the need for current vanpool type options or even employee shuttles Add/Change: Parking integration. For example, going into Denver, I find my location. It would be fantastic to find a parking lot, in walking distance, that is relatively clean, safe and inexpensive. Allow people to rate parking lots. Waze could potentially get a commission from certain parking lots Parking lots could pay to advertise or promote their parking Integrate with street level parking sensors Alternative after doing research: buy a parking app company or integrate with one, such as BestParking Integration with autonomous vehicles Provide the vehicles data points to help them drive efficient routes Integrate the Carpool feature with autonomous vehicles Autonomous vehicles provide data to Uber to help folks driving cars Siri integration to confirm road hazards or point them out
- Squirrels: go into example YouTube: go into example
- Launch: New Coke in 1985, RJ Reynolds smokeless cigarettes in in 1989, Harley Davidson perfume in 1994 Brainstorming: I was recently in a Duty Free store and the line was one wrap around queue. This is far more efficient that individual lines per register. Good info but already known. Need to get creative. Talk about Amazon Go.
- Comprehend Ride sharing app Blind people Need to get from point A to B Identify Smart phone user that can make phone calls Read braille 18-35 Familiar with speech to text Familiar with using speech to interact with phone Report As a blind person, I want to get picked up quickly ← 2 ...I want to feel secure since I can’t visually verify ← 1 ...I want to provide driver ratings ← 4 ...I want the drive to take the shortest route ← 3 Cut See numbers above List solutions Have a non-blind person help the blind person Inexpensive, need to hire 10 people, maybe call Seeing Eye to help find blind people to test with Blind person calls a 1-800 number and they order an Uber. Call center tracks it Have 800 number redirect to your own cell App for blind person that only works to get a to major POIs in a town (Lousville). Uses all text to speech Need mapping license. Need Devs. Will take longer. Harder to iterate and test Evaluate tradeoffs Listed in sub-bullets Summarize
- Be confident: Everyday can be different in the life of a PM. Successful PMs can navigate through all the challenges, work with all the stakeholders, and be counted on to deliver timely features and products of high quality.
- Questions that could be better: Who are your competitors? What’s your stock price?
- Tackle a small feature: Use caching as an example