What questions are generally asked when interviewing product managers and how to prepare?

1. General ability>Learning ability:

The interviewer may examine the learning ability through the following three aspects. 1. Look at your university major rankings (and honors, etc.). Those at the top will at least have good learning abilities. If your major is not ranked well, then you need to consider in advance how to prove your learning ability. For example, you feel that the exam cannot truly reflect your ability. You spend more time doing things you like, so you spend a day before each exam to study hard, and then you can pass. 2. Ask about the new things you have learned recently and see your learning effect. For example, ask about the book you have been reading recently, so that you can tell the interviewer the essence of the book and what you think after reading it from the perspective of the author. own gains, growth, etc. 3. If the interviewer will participate in your next interview, then he may arrange a simple learning task for you, such as learning the video editing software Premiere, and explain to him your learning process and experience during the next interview. Enlightenment etc. Learning ability is the most basic ability. When everyone is still blank, learning ability is an ability that the interviewer is very concerned about. Everyone must make more preparations

2. General ability>Execution ability :

To examine executive ability, the interviewer may conduct the following two aspects. 1. Do you have annual goals (either quarterly or monthly, the purpose is to ask the interviewer about their goals), how are you achieving your goals, and what have you done between setting the goals and completing them to ensure smooth execution? ? When you encounter unexpected problems, how do you solve them? 2. What was the biggest difficulty you encountered during college? How did you solve the problem? Did you gain any experience in solving the problem? Share your experience. In addition, some interviewers may give you a task (such as asking you to plan a campus singing competition) and ask you how to complete it. However, I personally feel that this kind of question tests more of the interviewer's logic/planning ability, and execution ability may only reflect a small part

3. General ability>Communication ability:

Communication Ability is generally rarely tested by asking questions. Basically during the entire interview process, the interviewer can make a basic judgment on the interviewer's communication ability. Let me emphasize that for product managers, communication skills are very important. The way to improve communication skills is to practice more, go to different occasions, and contact different people. In terms of methods, you can read the two books Pyramid Principle and Learn to Ask. They are still helpful for improving communication skills

4. General ability>Industry integration + ownership spirit:

Generally speaking, I rarely examine the sense of industry integration of fresh graduates. If necessary, I may do so from the following two aspects. 1. Tell me about your understanding of XX industry. 2. If you were given the opportunity to develop in the XX industry, what would you want to do and what goals would you achieve? In general, the sense of industry integration is relatively weak for graduates, because everyone has just graduated and does not have a clear understanding of each industry, and it is impossible to have a strong sense of industry integration

Generally speaking, I rarely examine the ownership spirit of fresh graduates. Only when the company establishes a good emotional connection with its employees and treats them as owners, can employees have a sense of ownership. Ownership requires us to think more from the perspective of the company and collective interests. For example, product managers need to think more from the perspective of making their own products bigger and stronger

5. General Ability>Mindset and Emotional Intelligence:

In our product career, we will encounter many problems, so it is very important to have a positive attitude. Regarding the examination of mentality, I may have the following two questions. 1. What was the biggest difficulty you encountered during college, how did you solve the problem, and how did your mentality change during this period? 2. If you failed this interview today, how would you feel and what would you do next?

When making products, you often have to communicate and collaborate with colleagues across departments and regions, so emotional intelligence is also a very important ability. Generally during the interview, I will observe whether the interviewer has high emotional intelligence through the following points. 1. For example, when you ask some difficult questions, see how the interviewer resolves them. 2. See if the interviewer will interrupt your questions during the interview.

3. Does the interviewer show impatience when constantly asking questions? Regarding how to improve your emotional intelligence, I suggest you read the book Human Weakness. He will teach you how to win friends and influence others

6. Professional knowledge>Technical knowledge:

About technical knowledge In this regard, in fact, I have no requirements for interviewees during interviews. Because speaking from my perspective, I switched jobs from a non-IT major to a product manager position 6 years ago, so I think technical knowledge is not a requirement for entry-level product managers. If you have strong technical knowledge, it can be used as an interview a plus point. But here’s one thing. If you are an IT-related major, you must at least master some basic technical knowledge. If you are an IT-related major and don’t even have basic technical knowledge, it may affect the interviewer’s understanding of the technology. Judgment of your learning ability

7. Professional knowledge>Project management:

For everyone, project management will be involved as long as you are involved in team division and collaboration. Project management, projects may be large or small. Generally, when evaluating this ability, the interviewer will ask the interviewer to talk about the projects he participated in during college, what his responsibilities were in this project, how the team division of labor, process, and time were controlled, and the final project What's the result? Regarding the project management part, it is recommended that everyone respond truthfully and do not exaggerate. Often, loopholes will appear after exaggeration, but the interviewer will know that you made a false statement. Project management itself is a huge knowledge system. If you have time, you can read the book Project Management Knowledge System Guide, or search for relevant videos online

8. Professional knowledge> Other knowledge:

Generally, in my interviews, other knowledge is rarely examined actively. Only when the interviewer's resume shows proficiency or proficiency in relevant knowledge, will I design questions

9. Professional skills>Product planning:

As for the product planning part, most interviewers will often design a product question to test the interviewer's ability. For example, you can design a question like this: Now you are assigned by the company to work on a new project. There are currently no competing products on the market for this project, and the company has limited R&D resources for you. In this case, how will you promote this project. When answering similar questions, there are several points to pay attention to, namely: 1. The questions give very few conditions, so before answering, try to ask all the prerequisites you want to ask before answering, such as Whether the company has conducted a derivation of the product, whether it is an exploratory project or a project with a determined direction, what the company’s expectations are for the product (how long it will take to achieve the goal, etc.), after completing the determination of the relevant prerequisites , and then answer how you promote the project 2. Everything the product does must be based on user needs. Since it is a new project and there are no competing products, there may be uncertainty in user needs, so when doing this kind of project The first thing that must be done is to verify the authenticity and size of the demand. If the interviewer does not include this step in the answer, then the answer to this question will not get a high score. 3. When planning products, we must have the idea of ??MVP, so the idea of ??splitting product functions into multi-phase development must be reflected. This is also combined with limited R&D resources. 4. New projects have greater risks, so they must be reviewed in time to determine whether the direction is correct

10. Professional skills>Professional design capabilities: The inspection of professional design capabilities will basically be combined with the above product planning capabilities Let's examine it together. For example, we will ask a specific question and then ask you how to solve it. Regarding this point, you can refer to the solution confirmation flow chart below (how to find the final product solution from product requirements).

For reference only

As for professional design capabilities, another important thing is documentation capabilities.

In the end, everyone's various ideas still need documents to be conveyed, so at this time, everyone needs to have basic requirements document writing skills. Regarding the writing principles and included elements of requirements documents, you can refer to the figure below

For reference only

11. Professional skills>Market analysis ability/forward-looking:

As for market analysis ability, it is recommended that everyone try to conduct research on a market that they are familiar with. Analyze and complete a simple industry analysis report by yourself. The industry analysis report generally needs to contain the following elements: 1. Overview of industry & professional terms 2. Market insights 3. Competitive landscape 4. Trend outlook & market opportunities. Basically complete it independently After reading an industry analysis report, the chance of being asked again during the interview is greatly reduced. Regarding the inspection of market analysis ability, my general method is to ask the interviewer to analyze the current industry situation from an outsider's perspective. In this way, I can understand the interviewer's market analysis ability. When answering such questions, the interviewer The author's analysis must include the three points 2, 3, and 4 mentioned above

12. Professional skills>Foreign business communication skills:

Regarding this aspect, I am currently in my 6th year In fact, it has not been involved in my career, so usually when I go for an interview, this ability will not be tested. More attention is paid to similar communication skills. Under the premise that the current division of labor among various positions is very clear, product managers rarely actually engage in business communication (basically sometimes, there are business people with you), so there is no need to prepare for this ability.

13. Professional skills> Operational data analysis:

Regarding the operational data analysis ability, during the interview stage with fresh graduates, I rarely have any questions to investigate. If an inspection is needed, it is basically to examine the interviewer's data awareness, analytical tools and skills, which are actually very easy to make up for in subsequent work

14. Professional skills>Marketing:

As for marketing ability, there are basically no requirements for fresh graduates. Even for product managers in most jobs, this ability requires the ability to work with the market and marketing teams to formulate and implement relevant strategies

15. Professional skills>Channel management:

If you want to do a good job in channel management, for product managers, you first need to have good communication skills, and secondly, you need to have a good channel management methodology. Under the current company system, my job does not yet involve channel management-related skills, so I will not share them with you here. From the perspective of interviews, generally no crazy interviewer would ask a fresh graduate to have channel management capabilities

16. Professional skills>Market/user research and analysis:

This ability assessment mainly examines the interviewer’s competitive product, user research and analysis abilities. The main question method for research on competing products is: Are you familiar with XX product? Analyze XX product. Generally, the direction of analysis is not specified. It mainly depends on which directions the interviewer can analyze, and then asks in-depth questions. From the interviewer's point of view, when encountering this kind of problem, it is best to analyze in different directions first, such as user level, Business model level, product function level, industry status level, etc. Judging from the interview situations of many interviewees, most of them only consider the product function level. Regarding user research, the general question is: If you were asked to research the user usage of a certain function, what would you do? To answer this kind of question, it is recommended that the interviewer first ask clearly many prerequisites, such as how many people use this function, whether there is an online feedback channel, whether there is a customer service feedback channel, whether the user's contact information can be obtained, whether There are seed user groups and so on. In short, first ask about the prerequisites before answering how you do user research. Regarding competing products and user research, another key point is the need for documentation, so you can search online for how to write documents for user research and competitive product research

17. Organizational influence> Methodology construction:

The investigation of methodology is mainly based on the interviewer’s own expertise and experience.

For example, if the interviewer is very good in a certain aspect, then he will basically be asked to share his methodology in a certain aspect to see if he is a person who is good at summarizing.

18. Organizational influence> Knowledge inheritance

Knowledge inheritance is more about our ability to share. Whether we have done relevant sharing during college and whether we have taught knowledge to other students as seniors/sisters will be an inspection point, but in reality I rarely go to investigate in situations