The Most Common Mistakes People Make In Product Manager Interviews

Have you heard? My new book Continuous Discovery Habits is now available. Get the product trio's guide to a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery.

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. 

There are a ton of great articles about what you might get asked in a product manager interview. I refer you here, here, and here. I’ve also written about what I always ask during phone screenings. Now that you know what you might be asked, I’m going to focus on how you can avoid the most common mistakes.

Product Is Not About Your Opinion

Far too many people think that being a product manager is just having an opinion about what a product should do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, you do get to have an opinion. And yes, an intuitive product sense can go a long way. But you better be able to back that opinion up with some data and reason. And you better be able to show me that you can incorporate other people’s opinions. Product is not all about you.

Always Be Able to Answer Why

Similarly, be prepared to answer why. For just about everything. Product is far more about the why than the what. Anyone can generate countless ideas about what your product could do. You need to make the argument for why your product should do what you think it should do. And most importantly, you need to show that you can justify the why to executives, engineers, sales, marketing, and just about everybody else in the building.

Don’t Tell Me You Wish You Could Do More User Research

This might be my biggest pet peeve of all. Don’t tell me that you would do more user research, if only your company would let you. Stop asking for permission and figure out a way to get it done. You don’t need budget. You don’t need resources. You only need initiative and a little know-how. If you lack the know-how, just get started. Learn as you go. I’d rather hire someone who lacked the know-how, but learned bits and pieces along the way over someone who never got started because they didn’t know how.

Don’t Complain That Management Doesn’t Get It

This is similar to the last one. I know. If only you had more decision making power your product would be better. If only your CEO valued the user more, your product would be number one in the market. The last thing I want to hear in an interview is how you know the right way and everyone else in your company is doing it wrong.

This drives me crazy for two reasons. First, it tells me that you don’t understand the business context. Not all executives are great, but very few make bad decision after bad decision. And odds are at least one person on your executive team gets it. So if you think they are all wrong, the odds are you don’t understand the business context well enough to understand why they disagree with you.

And second, it tells me that you don’t know how to advocate for your position. Product managers work in a role where they don’t have authority over the engineers who build their product, they don’t typically get final say on how the product is positioned (marketing does), or how it is sold (sales does). And yet, product managers are responsible for the success of their products. The only way you can succeed is if you learn to advocate and to both convince others and adapt to others. The more i hear about how you are right and they are wrong, the more convinced I am that you will be a terrible product manager.

Avoid If Onlys

The last two are really if onlys …

• if only engineers were good at estimates
• if only you could convince your boss your vision would work
• if only sales would stop promising things you don’t have
• if only your design team was better

Avoid if onlys in interviews at all costs. I understand you aren’t going to win every battle. Your management is going to be wrong sometimes. Engineers are terrible at estimates. Sales will always promise things your product doesn’t do and will never do. These are your constraints. This is the world within which you must work. If you complain about these things in an interview, you are telling me you don’t really want to be a product manager.

Know What Success Looks Like And How to Measure It

I can’t tell you how many product managers don’t start with the end in mind. How can you succeed if you don’t know what success looks like? Not to sound too much like a self-help book here, but this is the most basic of the basics.

Some things are hard to measure. People talk a lot about engagement. How do you measure engagement? Why are you engaging people? Are you trying to sell them something? Do you want them to click on an ad? Do  you want them to donate money? Do you want them to subscribe to your content? This is what you should be measuring.

Before you walk into an interview for any company, you better be prepared to have an intelligent conversation about what success for the product looks like and how you might measure it.

Standing Out

I’ve screened and interviewed many product managers. If you can manage to avoid each of these mistakes, you’ll stand out from the majority.

What are the common mistakes you see in product manager interviews? Please share in the comments. 

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series.