Thread by @ibscribe

I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately (hiring PMs for my team), and all the phone screens reminded of how much I enjoy a good back and forth. I’m especially a fan of open-ended, multi-layered, tangent-spawning questions that can fill up the allotted time. 🧵

here are some examples, along with the why? behind each of them

1/ “walk me through an instance of you disagreeing and committing with an executive or peer on what direction to take your product in”

from this I can learn:

•if you’ve ever disagreed and committed
•if you’ve dealt with executive pressure
•if you can connect strategy <-> tactics
•if you focus on being right or rigorous
•if you can remember how it netted out

2/ “walk me through a product trade-off where the data in your hands vs the intuition in your head didn’t jive, and how you made sense of it”

from this I can learn:
•what level of trade-offs you have made
•if you use data and to what degree
•do you over-rely on data to guide
•how you build / refine product instinct
•if you follow curiosity or index on delivery

3/ “walk me through a contentious product decision that you helped navigate where there were legitimate points of view on multiple sides”

from this I can learn:
•how you operate in a group dynamic
•methods you use to get to decisions
•what you optimize for in decisions
•if you can argue other points of view

4/ “walk me through a series of product bets you were part of that ended up in compounding value for your customer / step function change in your business”

from this I can learn:
•do you think in chunks (multi-release)
•can you break down work to de-risk
•can you tell a long-term story
•what lens (customer, business) you use

5/ “walk me through a time when you made a trade-off between experience and cost, and the eventual outcome of the situation”

from this I can learn:
•your ability to build a business case
•if you can align business and customer outcomes
•how you balance inherent tension
•how you gauge things that are hard to quantify
•how you think about the customer working backwards

Since they all start with “walk me through” I refer to them as WMTs. I hope these are helpful, no matter which side of the interview you’re on. And of course, they’re not unique to PM interviews - you easily replace the term “product” in each question with tech / design / etc…

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