 Hello all, I am Aditya. First of all, thank you so much for taking out your time from your busy schedule today and hear me talk about this very interesting and important topic or I should say at least in my opinion a very interesting and important topic that is a preparation guide towards your product management interview. The agenda for today's discussion would go like this. I would first introduce myself, then we will slowly talk about what are the key topics of today's discussion. I would also briefly touch upon the topics that I will not be talking about in today's discussion and then we will slowly delve into further topic discussions as we proceed. So who am I? Well, as you all know by now, my name is Aditya. I've been an engineer by profession, but I am product at heart. It's been almost more than a decade that I'm working as a product manager across three different continents and five plus countries. I've completed my studies and masters in India and I'm currently living in Berlin, Germany. Apart from the product management, I'm very passionate about sports, football and cricket are being one of those and I love traveling. Of course, that's the perk of being in Europe and I'm enjoying it so far. I stay in Berlin with my wife and I'm soon going to be a father. Awesome. Now let's proceed to give a scope towards our today's discussion. If you see a product management interview process is typically a lengthy one lasting about a month or two and takes you through different stages during the interview process. Our goal for today's discussion is not to talk about all those stages. We will be primary focusing on stage number four and stage number five, where you are preparing for the interview and you're appearing for the same. In these two phases and stages, we will be talking about how to best prepare before your interview. We will be talking about what are the key areas where you should be focusing on, especially while you're preparing for your interview. Then we will go on talking about common mistakes to avoid pre and during the interview phase and then tie it up with the tight time management and use some frameworks to be successful throughout this process. Today, we will not be talking about any specific company related process or its rounds throughout our discussion. We will also not be discussing about any particular interview questions and their answers. The goal of today's discussion is to show you all a path towards PM interview preparation in best possible and scalable way so that you can learn and apply these techniques and frameworks in the best possible way for any type of the interview for any job level and offer. Awesome. Let's proceed. If I may ask you what is the best and the most common way of starting any interview across the globe? The answer is very simple. Introduce yourself. It is so common and it is so given that most of you tend to forget about preparing this phase of your interview. Well, as a result, many of you end up talking too much about yourself and end up eating precious time of your interview or you talk too little for your interviewer to understand who you are and what you've been doing. If you ask me, this is probably the golden opportunity for you to establish your presence throughout an interview and then set the tone or the context for further discussions. One of the best ways to prepare for your introduction is to start writing one. I typically write my own introduction on this full A4 size of paper and I make sure I stick to the size irrespective of my tenure of profession. Typically, when I begin to write my introduction, I slice it down into six possible steps. Step number one is to talk about my background and my passion. Then I slowly move ahead and start talking about how I'm pursuing this passion. What am I good at? And how am I implementing my strengths in my current job? Well, these first four steps are pretty much talking about you as a professional. Most of this is also probably covered in your resume, but it's also good to talk about. Once this part is covered, then take a side step and in the fifth section, you start talking about your hobbies. You introduce yourself as a person. Believe you me, that is very important and most of the interviewers are looking at you not only as a professional, but as a person because they are going to work with you very soon. And then you can end your description or introduction to understand and help interviewers understand why do you think you are a good fit for this job and how will this job help you proceed in your own career. This will set up the tone for your further interviews. Well, they say a good beginning is half the battle won. And if this is done in the right way, you've already won half the battle. Once this part is done, then your further interview is likely to take two possible parts. Of course, depending upon the company, one is Amazon style of interview, where it is more functional, while the other one is Meta or Google style of interview, where you will be talking about product sense and product execution. Today, our focus is to talk about Amazon style or functional type of interviews. Let's deep dive further. These functional interviews are then further split into five different buckets, commercial acumen, analytical skills, product methodologies, collaborative skills and leadership principles to name those. Every product manager is then further judged across these five principles of functional expertise into product management. These are done by setting up the different and dedicated rounds for 45 minutes or one hour, where individual product managers are tested about their knowledge into these skills. Commercial acumen talks about how good you are from a business point of view. Do you understand your business? Can you contribute to the business by building a right product? Analytical skills talks about how do you understand the product that you are building is the right solution towards solving the customer problem? How do you measure the success of the product that you are building? Do you know the exact methodology and can you communicate it to the stakeholders? While you know all those things, the product methodologies test your frameworks as how good you are in building the product that is required at right point in time for the company and to the customer. Collaborative skills, on the other hand, test your functionalities. At the same time, test your capabilities to work with colleagues and other teams in the cross-functional and collaborative manner. While the leadership principles test your capability to hold a unit as a team, motivate them and drive this product towards the right direction as a leader. Every product manager is tested on these skills throughout the interview process to make sure that you get the right job at the right company at the right level. While these functional expertise round help interviewers gauge product managers bred into product development and methodologies, they are further tested on their depth for different product mindset throughout the each round. Customer focus, speed, empowerment, learning agility, emotional quotient or social skills and aspirations are some of those. While you are getting tested on your customer focus, the interviewers are trying to understand how good you are in understanding customer's problems. Are you prioritizing the solution's right in the direction for customer's happiness index or quotient? How fast you are in identifying the right solution? How agile you are in communicating that solution to the stakeholder and get it on the priority list? Are you empowering your team to take right decisions in the right directions? Are you willing to learn? How good you are in your empathy? How good you are in order to understand your team, their problems? Are you solving their problems in the right way? And last but not the least, what is your aspiration to take up a product that solves the customer problems? This combination of breadth and depth gives an opportunity or I would say a playground to an interviewer to gauge you on different fundamental skills of functional expertise and product mindset. And that is not it. While you are getting tested on each of these different units in different permutation and combination, which by the way could be in hundreds and thousands, at all the time you are getting tested on these three fundamental skills, which is communication, structural thinking and time management. This is the structure that every product manager must go through in order to clear all the rounds and secure a place in a good company. It is quite complex, but it's not that impossible to crack as well. Most of us fail to understand the structure and as a result, end up not getting a job that you desire. The answer is very simple. We prepare for the interview questions without understanding their importance. We come up with a list of questions and then start preparing their answers. When you're not asked those questions, but you're asked the question which is sort of similar in that genre, you tend to get confused and that's where you lose your momentum. Guys, that's not the way one should prepare for the interview. The key is not to learn the answers to these different questions, but to learn how to tackle these different questions in a right and meaningful way. To support this, I've come up with a four-step framework to help myself and you understand how do you take a step-by-step approach towards this preparation. I've used this framework heavily throughout my career for different stages of my interview and found it pretty useful. And now is the time I think that I am in a good shape to share it with you all and eventually help you get your dream job and help you find out the best possible way to crack the interview. Let's proceed. Step one is to prepare yourself with all the functional and theoretical explanations of these expertise. Mind you, there is no right or wrong answer here. Every company or every product manager has his or her own ways of getting into these functional expertise throughout their career. And what is important for you is to know your way so that you can document it. You can prepare yourself for it and eventually say it out loud to the interviewer during the interview in most possible, feasible and convincing way. What I typically do here is I try to divide these functional expertise into a theme and I try to give it a structure or at least create a write-up in my own mind to come up with possible explanation towards the same. For example, product methodologies. How do I prioritize my roadmap? How do I understand the problem and how do I get into the backlog and get it signed off by the stakeholders? Commercial acumen. Why do I prioritize the techniques and the roadmap? Do I understand the problem scope? Do I understand the impact? Do I understand the opportunity? And do I do the calculation into the business case so it helps and boosts my prioritization in the best possible way? Analytical skills. What is the methodology that I use to find out the North Star Matrix for a particular product that I own? Or for that matter, if there is no North Star Matrix, what are the key KPIs on which I measure the success of this product and further decide what I should be building next towards the customer problems? Collaborative skills. How do I manage my stakeholders? How do I identify my stakeholders? How do I communicate with them? How do I get them on my side? And how do we together as a team build something that is most valuable for the company? Leadership. Do I own a team? How do I manage my team? How do I make them comfortable with me? How do we together start solving the problem and build the product? What are the different leadership principles that I adopt in order to take this to the next level and manage my team and the product in the smoothest possible way? I try to come up with these explanations on sort of one pager or two pagers and I keep it with me so at any point in time anybody asked me what sort of product methodologies you use? I have an answer ready in very crisp and clear manner. Well, this is good but definitely not sufficient. Typically everybody has their own ways of understanding this functional expertise and then call them out during an interview in the best possible way as they have implemented in their own career. That just does not give you the competitive advantage that one may look for. What gives you the competitive advantage is step number two that is coming up with real-life examples in your own career to support your answer. This may sound very simple but it is not. Many of my mentees come back to me and they say they tried to give an example but they just couldn't come up with the right example at right point in time given that there was a time pressure. An answer is very simple. Do not try to think of a right example during your interview. Have it prepared beforehand. This is where I come up with this structure where I write the themes on column number one then I try to come up with the specifics in terms of the anecdotes or the numbers or the specific descriptions towards that theme with respect to a product or products that have been delivering. For example, product introduction. I am already prepared with all the product introduction for the products that have been delivering be it a problem statement who were the end consumers what were the stakeholders what was the mission and vision of the product and what sort of proposal solution that I had implemented and what was the scope. Let's take another example. Methodologies. How did I prioritize this problem statement? Did I use any particular product development framework? What sort of product ceremonies that I went through? Was it Scrum or Khanbar? What was the business problem that I was trying to solve? Did I build a business case? What was the overall impact of this problem statement and its solution towards the EBITDA or the top line for the company? What was the North Star Matrix? How did I clear up the dependencies if there were any during the phase of this product? What was my role in delivering this product? Was I leading a team or was I an individual contributor? What was the product hierarchy? All these sort of questions that I think ahead of time and I make sure that I jot them down when I'm describing a particular product that I have handled in my past. Does that mean that you always have to write it down? The answer is no, if you're smart enough and you can come up with such examples well and good. But writing this down is just not by hearting. It's simply giving me the right amount of information that I want to call it out when I'm giving any examples without fumbling or taking too much time during the interview. And this exactly is a framework that I use for all the products in the last 10 years that I have delivered. So that it helps me come up with a cheat sheet at the end of the day, which I can simply look at just before the interview, have my mind prepared in a structural way and then go ahead and appear for the interview and carry out great amount of examples which helps me win the competitive advantage throughout the interview. Once the step number two is complete, I then slowly move towards step number three where I try to counter different product mindsets. This is the structure that I prepare in order to come up with possible examples and plenty of examples which are tagged to different product mindsets and you may or one may encounter during their product development. Mind you, product mindset is not a methodology or a technique. These are situation-based questions and to each one of you, you may have different sort of situations while delivering the product. What is important is to call those situations out, bucket them and tag them to a particular product mindset. Then, link those to the product development so that while you're describing a particular product that you've delivered, you have ample of situations tagged to the product mindset which you can explain to the interviewer during the interview. Talk about these questions in depth because each one of you have different situations at your work. Each one of you have faced different situations during delivery of the product. What is more important that you call these situations out, tag them to the product mindset and link them to the particular product examples that you want to counter to the interviewer. If you need these questions, you can still reach out to me separately on LinkedIn or the email ID that I will be giving at the last slide and I'm more than happy to share this with you all. Once step number three is complete, you go down to step number four where it links step two and step three in a seamless manner. For example, now you will have product one with a particular description or the specifications of that product sliced into different functional expertise. And to each one of these expertise would come up with the product mindsets and ample of examples that you would want to call out if you had to. Mind you, this is not something that you should do only for one product. Ideally, you should have this framework ready for all those products that you've delivered in your past. Eventually, you should have this cheat sheet ready with you so that at any point in time, anybody asks you something, you have a right example and right explanation to the question in the most feasible and impactful manner. Once you are ready with this framework, including four steps, you're practically ready to appear for an interview. You have everything that you need to solve. You have everything that you need to answer during the interview of any functional round for any company at any level. But do you really have to do this? It's up to you. In my opinion, if this is done in the right way, you will gain the competitive advantage. You don't have to write everything and buy hard. This framework is not something that you should write and buy hard. This framework is something that will help your brain organize the thoughts so that when you're talking about things, they just come seamlessly. You don't have to think. You don't have to sound convincing because you're already convinced. You are creating that enthusiasm and you're passing it to the interviewer who's eager to listen to you and learn from you, who can participate in this discussion with you and slowly start asking you the questions in the right direction and peel the onion in the right way so that you will be able to give answers in the most possible and pragmatic way. You will be more precise and concise in your answers. Eventually, you're saving too much time or good amount of time for you to tackle more and more questions. Eventually, explore your overall experience to the interviewer and show your different genres of product development. You're talking about key points. You're not blabbering. You're always sticking to the points which helps interviewer understand you're not only good at communicating but you're also thinking structurally and you are putting your points in a timely manner. And last but not the least, you are confident. You may be incorrect in giving the examples but you're logically correct. You are convinced in the example that you're giving and you're coming across as someone who's confident in giving these answers. Eventually, earn the trust of an interviewer in you. Now is the time that you take these learnings and then appear in the interview. But it's very important that how do you take these learnings and execute them during the interview because that's the moment of truth. The next slide talks about a few tricks that I would like to share with you all in order to make sure that your learnings are implied and applied in the best possible way while you are appearing for the interview. Some of those are as follows. Number one, answer the fundamental part of the questions in first two minutes. It's a two-minute principle and typically when an interviewer asks you any question, he or she is very much attentive in listening to you for the first two minutes. And hence it's very important that you make sure all the gist of your answer is called out very clearly in the first two minutes. I typically use star framework to come up with this. Star stands for situation, task, action, and reserve. You will find ample of material online to understand how do you accommodate yourself in the mindset of talking things in the star framework. Irrespective of anything, irrespective of the question, always try to give anecdotes in support to your main answer. So your main answer should be taking first two minutes while your anecdote should take next two minutes eventually make sure that every question's answer is covered in first four minutes. Be very precise and concise in choosing the anecdote in accordance to the interview theme. For example, if the interview theme is about product methodologies, choose the example from your list which talks about many situations where you had to come up with the prioritization. You had challenges in convincing people. You had to prioritize over something else that probably is not solving the customer problem to a level that you would expect. There's a lot of number crunching or there's a business case. Having to choose the right anecdote helps you talk much in depth and convincingly present your use case. Always have two to three examples ready for the same question. Never go ahead with only one example per question because there are cases where your interviewers try to switch the context and ask you to give more examples in this direction and you don't want to fall flat on your face. As we discussed earlier, you have to be precise in giving the examples because your examples should generate curiosity in interviewer's mind. He or she should feel that they're a part of the story and they want to hear more from you. Make sure while you are giving these answers, you are constantly checking your interactions with the interviewer, you are analyzing them and seeing if they are understanding you or following you. If they are not, it makes sense to pause and ask them if they are following you and take their feedback and proceed with the further explanation. All these tricks you will learn over the period of time when you start appearing for the interviews, but make sure you try and give this a justice. You try and list them down. You train your mind to make sure you're following them. So during the interview, you are not only calling it out very clearly, but you are executing it precisely and well. Eventually, help you crack the interview. Thank you so much. This is exactly what I wanted to share with you all. As discussed earlier, I again thank you for taking your time to talk to me, to listen to me, to hear me. Feel free to share your feedback. I am sharing my email ID below. You can also reach out to me on my LinkedIn handle and I will be diligent enough to reward you within 24 hours. Have a great day ahead, guys. See you, bye.