 Hello everyone, Andrew here again. Welcome back to Episode 4 of this presentation on the product school about how to interview at top tech companies. Today, we'll be going over the behavioral IC interviews. IC meaning individual contributors, so non-managerial positions. As usual, a little bit about myself. My name is Andrew Oh. I am a product manager, a former founder and a coach. I've worked at companies such as Grab, Tech Talk, and Pulung. Pulung being a stock and crypto trading app based in Indonesia, Grab being a ride-hailing company based in Southeast Asia as well. I've also founded multiple different startups ranging from e-commerce to social to flying taxis, and I'm also a coach on exponents. One of the world's leading product management interview platforms, we can learn and train how to interview and up your frameworks and skills, as well as being able to find mocking partners to help you improve your interviewing abilities. So without further ado, let's get right into it. Today, we'll be going over a few topics here. So what exactly is behavioral? What is the framework breakdown for how to address these types of questions? Three, just going over and reviewing the types of questions that we have that we'll be going over in this walkthrough. So what is behavioral? Now, there is a difference between IC and managerial behavioral questions. Next week will be the final episode of this five-part series where we'll be going over the managerial behavioral questions. It's a difference quite significantly from the IC ones. So today we'll just be focusing on IC, and so I will define what behavioral is in this context. So behavioral interviews are really about determining how you operate and execute as a product manager. So what I would recommend before you enter any behavioral interview rounds for the specific company, one of the most important things, the best things that you can do for yourself, is to get familiar with the company's mission and principles of that specific company. Because you may need to tailor your answers or your style of responses to that company that may value very different specific traits or themes of which they will be expecting under the PMs. Now, you also want to be prepared to speak about a few past projects that you've worked on in the past, and any other kind of like scenario that you might have been involved in politically. Really, this is about how can you operate and influence stakeholders as an IC? So why is this being assessed? It's important for these companies to really be able to understand if you can succeed within their organization and the complexities of that organization will have. So, for example, if a company is stressing more on you being able to really reign in on the engineering team, come in and be able to set and dictate a roadmap and a strategy with them, then you might get more questions tailored and based on that. You might have other behavioral interviews that might be more reflective, really looking for more culture fit. A great example is the Shopify and they ask very specific questions like tell me a live story. Again, every company is different. Every company will be looking for very specific thematic themes of what they would expect and really require for their PMs to succeed within their own organization. So who will be interviewing you? This would be a range of different interviewers, but likely it will be interviewers from one level up. So you're going to be expecting a hiring manager, a skip level, or even an engineering lead to conduct these interviews with you. Engineering leave would be more specific to technical interviews, but for, I'd say, half of the majority of the companies, technical interviews would actually be more like behavioral interviews on how you would interact and work with the engineering team. So, let's go over a few of the strategic points on how to prepare for this. First, let's go over the stories. You want to prepare three stories with high impact projects. So what I would recommend are really just three core principal projects. One story about failure. So this could be a failure on a specific project. It could be something personal that you had gone through, but really it's a story about failure, working with a particular situation or project that you've been through. The second story is about working on a complex problem with the scope and or stakeholder roadblocks that you had to navigate through. This is going to be assessing more of the stakeholder cross-functional management side of the story that you can reflect and shine on if asked. And lastly, the third story should be about your biggest win. And when I mean your biggest win, I mean the win of which you yourself have clearly defined that product or future strategy and really just own that project all the way to the finish line. The next thing you want to do is just really consider some of these storytelling frameworks. So you're going to want to answer each of these behavioral questions within two to five minutes. And at that point, if you need to go further, just make sure you check in with the interviewer and ask if there's any other questions or any specific areas that they want to dive deeper on. So your goal is to answer again within two to five minutes. I would recommend using a star framework to respond to each answer. This is pretty standard. You might also see this in your interview guide depending on the companies that you're interviewing for. Star framework STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Results. So Situation is about setting a context to help frame up and provide context towards that specific situation or problem that you had encountered. Task is about what was the goal that you were trying to achieve. Action is about what were sort of the solutions that you were able to derive to get out of the situation or to move things forward. And Results would be simply what were the results or the end outcome of this specific story. So usually you would want to tie that back to a metric-based outcome if you can. The next thing to do, another strategy you want to just play along with is to also ask for time to consolidate your thoughts before each story. Now, behavioral interviews are supposed to have a natural flow, but that said, when I say natural flow, that's really up to you and the tone that you set with the interviewer. It's only weird if you make it weird. It's only awkward if you make it awkward. So just casually ask for some time to consolidate your thoughts. That's it. And then just don't spend too long on it, just spend 10 to 20 seconds. This isn't like an execution or product sense interview. So you just want a few seconds to really just consolidate your approach and really just narrate and pick the story of the one that's best matched to this specific question they're going to get asked. And then when you start answering the question, you want to make sure that you're sitting up front your approach. Talk about what is the structure of the story that you're going to be narrating back to the interviewer. This is important so the interviewer understands where you're going with this. And also it just helps the interviewer understand your way of thinking. This is really, really important communication style and skills. It's going to be reflected and assessed. So just make sure that the interviewer can see where the finish line is going to be. And again, just overall structure of your approach for answering these questions. Next, you want to also just do some check-ins with the interviewer. Again, if you feel like your answer is dragging a little bit too long. Or if you feel like there were some crucial points within the story of which he might have some follow-up questions. Or you might just in the video see that the interviewer might want to ask a question. Just check in at that point and just ask if they have any questions. Again, that's not just for the sake of letting that interviewer have an opportunity to speak. It just reflects really good collaboration and teamwork skills and communication skills at hand. Lastly, be selfish. Ensure that you do say I instead of we for certain parts of your story where it really was you driving the whole thing through. If you do say we at those specific points where it really was you driving the whole thing forward. You're discrediting yourself and you're giving shared credit to the entire team of which it could have been someone else. That's arrived a specific solution or had the tenacity to really just take this approach to the problem that you were trying to solve for in your story. So for ICs, I think there are three main types of questions you're going to get asked. Project-based, cross-functional-based, and culture-based. An example of a project-based question could be tell me about a project that you worked on recently. An example of a cross-functional-based question could be tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a stakeholder. And cultural-based would be maybe tell me about a time that you failed or was wrong about something. Each of these questions are assessing a specific aspect of the way that you work. And it also is supposed to be assessing a particular way of thinking slash culture fit that you also employ. Again, these are the three main themes that you're likely going to encounter as an IC in terms of your behavioral-based questions. And it's really important that you understand what the goal of these questions that you're getting asked really are. So when you take that 10 to 20 seconds to really consolidate your thoughts and you ask the interviewer for time, first, try to understand the goal of the question. What is the point of the question and what is it really trying to ask me? Reading between the lines. So for example, tell me about a time that you failed. What it's really asking you is tell me how you're humble and showing humility in a particular situation where you failed. It's trying to drive that your honesty and your sense of character. Asking about a project-based question, like tell me about the project that you worked on recently. That's likely going to be more assessing your approach and your framework to how you tackle problems, how you execute and operationally operate as a PM. So just really try to again take that step back. First, really try to understand what the goal of the question is really trying to ask you. So you can formulate your star response based around that narrative. So let's go into a specific example of each of these questions, which I just mentioned before. So the first one is that project-based question of tell me about a project that you worked on recently. So when it's asking that specific question, it doesn't have to be your current or your most recent role. Could go back a couple of companies, could go back several years. Honestly, even if it's eight or 10 years, if the example is really great and it's relevant, I will still bring that up as well. You can consider a story from those areas of your career. Now, really the framework that you want to be approaching for a situation like this, a question like this, again, you will try to structure your response in a star-based framework, but what you want to do is again redefine the goal. So in this case, the ingredients you're going to be having here, when I'm talking about defining the goal, I mean the goal of project more specifically. You want to state and focus in on the challenges and the potential complexity of the problem that you are trying to solve. Explain the strategy formation of how you went about creating that product strategy or future strategy to tackle that problem, and then you can go and see the launch and the results of that specific project that you had. So I won't go into a full-fledged answer here, but I will maybe just go into some high-level response that you can provide. So maybe let's do an example, a hypothetical example. Let's talk about maybe me being a PM at Uber on the fraud team. So at Uber, really the goal here on the fraud team, I remain OKR was to reduce the fraud less. One of the issues that we had with this specific problem could have been that all we have is data. We don't actually really know who is actually frauding us, ourselves and probably everything. A company had never actually even gone about trying to even make the effort to go talk to their end users and show user centricity to really determine all the blind spots and all the fraud methodologies that could be affecting Uber as a company when it comes to fraud. And the end users in this case are not just the victims but actually the frauds themselves. And so this is kind of like where you're staying that challenge of the complexity of the problem and it's going to get deeper from here. So then you can go ahead and talk about how without talking to our fraudster users, we don't know again like not only who they are and how they're being incentivized and why they're choosing Uber to fraud, but also we don't know their entire end to end user journey. How are they navigating through the UX and what other systems are they using to try to fraud us? So without that kind of disability, we're kind of acting blind and again all we do is like a data to try to make some fraud rules and that in itself is making a pretty inefficient ML model to even operate on. So then you go into the structure formation. So what do we do here in this case? What was the action that you took to solve for this problem? So then you can go into how you maybe set up a program to bribe fraudsters to tell you about new fraud methodology, new fund methodology that you might not have known before. And this allowed you to get baits or fish to catching onto that bait that you fished out. And from there you were able to actually meet the fraudsters and you decided to include your designer, your engineer. So everyone can operate within the same level of information and what you learned was X, Y and Z. This X, Y and Z was really key to, were really key strategic insights that helped you then formulate the product strategy, which was, you know, again, X, Y, Z, which then helped us transit that into our roadmap, which resulted in us reducing the fraud loss by say 90% over the next six months after we launched. So that could be, again, just a really good framework with some example of how you can go ahead and tackle this specific question. I try to nail that within five minutes. I wasn't timing myself there, but you're leaving enough of a skeleton for the interviewer to be able to ask follow-up questions. And the interviewer will then ask you follow-up questions and go a little bit deeper. So for example, they might ask, you know, what were specific KPIs or metrics and metrics that you decided to track for this product? How did you, like what, like how did you test your hypothesis for the specific MVP? You know, were there any challenges or roadblocks that you encountered trying to move this project along with your stakeholders? Who were those stakeholders? So these are just the other examples of follow-up questions that you're going to get asked based on a question like this. And this is probably the most common project-based question you're going to get asked. So tell me about a project that you worked on. And those are just some very common example questions in terms of follow-up questions that you're going to get asked based on your response here. Now, one of the things you do not want to do is drag out your answer. Interviewers hate this. Interviewers don't like when you're dragging your answer to say five, 10 minutes and you're not giving them an opportunity to even check in on that. So again, communication here is key. Your ultimate goal is to make your interviewer want to work with you realistically in a working environment. And if they can't sit through a 45-minute call with you, let alone bear a five to 10-minute answer that you're responding with, you're going to get marks deducted off the rubric. So just be careful of that. Again, keep everything concise. Stick to high-level summary. And leave enough breath and just a shallow enough depth in your initial walkthrough of this example to reflect good strategy, good structure, and a clear narrative so that the interviewer has enough ingredients to ask you deeper questions to assess your thought process here. Next question. Let's move on to the cross-functional stakeholder question. We're running stakeholders. So next question that we have here is about, tell me about a time you had a disagreement with the stakeholder. Now, what you want to do here is take a slightly different approach. Again, trying to structure, you can still use the star response method to structure your response. But the strategy here, or the different components that you want to go with in your framework would be, again, really identify from the context of the project or whatever the situation is, what the goal was. You want to focus a lot more time in this response on the struggle or the challenge that you had with the stakeholder. So let's just say that you have, let's just say that this is a five-minute response. Spend maybe two minutes going over the specific challenges that you had with that stakeholder. So that stakeholder could be an engineering lead, a business stakeholder, could be your manager even. Whoever it is, you would just want to really be able to state that challenge and demonstrate empathy for that person. Empathy here is really the big key in the secret sauce that most engineers are looking for in any kind of cross-functional stakeholder response. So demonstrate your empathy for that stakeholder that's blocking you. Be objective. Show in this story that you are not only being fair and also demonstrating empathy towards a specific stakeholder, but that you're being objective by showing data, talking to users, getting some sort of evidence or high level of conviction for how you try to move this stakeholder forward. And if it doesn't, and how maybe if it didn't come to a pass or like an approval from a stakeholder, how could you have maybe come in between and compromise in order to make this work? Really, this is such a crucial example of a question because it's really just trying to demonstrate how can you succeed in the complexities of a company and also culturally to win over people that you're going to be working with. And this kind of question is going to be assessing whether you're an empathetic leader that can operate within the team and get along with others, or are you a tyrant that tries to force things forward? This is real where a lot of people might get caught. So you need to be careful about the way that you're cracking this narrative. And again, it's one thing to just say it, but it's another thing to show it. The way that you come across in this interview, the way that you come across in the story should be genuine or at least seem genuine. Otherwise, a really great interviewer will see through it and know that this may be a really ingenuine answer. And this kind of story is not reflecting who you're portraying right now. So be careful about that. And last part of that, of course, is tell them that approach of how you won that person over and show the results. Now, if you are going on a story, whether it's true or not, in regards to how even showing data, even compromising this stakeholder is still not moving, the next best thing you can do is escalate. And maybe it would be wise to include a story, or again, you can navigate the story of a what-if situation of what happens as a follow-up question if this stakeholder still decided not to budge. If you come demonstrate in the story already everything that you tried that you could do, you've shown empathy, you try to compromise, you show data. It's almost like a really dumb no that this stakeholder shouldn't, that this stakeholder is not playing ball with you at that point. The most important piece that you can demonstrate to this interviewer is that you do have a line for when you're going to escalate this problem because of that if your hands at that point escalated to your manager and demonstrate how you basically have a case at hand because of all the things you've done before to try to move the stakeholder and let your manager or your skip level be the one to handle the decision with that person's manager or skip level. And at that point, if at that point it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out, but at least you've really done everything you could to make that work. Lastly, next question is tell me about a time you failed or was wrong about something. This is one of my favorite questions. So really what this question is trying to get at is it's about humility and empathy. And the part about this kind of question is that, you know, a lot of pms. And, you know, this is no secret, I think, I think, honestly, over 50% of the pms, I wouldn't even be even be hard pressed to say it could be as high as 80 plus percent do not have humility. They have a lot of pride. They have a lot of ego. They also power trip quite a bit. Hence that cost functional partnership question that we just reviewed is also really important. Stories of failure is where you can try to rule a lot of that out in your assessment as an interview of that particular candidate. And so it's really important for you to choose a story where you're being honest and not just honest, but genuinely it was a painful experience that you might have gone through. So I'm trying to pick out that painful story. It could be projects and work related. But let's be real. Some of the some of the best examples that you can really pull out from this is, you know, it could be something on a more personal basis. And that's totally fine. You can just clarify with the interview if it does if it has to be work related, but they'll most likely tell you can just be personally related as well. Again, it's not about the work context per se. It's more so about assessing your sense of character. The more painful the story is the better it can be because this story is trying to assess how did you how did you pull yourself out from this hole that you were in. And how did it make you a better person that you are today? Therefore, if you could try to go with a really shallow example, and you try to go with how you ended up being so much greater because of it, it's either going to seem like a lie, it being untrue. Or, you know, if you went with a shallow example, and you had a shallow response of how you were slightly better, it just isn't a good example to begin with. The trick here again, and I can't stress enough, you have to go with the most painful or the next next the most painful example of a story and use that as the catalyst for this response. Similar to the cost functional partnership question that we went through, you want to spend a good 40 60% of this response talking about the challenges that you went through, why you were wrong or why you failed in this particular story. And then the recovery, the redemption. What did you learn from that story? Or that challenge that you had gone through. And how has it made you a better PM? How has it made you a better person? Evolution. Improvement. Both of these things are some of the most important characteristics of which it's trying to assess in terms of the outcome. But really a sense of character is where those questions are really getting at. Okay, so that is all for today. For our IC interview questions that you can expect to get at top tech companies. Next week, we will be going over the managerial behavioral questions, which is a lot more complex. And we'll go into topics such as hiring, culture building, and many other categories. So please stay tuned. We're looking forward to seeing you guys next week. Take care.