Thread by @kivestu

1/ Last week, I asked PMs for thoughts on “take homes” or homework assignments during the PM interview process.

Below, I’m sharing back the findings on 1) why it’s helpful for the company 2) thoughts from the candidate side and 3) a few of my own tips for approaching them.

2/ First, from the company perspective @bguenther, pointed out that it “provides something very concrete” to evaluate since the exercise forces a candidate to think deeply about a problem.

Since PM skills are tough to evaluate in the abstract, this can be *very*, *very* useful.

3/ Furthermore, as @thibault_imbert points out, it offers a great window into how the candidate “is able to present and lead a conversation.”

It’s hard to overstate this given how much PMs must rely on soft power/influence to get things done.

Communication is 🔑.

4/ On the flip side, candidates seem to appreciate the value in assignments with one, big caveat:

No one wants to feel like it’s free labor!

For hiring companies, make it about the problem-solving process, not solving some rote work for you.

5/ My personal experience with assignments has been positive - I’ve done them at Uber, Twitter and Airbnb (an on-campus hw assignment of sorts) over the years.

I’ve got three tips for candidates working through a homework assignment.

6/ Tip one: make sure you spend time up front defining and framing the problem you’re solving.

Don’t immediately jump into a solution. The team will want to know how you explored and narrowed the problem space.

7/ Tip two: make the work come to life.

Wireframes are great - hand-drawn, @balsamiq, whatever. No one wants to read paragraphs of text.

If it’s a data-heavy case, sum up key insights with a well-placed chart or two.

8/ Tip three: don’t forget to acknowledge gaps and next steps.

No product idea is perfect so don’t try to sweep problems under the rug. Call them out, explain why they’re the lesser of two evils, etc and explain how they could be mitigated.

9/ To sum it all up: a “take home” is a product in and of itself. Treat it like one.

It should feel complete and tell a story. So what’s one look like...

10/ Here is a detailed post showing my Uber assignment from early 2013.

It’s not perfect but it resulted in an offer to be PM #4 there. Not taking that offer may have cost me some serious $ but that’s a story for another day.

rocketblocks.me/blog/pm-interv…