 Nowadays, product manager case interviews is everywhere in all type of companies, not only the tech companies but also healthcare and even chocolate companies like Hershey's also doing case interviews. It's crazy, everyone needs to master those skillset, but most people do not know what the best way to answer those questions. And today we had Microsoft product manager intern Iris to do a mock interview with me and demonstrate to you guys what the best way to answer product case, design interview questions so that you are able to let your dream product manager job offer as well. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a director of product and featured in Forbes. I've helped 100 people lend their PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. If you're interested in product management course, go to pmaccelerator.io. If you want to learn the most effective way to become product manager, subscribe to the channel and turn the bell button, and sometimes notify every time and turn on your video every Tuesday. All right, so if you like any of the free mock interview and content prior to today, make sure to hit the like button. This is the only way YouTube algorithm will recognize me. And now, so Iris, let's do a mock interview today. Welcome, welcome to join our show. How are you? I'm good. Hi, Nancy. How are you doing? Very good. Have you started your internship with Microsoft yet? Not yet. It will be starting in two weeks, so it's still approaching. Awesome. Very exciting, very exciting for you. Awesome. It's also in person. Finally, I think after the post-COVID all of the mess, and then finally, it's in person. Awesome, awesome. Congrats. So now today, let's do a mock interview. The case question is, please design a mentorship feature for LinkedIn. Okay. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting prompt. And so probably I will start from the some clarification question based on that. So the first one is, is that integrated into the current LinkedIn app or is it a standalone platform outside of that? Is integrated into LinkedIn app, just LinkedIn jobs and feeds. There was another tab which is mentorship mentors. Got it. And also the second one will be the timeline of the product. Is there any specific timeline of such a how long that would take for that or for the team? You can assume you have unlimited resources. Of course, when we launch a product, we want to make sure it's relatively fast, not five years, but it will also want to build amazing products. So you can find a balance between good quality and speed. Great. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. So based on the clarification, I think there are two assumptions at the beginning. The first one is people going to LinkedIn, it's still pursuing the same purpose of that. So such as job seeking and the connecting with others will not changing anything on there. And the other is the previous available features are still there. So these are the two assumptions. And also adding up all the clarifications, I think I'll be approaching the problem by first identifying the customers are, and then I will go into the needs and then finally go to the solution. This will be the structure of that. Does this sound good? Yes, perfect. Go ahead. So I think the mission of LinkedIn I will start from there. So as a thinking about as a product manager in LinkedIn, the mission is connecting the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. So based on that mentorship program is built up on that and customer segregation. I will start from the two sides of this program is mentees and mentors. So for the mentors, I will break it down into three groups. So for the mentors, they can be really general advisors such as they have general career consular without addressing the specialization. And the second group will be the specialized mentors such as they are in tech field, they're in arts field, they're in the like manufacturer field. So they have the specialization. And the last group will be underrepresented group mentors such as for those low income LGBTQ and first generation immigrants. So all of those, they have the special needs and have special background. So these are the three categories of the mentors. And the other are the mentees. I will categorize the mentees based on their years of experience. So I will use three years as a cut line. Those are more junior and new to the industry. And then above that will be five to 10 and 10 to 15 and 15 plus based on their experience at the cut line. So based on the segmentations, I think I would love to focus more on the mentees based on three criterias I think on the prioritization. So the first of all is thinking about the market size about all of these two markets. Mentees are the proactive aspect and proactive group in this sense. If we can get them involved, that is a highly likely that will be successful in this platform. And the second one is the impact that will help sort of help platform. Mentees are more than those mentors. So mentees, if we address on them, we can address their needs will be able to make more highly impact on the whole ecosystem of the job seeker. And the last one is the value to brand. Because of the mentees and also the market is taking up and is adding more value to the linkage brand. So based on these, I will addressing the mentee rather than mentor, if that's not good. Yeah, have you thought about supply and demand? If you do understand there are way more mentees, but usually I assume there are fewer mentors than mentees. What if there's not enough mentors on the platform? What you thought about that? But because you still prioritize mentees, but what you thought about mentors and that this demand supply and demand of mentor mentees that this also change your decision? Yeah, I think for the supply and demand, there are two aspects. So first of all, even though it sounds like the mentees are more longing for the mentorship, but at the end, as you can see from the platform, there are a lot of people offering the services. And looking in it's currently having an aspect that you can offering services and you can have a kind of a band in your profile and say I'm offering specific kind of services. So that means that in this current market, even though I don't have the number, but there are mentors wanting to offer their professional knowledge and mentees, I think the supply and demand is not as that in balance as we imagine. And on the other hand, because of the mentees are more vulnerable and they are less have less power in this platform, starting with mentee will be starting with the mentee will be available for the mentors to also do a side of the match, because mentees can provide more information that will be more efficient matching for these two parties. So based on these two, I think I will still stick with the mentee, but the demand supply should be something we need to check on during the process. Very good. I like it. So when you segment mentors is based on the specialties, when you segment mentees is based on years experience. Why do you want to use years experience with segment mentees? That's a good question. So mentees based on the experience, they have different needs along the way. So such as for juniors, they thinking about the job seeking process is about three aspects of the say first of all is how to brand yourself. And second of all is how you apply. And the last of all is how you succeed in your career. So based on the three aspects of the career in general, for the mentees, they have different needs and prioritizations based on their experience. So such as for juniors, they prioritize the job seeking how to brand. And for those who are in later stage, they prioritize the growth and based on these is going back to their needs in this process. Awesome. I love it. Okay. Yeah. Feel free to continue the process. So based on the above the discussion, we want to prioritize the group of junior level mentees who are currently looking for a mentorship. Why do you prioritize junior level mentees? We talk about you prioritize mentees, but you didn't tell me why you prioritize junior mentees. Tell me more. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. So the junior, the junior level is comparably still based on the three criterias we said, first of all is the market size, how big that market can be. And the second one is the impact. And the last one is the value to brand. Based on these three criterias, the first junior is the biggest market size they currently have. And also on the mentor side, it's also the biggest one that the entry level, there has more people, mentors can come in to help. So this is this has the biggest market size is a great starting point as this is we're launching a new product. And the second one impact for most of the juniors, they have no experience in industry. And so at the beginning, if we can offering mentorship program for them, they will be having a better impact for their career in the future for the growth for them. And the last one will be the value to the brand with all of these in the ecosystem coming together, they have can be a better advertising for the LinkedIn in general as a mentorship program in the in the first place. So these are the three reasons for that. Awesome. I like it. Okay, yeah, please continue. Now, you know, you prioritize junior mentees and tell me more regarding the different kind of pain points. Yeah, I think junior I personally can relate a lot in all of the pain points that I'm a junior and a lot of people are junior. And for me, there are four pain points I can think about this moment. And first one is the fear of rejection. I reach out to hundreds of people and I probably only got 10 reply back. But the fear of rejection is always there about not not sure how I can move forward with that. And the second one is the difficulty in knowing people as for me, I'm an international students is hard to find the connections such as based on your alma mater, based on your background. And it's really hard to kick up this conversation. So it's the second pain point. And the third one is the the accessibility. So for most of the people, if they did not come a really ball off background, they cannot know any friends within networking circle. And this will be a really important aspect for them if it's a public available platform as a mentorship program. And the last one is the networking such as how to talk. And if you cannot find anyone that is related to you is even harder to start this conversation. So based on these four pain points, I think the solutions will be also there are three solutions that come up based on these four pain points. The first one is because at this moment, the one on one kind of connection can be a lot of rejections. So what about we build up a multi person group in together, such as there's several mentors and several mentees in the group, you can ask any questions you have to them, and whoever has the availability can reply. And this is kind of taking off the guard of the fear of rejection. So it is not a group live mentoring, it is a group chat message. Yeah, it's more like a group chat message and a group group discussion session. But it can be asynchronous. Okay, but do you think mentors have time to respond to messages doing things faster to tell them with voice? I figure out actually taking a long time to write advice compared with to tell them what's in my in my hand. Yeah, I think that comes back to it comes back to that there can be an integrated voice messages, that can also be a voice message because in iPhone it is already integrated that you can reply with the word and will be translated to text. So it comes to the question if LinkedIn wants to do it by itself. I think at this moment it's not worth it to do the text translation from voice, but that can definitely be incorporated the voice message feature. It would not be too much of the cost for the company and the project in general. The second one will be a tailored algorithm. So in the field of the users in the user flow and then for the mentees when they step in, they can fill in a form regarding their formal questions such as what's your career background, such as where you want to land your job in and then some informal questions because sometimes I think we are de-emphasizing the informal aspects of the conversation such as what's your hobby, what kind of food do you like and these will be a really great kicker because I remember one of the conversations I had with a networking session was because I'm a strength coach so she is also in the yoga sector and that was how we kicked the conversation in the professional setting even without a professional topic. Just adding on these will be a tailored algorithm for the recommendation for the mentees and the last one will be a speed date such as we are incorporating the Tinder, like the Intender feature into the swipe. Yeah you need to swipe and then if that is a match you are able to talk and to start pick up a 15-minute conversation. If it's not a matching then it's not. So these are the three solutions I have in mind. I would love to kind of check on with you how do you think about these three and do you have any questions? I think why I think two and three are similar. Three is like feature two is like matching based on interest. Yeah so the two is not a is not a speed dating you cannot see the picture. The second one is the second one is more on the blind side. You can only see the text-based information from the person but the last one will be a speed dating incorporating the images and also you can you can see a lot of people in such a short amount of time but the second one is the algorithm recognition so there will be a more automatic algorithm coming up to your homepage and you click on each of the profiles and read through them again but the third one will be a summary of their profile and the summary of their experience. I see I see so basically two and three are addressing very similar challenges which is how can you find the right match so the first solution is addressing a different challenge which is bear off rejections. Yeah so to summarize to bring this back to the pain points the first that the multi-group matching it addresses mostly the fear of rejection and on the other hand it's difficult to know people the amount of people you can know in the short amount of time so and the second one is helps on the on the difficulty know the pain point and also the accessibility for those even though you do not have a well-off background you can still be able to match with someone potentially have a similar interest with you and the last one the speed dating is addressing the pain point of the fear of rejection the networking difficulty and also the accessibility so those are the pain points each of that addressing. I see okay cool I like it so which one would you prioritize to build? Let me just rank it I haven't structured out but I can talk out loud so three criterias I would love to incorporate the prioritized edition the first one is the market size and the second one is the urgency of the feature and the last one is the impacted community and for the for the multi-group just imagining we're drawing a table for the multi-group the market size can be medium and urgency can be low because there can be replacement currently such as the competition Instagram Facebook you can also use other platforms to do it and that's when the impact will also be medium in a way that a multi-group matching can also be as you said the tedious in a way meant to work will not reply as fast as expected and for the second one if the algorithm is tailored to the user's need the market size can be really high because it's low barriers for each of the parties to enter in you just sit there you can just click in and it will not take too much of your time and the commitment in the first place and the second one the urgency to tailor to it I think this is a high urgency in a way there's no better platform in this in this market it can do as tailor as possible as a link in linking it has all of the data from the user's past user experience and also with the profile so with all of these information the algorithm will be more accurate than most of the other platforms and the last one the impact will also be high in a way for each of the mentee and for the mentors they can step in and for this matching process and the last one for the speed dating at the market size I think will be medium to high in a way the speed dating sometimes can be too casual and for the customer's perception and image is harder for them to perceive in this professional setting that can be a concern for it and for the urgency this can also be medium high in a way linking it has the algorithm but on the other hand it's still the constant the image of professional setting of how how appropriate how much appropriate it can be and the last one is impact this can also be high it will be low barrier for each of the party so in in the summary I will prioritize the second one too for the algorithm tailor based on their of building information as a form okay so in your prioritization you mainly talk about how much of features if it's going to effectively solve the problem and how many people the size of market is going to use it um what other things would you consider when you prioritize the features so I think uh there are costs first of all for the team and for the company to build up and also on the other hand is for the public image of the company will that be a great net cost of adding on to the existing really established platform so for the cost is easier to understand there are two aspects of costs how much labor will that be cost how many engineering and how complex the the problem will be and the other one is the time as we discussed at the beginning the clarification question we'll not do a five-year plan right now we'd rather want to have a six month we can see a mvp and we can test it and then at the end we can see the result so these are the two aspects of the cost and for the other hand or the the brand image of the market such as if we are adding some really low cost to Louis Vuitton is not going to work and same idea for linking in linking in is a professional setting and career focus and all of the contents is really well thought as far as it might not work everybody has a well thought of the drop market and also the industry so will that be appropriate to incorporate this feature into the current image of the vibe of the platform so these are the two other aspects to be considered um i will also add one more selection criteria which is the ease of adoption so the cost which is more engineering costs how we do it right ease of adoption is how easy it is for end users to adopt and use it i assume because junior mentee maybe it's easier to adopt the tinder style because i'm doing that on tinder anyway uh maybe the ease of adoption easier so ease and also faster for them adopt because like i swipe on tinder and then the other day swipe on like 10 right so that might be rank higher so basically we need to increase the selection criteria when we select all the different features but i do like the example features you had and also rush it out so based on the new things new new element we add into selection criteria is would you still stick to number two yeah so i think number two will be a better choice based on the adding on to first criteria to where we're having awesome so what potential risks do you think we might see once linkedin introduces this feature the reason is linkedin has an introduce a feature there must be something wrong with it or the trial it is then work what kind of risk do you think might might evolve in in a solution number two definitely i i think there are definitely several risks and it is how the p.m. should think the first one will be the motivation of the mentors as we discussed at the beginning on why do they want to devote their time into this platform um just um there are two ways i think it can be addressing these so it's all about the rewards out of sense of rewards so the first one will be previously they have done some mentorship program linkedin have done that before is that the mentor mentee and every time you have done a mentorship you can be awarded with a a pen on your profile and then i think this one will be great because you are kind of building up the brand image to other connections for you as a mentor you want to build a connection with others you can find some common ground with the pen and the second one i think if we want to make some monetary rewards after the 100 mentorship you have done you can have a free monthly subscription such as that or free in-linking learning subscription i think these are the rewards i can think of at the moment but the motivation there are a lot of inheritance motivation from the mentor such as the art rhythm uh and that is also the reason why a lot of people want to do mentorship at this moment and and also why you such as you build up the platform of the pma so the art rhythm and seeing other success these are some inheritance um the um motivation from them but based on that there can be some adding on rewards from the problem and the second one is will be the monetization because in the mission we when we're connecting back to linkedin's mission we want to help are you saying that monetization is a risk i think it's uh it's more on the um more i think it should be thought about more cautiously i will explain more why i think it will can be at risk so when come connecting back to the mission we we are connecting the people and to exceed the excel in the professional setting but one of the impact we want to make with this product is we want to adjust the um the people from underrepresented backgrounds because they cannot access the same resources at those well off students or junior people they cover students yeah yeah are those who have a better family income than just to name a few so the monetization at the beginning um i don't think that should be charged by any chance but in the long term we are able we can just kind of categorize it into two parts the first one can be charged but you can have access to more mentors such as you can have access to 10 in a in a month and for those who are on a free trial you can have access to five these can be later stages but i think at the beginning we should stick with the free trial to testing out the outcome of the active user and also the satisfaction the nps of the users so this can be a risk to how can you switch from free to charged in later stages very cool uh just one more risk i want to remind you is when you talk about motivation and you talk about positive motivation you forgot about the negative motivation which is um back in boston i saw someone it's like creepy creepy old man only mentally young women as mental as mentee okay yeah yeah that's real so like that's negative type of motivation for people want to become mentors very creepy and that guy goes to harvard uh so creepy but anyway so that should also go into your list potential risk factor which is um out of the behaviors or uh um professional behaviors they want to do by leveraging the professional name of being a mentor okay that is interesting to know check out creepy man from harvard so now so this ends our case thank you so much for sharing with iris um let me do a quick recap regarding what you did well and how you what are the elements you can improve okay so i do like the customer segmentations and also the pain point is very very down to points like it's very good and also a prioritization of customer segmentation especially when a challenger at the beginning regarding supply demand is really really good it's a very eloquent and very strong rationale the part i think we can improve is the solution in part in terms of how solutions match into pain point is not very um clear because because i prefer you pick one pain point and blow it up compared with i feel like the first solution is solving one pain point the other two solutions is solving the other two pain points so but you cannot compare orange and apple because they're solving different pain points right so um but if you rephrase it you say so now among all the four pain points let's prioritize let's say accessibility and matching because without this accessing people and matching not not to mention the other things wouldn't wouldn't work right so you can focus on that and then all your three solutions can match into accessibility and matching and and the other like two and three definitely match to accessibility and matching 200 right so now the first one when you take a little bit we can use the same solution but you you wrap you wrap it slightly different um to sound something more towards accessibility and matching you can you can add things towards well inside a matching one-on-one what will match group by group and then once the match by group they're putting the same group so it's still matching it's still under the umbrella of matching but on top of that also solve other pain points such as uh they feel fear of rejection and actually it's like two birds one stone you can say that way so that it doesn't feel like they are hitting different directions and apples compared to oranges but once you wrap around you feel like they're all apples the different flavors like started so so that way then you don't need change that much okay and then also prioritization of the solution you do need to add in more like engineering aspect which your cost is part of it anyway which part of engineering and also ease adoption different part um you need to expand your prioritization framework a little bit but but you did a while and I think the risk different things you go in it's good and also talk about monetization potentially it could be good could be bad uh that's good as far okay you just forgot that creepy creepy side of people doing uh uh man function uh but it's still very good and we just wrap wrap your solutions better to make sounds more um matched okay the rest okay great awesome awesome thank you so much for joining us today and everybody if you like today's mock interview you have more questions or you want to have different kind of solutions different answers or you disagree with us please comment on the chat and also like this video and cool for anybody who's interested in pm et cetera feel free to go to our website pm et cetera.io to learn more and and also watch other like sample mock interviews we have on our playlist and youtube channel is going to put on top of the screen and this is dr. nicety from pm et cetera dial and thank you so much for joining us iris thank you see all of you guys have today you guys hope you demand all of you guys then your dream pm job bye