 Hello everybody, I am Aditya Deshpande. Thank you so much for taking out your time from your busy schedule today to hear me talk about this interesting topic that is how to best prepare for product sense and execution type of interviews. The agenda for today's discussion is where I will first introduce myself to you all then we would be talking about the type of interviews that we will go in depth and discuss various frameworks to solve those interviews and then we will end up with a closing statement where you all would take the inferences of today's discussion and start preparing or I would say gear up for this type of interviews in your future career. Let's begin. Who am I? By now you know my name is Aditya. I am an engineer by profession but product at heart. It's been around 10 plus of years that I am working as a product manager across three continents and five plus countries. I'm currently residing in Berlin, Germany with my wife. I'm passionate about sports and traveling and product is another thing that I love doing the most. Before we begin, let's first understand the type of interviews those could be clubbed together under these two main categories that is product sense and product execution. In my career, I have seen four types of product sense and two types of product execution questions. Those are typically asked to the candidates. The first one is where you are given any random problem to solve for. For example, make people healthier. There is no company. There is no organization. There is no additional details given to you. It's an ambiguous plus vast problem area to solve for and that's where you are expected to wear the product management hat and get into the details. The second type is that you are playing a role of a product manager for a particular organization or maybe there is no mention of the organization but you are clearly given a task to design or develop a product for particular feature or a problem statement. For example, design an app for social volunteers. The third type of interview question could be tell me about your favorite product and why and how would you further improvise that and the fourth type would be a strategy question where you would be asked your opinion about if you should launch product X in Y market and why and how. When it comes to product execution, these are the two buckets that I typically see candidates getting asked for. First one is this is the product. How would you measure the success of this product? For example, measure the success of Google Play Store or given the North Star matrix or important KPIs for a given product and if one of the matrix is failing, what should be the action that you as a product manager should be driving? For example, YouTube comments are declining. What would you do? In today's discussion, we would be talking about the highlighted two product questions for our further discussion. One, under product sense that is design a product and the second one under product execution is major the success of the product. In my opinion, if you are preparing for these types of interviews, these is the gist. You would be preparing for all types if you prepare and focus on these two types of interviews in the beginning. So let's proceed with product sense type of questions. Well, if you search on Google how to best solve for product sense type of questions, there's a plethora of information that is available which talk about these 10 steps. How one should be following these 10 steps to arrive at a good source of answer when it comes to product sense. And I'm not going to talk about much in depth because this information is already available to you. What's been rarely talked about is how to solve for these 10 steps. I'll again go back and I'll let you know that these 10 steps is a preparation in itself. Each of these steps requires you a dedication in terms of preparation. And that is the key how one should be preparing about these 10 steps to arrive at an answer which is generally acceptable by the organizations asking you these questions. We will also be talking about the time management. Are you able to solve the case study and follow these 10 steps in 45 minutes? How much time one should be spending at each step? Which steps are non-negotiable, which steps are important and which ones are good to have? What are the common mistakes that one can make while solving for the problem throughout this framework? And while you do that, how do you interact with the interviewer during the interview and seek his or her opinion or feedback as you proceed? This is the crux of today's discussion. So, today I'm going to give you a framework that I used to crack this 10 step interview process. This is a five step framework that I followed and found it useful for myself. I would also be talking about the core structure of this framework and how one should be using that in real life to solve this side of problems. I'll also share some of the tips that one should be preparing for product sense and product execution type of questions. This five step framework demands you to prepare at least five weeks in advance before your actual interview starts taking place. The first step is week number one, that is exploration. You explore the different domains and industries and boost your knowledge. Next two weeks is about getting used to the framework. You need to apply your knowledge that you've gained to solve some of the use cases or questions for industry to get used to the framework that we are going to discuss today. Then the fourth week is all about practicing. Practice more and more examples using this framework and by doing this, time box yourself. Because in the fifth week, it's all about time management. Now that you know how to solve a particular problem using the framework, you also need to analyze your performance on the clock to find out your week areas and then you need to improve on those. And in the last week, that is the week before your exam or probably your interview, you just need to revise the work done in the last one month. You just need to organize yourself and your thoughts before you appear for the interview because that is also one of the key steps towards appearing for the right interview at right point in time. Let's proceed. Step number one is the first week of your preparation, that is knowing the facts. Well, the first step is further divided into two steps, which is step one A and step one B. One A is all about helping yourself with the real statistics in the world. Product analyst or analytics is a core domain that one product manager should be aware of and having a knowledge of below statistics is only going to help you throw out some numbers while solving the case study. I prepare myself with at least below 5 KPIs that exist in the world. That is world's population, different continents, their population. What are the key countries? Those are really playing some important role in product innovation is concerned, their population, their statistics, their cities. What is the male and female ratio, literacy rate, birth ratio, population age, how is the overall population divided into Gen Z, Emilia and Gen X, etc. What is the income ratio? What is the smartphone penetration? What is the internet penetration? You also should be aware about key companies and their statistics. And for me, those are Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok. I also should understand their active users, amount of time that each user is spending on those types of products, etc., etc. And then you close it by generalizing average time spent on social media per day per user, so that you can use those figures in future. Additionally, if you are already aware of the company for which you are going to appear, it's always a good practice to know about that company, the kind of problem that company is solving, and then use those statistics with respect to that company. Once you're done with this, let's move ahead with step one B, where you start gathering the knowledge about various industries that you will be preparing for. You prepare for various industries, you read some reports, I typically use Gartner because I like that source, but you can choose any if you want to. But you gather some key information on the past and the future scope of that industry. You identify the key players in this domain who are dominating. At least try to have one user per domain or the one company for that per domain, which is doing a great job. If the company already has an app or website, be their user, explore the user experience, and while you do that, you pin down your learnings. You pin down your learnings to understand what is the overall worth of the industry and where is that company playing role. Who are the main users? If this is a marketplace, who are the facilitators? What are the problems that we are trying to solve? How is that company or an industry as together measuring the success? Is there any kind of innovation taking place? And if yes, then what kind of innovation? And last but not the least, if you were the product manager working in that domain or a particular company, what would you be doing in order to improvise the current scope? What would be your futuristic vision? In my opinion, the first week is the time where you should have all those statistics and information pinned down so that you are already preparing your mind to prepare for a product type of questions. You already have some clear thoughts and opinions that you can just throw them during the interview and sound realistic, logical and supported by the facts. That's a big win if you prepare for this step in week number one itself. Well, there are so many industries in the world. How do we start? These are the 10 or 11 domains that I prepare myself for before the interview. I have listed down all the key aspects of these domains, their users, their KPIs, their leading companies, their statistics, etc., etc. And so far, I'm covered for 95% of the times when it comes to the interview and particular use cases. I strongly recommend you to go into the details of these domains and have your understanding and learnings pinned down. Once you have this, the time is to move to the next step, which is picking up the domain and start solving the sample questions towards product execution or sense type of interviews. Now, you remember that we talked about those 10 steps easily available on the internet when someone asked you to solve for product sense type of questions. This is the step where we'll peel all those 10 by 10 steps into details with one real-life example and start solving from them. And here is a time where I will be telling you what and how you should be thinking about each and every step with this real-life example. Let's proceed. The example that we'll be talking today is you're a product manager at Meta and you're and your task to develop a product for handyman search. How would you go about it? Now, this problem statement in itself is very much resembling your domain exercise where you would be talking about healthcare as a domain. And then the problem that you can solve for is design an app for doctor search in your local area. Okay, let's begin. The action number one is to clear up your understanding and ask clarifying questions. Now, there is always a trade-off that how many questions one should be asking, should you ask zero, one, two, or you should be asking a lot more question and one has to strike the balance. That's the right approach. I typically ask for four category of questions when it comes to action number one. Let's go through the example. Given the problem at hand, I would first assume by handyman, you mean someone who helps get the repair work done or renovation work. It's very important to highlight the keywords in the problem statement and get to their definitions and clarify your understanding of those definitions with the interviewer. So you are on the same page. The step number two is to understand the scope for which you're finding out the solution. The problem here talks about handyman search. Are you talking about building an app or a product which helps you search the handyman or you're talking about the end-to-end solutions? The step number three, it's already clearly given here that you are a PM at Meta and hence you're building that app for Meta. But are you building that app within the ecosystem of Meta or you are creating a standalone application? That's the third question I'd ask for. And the fourth one is narrow down the approach by selecting a particular geography where you would launch your MVP and test it. The best possible way is to select a country where you stay. For me, it's Germany because I'm very well aware of the Germany statistics. I quickly do the napkin math to come up with the Germany's population, the family size, the amount of people who would be probably requiring to search for handyman for their own domestic use or for that matter a corporate size by making some assumptions and the amount of corporates who would be needing these services in future. This is the step where you use your preparation material, come up with some real quick numbers, show your analytical sides towards the interviewer and eventually make your mark at the beginning step itself where you talk about your knowledge. Once you're done with this, you proceed with action number two, where you define the high level approach you're going to take towards solving this use case to your interviewer. It's very important that you talk about it because your interviewer should understand the approach that you're taking and at every point in time that you're talking, he or she understands where are you and where are you coming from. I typically take a standard approach here so you don't have to buy hard but this is the standard approach for every interview question where anyway when the question is asked to you, you definitely find out the motive behind you solving this particular problem. What are the various use cases that you're going after? Who are the users? What are the different opportunities? What are the pain areas? What are the gain areas? What is the mission and vision of your product that you're going to develop to solve this problem? What is a solution or solutions you are going to come up in order to solve those problem statements and how do you carve out an MVP and take it to the development and major the success? These are some of the steps that you would be going ahead to solve this problem step by step approach and it's very important that you not only tell this to your interviewers but also make sure that they are aligned with this approach and seek their feedback. Now that you've defined the approach, the next step is start following that approach step by step. That's where you come to action number three where you define the motive. You establish the logical connect between the organization where you are asked to solve this problem and the problem in itself. For example, in case of Meta, their vision statement is to empower people to build communities and bring the world closer together. Again, at this point in time, I highlight the keywords because that's where I'm going to expand and find the logical connect to. For example, empower, build communities, bring the world closer together. Now when I'm applying this logic and these keywords to the problem statement, I can clearly see the relation. By building the handyman search app, I'm empowering 2 plus billion active users on Facebook with the handyman related information on the single platform. On the other hand, I'm also helping different types of handymen build their community on the larger social media platform. And I'm eventually going to kick the flywheel effect where handyman demand meets the supply to enable people come together to different services offerings on a single platform. Now that's where the logical connect comes into play. That's where I think it makes sense for Meta to invest in this sort of product and take this overall value offering towards next step. The next step is basically action number 4. That is where you find out the use case that you would like to solve for. This is the trickier step because the domain that you have been asked to solve is huge and ambiguous. So how do you arrive at a use case and prove the fact that this use case needs the most important attention towards? Here I use 2 by 2 framework. That is total addressable market and addressability. What is the market size for the given problem that you are going to solve for? And what is the relevance when it comes to Meta to solve for that market for that particular use case and for that size? Remember one thing having the largest population facing the problem is not sufficient for Meta to solve for. It should be in Meta's interest and it should be in Meta's vision to solve for the use cases which actually make an impact on their user segment and overall market. That's where addressability comes into play. But the second part is how deep one should go in order to find that particular use case. What is the right split? And I take three step approach here. The first one is to find out the category of the problem. The second one is to find out a particular type within the chosen category. And then next step is basically find the subtype typically focusing towards the usage of that particular category when it comes to solving the problem. Let's take a real life example, handyman search. Now that we know the motive of Meta to solve for this particular problem for its end users, which is the use case that we think is the most important one. Let's take an approach towards it. Now if I think about handyman search, who are the users who probably be needing this handyman search services? It could be divided into two major categories, the domestic use and the business use. When you talk about the total addressable market, I think the business use is pretty stagnant. They already have list of service providers who are solving their problems when it comes to solving repair wars or innovations. The demand is ad hoc and massive when it comes to domestic use. Not to forget that that's where also the meat lies for Meta because 2 billion plus active users on the platform are majorly categorized into domestic users and not the business users when it comes to various service offerings that are lying on the platform. So at step number one, I go ahead with the domestic use case. Step number two is to find out given the domestic use case, what sort of handyman services would be required? I again basically talk about different types of services those would be required in the given or chosen category that is domestic. Now that I think about various use cases and types of the service providing that the handyman would be providing, there could be categorized into small repairs or the renovation work. I think renovation work is something that is carried out on not so frequent basis. At the same time it is very much planned in advance. On the other hand, the small repairs is more on ad hoc and they cannot be planned. Hence, when it comes to renovation, there's a word of mouth. You typically ask your friends and family in order to get some recommendation as who's the good handyman who can do this job for me. Given that I have planned a renovation maybe six months down the line. When it comes to small repairs, number one, you don't really plan for it. Hence, you do not really have the questions for your relatives or your friend circle. And number two, when this situation comes, the availability takes a hit. So even if you have someone in your recommendations, that person may not be available for the small repair work. It could be that person is not available or it's not worth for him or her to come and solve for the use case that you have. Hence, again talking about the need of an hour, the small repair takes the priority when it comes to renovation. Now that you know that you need someone handyman or rather you need a service for handyman for domestic use and particularly for the small repairs, the small repairs further could have different subtypes. That is the usage. I could have small repairs planned over the weekend or at the same time I could have small repairs. Those are completely ad hoc and random. The leakage in my bathroom is not planned. It is ad hoc. But if I want to fix the kitchen dam or maybe replace my sink, it's already planned. Small work, but planned. And I can again plan the overall planned repair work with the help of people who are already available from my future or past references. But random time or random work, that is the one that basically demands urgency. And a platform like Facebook where billions of people are interacting with each other. That's the use case that is most prominent that they could solve for. Not only that the Facebook or Meta can solve for it, there is a demand because right now there is no clear solution available in the market that will make you handyman available at the random point in time for the feasible and affordable cost with a good word of mouth or reviews. And that is the reason when I go ahead to solve the use case. The use case that I feel like solving for is handyman search for domestic work for the small repairs and for the ad hoc purpose. That's where I would be taking my bet on as a product manager to solve the problem statement in the beginning part of my journey. Before we proceed with next step, let's quickly revise what we have done so far. We talked about the problem statement. We basically defined it. We made some assumptions. We then talked about the steps that we would be taking to solve this problem. And then we came up with overall relevance of this problem statement with respect to Meta as why they should be investing in solving this problem. We further went ahead and we tried to drill down on the use cases that we think are most important ones to solve for and we selected one of those. For the selected use case, that is basically to find out a handyman service or search product for the domestic repair works, for the smaller repairs and more in ad hoc nature. We went ahead and we found out a possible user base that we would be targeting in order to launch an MVP. And there we narrowed down on the end user, which is end consumer, who's looking for this particular services and day in day out basis. Now that we know that we already have a use case and a user to solve for, we are in a good shape to come up with a particular mission and vision statement of the product that we would be launching. In this case, the product vision goes like this. Make handyman search a stress-free experience for all where the stress-free could be defined into three steps. It is easy that is making easy for everybody on Facebook to search for handyman near their location. It should be trustworthy. Help everybody with right details and ratings to fine-tune their search for their handyman job. And the third one is accessible. Help everybody to use Facebook handyman search product irrespective of them being on the platform. That means you scale the product in future. Now mind you, the use case that we defined for particular user segment was talking about trust, easiness, availability, and affordability. But when we went ahead and we defined the product, we basically took off the overall affordability aspects in it. The reason behind this is you cannot be solving for affordability in the MVP because for that, you first need to create a platform, you need to create demand, you basically support it with the right supply and eventually kick off the competition. And in the later phase, maybe you can think about cutting down the costs when it comes to affordability. I typically list down particular user case, their problem statements. I use those five sentiments and when it comes to choosing one of those sentiments, I go ahead with at least three of those sentiments to come up with overall mission and vision of the product that I will be solving for. And then I would be laying out a product or tabular structure where I will have my ideas defined. I'll have my approach defined. And then with those ideas and approach, I will use the further two by two metrics, which is efforts and impact in order to drill down further approach that I would be taking in form of MVP that I want to start solving for. Now, once you define the vision and mission of the product that you're going to solve for, your interviewer is expecting you to come up with multiple solutions, given the use cases and the user that you have selected for. And then eventually further narrow down and choose one of those approaches to drive your MVP. And hence, it is very important that you understand those use cases and at least have three or four solutions in your mind before you start picking one. For example, in this case, I have listed down four ideas. First one is to build a new tool. Build a new tool which has all the information about various services. We basically localize them. We basically make it available for the user. But in order to come up with something new, the efforts are going to be enormously high and impact could be minimum because user acquisition could be one of the major challenges there. Then in order to solve that problem, I could basically go for three PL integrations where I do not come up with the entire new platform. The platform may exist. I go over acquiring those platforms and make it available for my users. But maybe the overall customer experience on that platform is not that great. Hence, even if your efforts are basically low, the impact could also be potentially low in this case. I could also be going ahead by solving this use case by using Facebook's already available products such as Facebook Live and convert that entire search feature into video conferencing. Where in order to have this ad hoc support, nobody has to come to your place and solve that particular problem. You could immediately find someone giving you all the insights and help you solve that problem yourself with the help of video conferencing. Maybe that sounds like an approach for the futuristic steps, but that's not the real problem that we are trying to solve here. We are trying to solve for the handyman search and we are not trying to solve for consultation. Then the next step is use marketplace. Why not use marketplace as a platform to make that offerability in terms of handyman search? The Facebook already has a platform called Facebook marketplace where around 1 plus billion active users are participating in order to trade off the services. Why not make use of that platform and at the beginning make that service offerings towards the end consumer where one can go look for the handyman service and eventually subscribe to that service and get the benefits of whatever product that you needed for. In this case, you are not building something right from scratch, hence your efforts are low. And the other hand, the users are much aware of the platform, hence your adoption rate is faster, the acquisition cost is low and impact could be greater. Hence, even if I have multiple solutions to solve for, I choose MVP as one of the options that is highlighted in this presentation that is use marketplace in the beginning and try and make use of that marketplace platform and a new category called handyman search and eventually build on top of it. At this point in time, you should take a pause and you should ask your interviewer about the approach and the selection that you are making. Most of the time, your interviewers would be prominent enough to tell you their feedback but if they don't, it makes sense to ask before you actually start elaborating on this idea of selection. Once you have a nod from your interviewer, the next step would be to define the MVP and come up with the wire framing of the solution. In this case, it's a Facebook marketplace that we would be using as a platform to come up with a new category as handyman service. Now, as you start evolving this idea, make sure you do not break the overall user flow of Facebook marketplace because that's where you are capitalizing on. The user experience is already enriched, you need to capitalize on that user experience and build something new, gather the learnings, get the data and decide on what to build next and make this product successful. You try to ensure that you are making the use of existing ecosystem to build the MVP. On one hand, the interviewer understands your knowledge, on the other hand, it shows that you are carefully invested in various products that Meta is offering to the end consumer. At the other hand, it is also important that your approach is super pragmatic and it's not going to cost your company tons of money at the beginning itself, at the beginning itself where you are not really sure if this experiment is going to keep off. Many times, when you are defining the MVP, it's very difficult for an interviewer to follow you. Hence, I always take a help of quick hand-drawn scratch to come up with the wire framing and help your users or the interviewer understand the kind of user journey that you are envisioning for. It need not be fancy, it need not be accurate, it just needs to tell interviewer what you are thinking and what is the step by step approach that you are taking into consideration while defining your MVP for your solution scheme. Now that you have MVP defined with the wire framing, the next step is to come and talk about what are the key KPIs that you are going to major as a part of this MVP release. It's very important that your interviewer understands that you are not only building the solution, but you are also invested in measuring the success of that solution and carefully deciding how you should be proceed. Here, I am listing down some of the KPIs that I would be interested in measuring the overall success of this MVP. And eventually, I also make it a point that I use these KPIs carefully to come up with the North Star matrix for that particular product that I would be driving for and making a call. I'll give you some examples. In the MVP, I would be super interested in measuring how many handymen are actually registering for their services on week on week basis. How many people are basically searching for those services on week on week basis? Is there a growth in number of active consumers on Facebook marketplace? That means, is there a stickiness that my product is driving on the overall KPIs of Facebook marketplace? What is the average time every user is spending on a daily basis on the particular page of handyman search that I am going towards? Not only this, search is one criteria, but is that search successful? That's where I would be plugging in the Facebook Messenger that's already built in feature in Facebook marketplace. And I will try and measure if someone is looking for a handyman search, is there a message getting exchanged between that handyman person and the user who's looking for the services with the hope that they will connect with each other and exchange their service offerings? Not only this, as a success KPI, one should also be having a counter matrix in mind to make sure what you're building is actually not causing overall problem to the other organizational categories or maybe within Facebook. For example, you should also be making sure that while you build this feature of handyman search on Facebook marketplace, you're capturing all the user engagements in terms of comments and start doing the textual analysis on them to see if overall feedback is positive or negative. Maybe users are coming on your platform. Maybe they are actively getting engaged. Maybe there is a bot attack who's basically trying to make sure there is always a search running on your category. But is this the human thing? Is this the right thing to do? Are people happy about this search? Is there an exchange happening in the right way? We should also be measuring that while measuring these KPIs and you need to bring that aspect out in your KPI measurement exercise or step to the interviewer to tell that person that you're thinking holistically. Once you have these KPIs ready, it's a time for you to go towards the North Star matrix, which in my opinion in this case would be repeat customers. Using the service one time is a good thing. But if the customer is coming up again on your platform and looking for the services, that means the customers are eventually happy. And repeat customer that is number of unique customers coming back on Facebook to search for handyman service would be the matrix that I would be looking for in order to drive my decisions towards what to build next. Again, at this point in time, take a pause and ask your interviewer if this makes sense. Your interviewers would have some questions, but if you are talking about these KPIs with the possible explanations, I think you're doing so far so fine. Once this is done, the next step is to talk about possible downside of your proposed solution. And how would you mitigate those downsides? For I mean, for example, in this case, you are actually providing a solution on Facebook Marketplace where customers would come look for the handyman service, handyman would reach out to their lead using the Facebook Messenger. Eventually they meet and then they start solving the problem. But we are talking about creating a solution where there is an interaction on online search and offline service offerings. And this can potentially impact your repeat customer rate because next time when customers are looking forward for the handyman, they are not going to come on your platform. They can simply take their number, reach out to them directly and call them up. There is a possibility that you would build this experience only for one time. The another downside would be, how do you know the service offerings that you're building on Marketplace is the legitimate offering that customers are having? Is there a risk of safety? Or are there cases where these overall solutions could be misused, such as product counts? I mean, at the end of the day, you are not expected to have the solutions for these downsides. It's important that you talk about those downsides so that your interviewer understands that you are thinking holistically. Your solutions may have an impact on the overall larger KPIs as a Facebook that they're tracking so that as a product while you're doing the justice, you are keeping those things in your mind and possibly coming up with the solutions or the mitigation strategy. In my opinion, if they ask you to solve for it, the safest answer would be launching light, AB testing, and then the tight monitoring of the KPIs. If something goes shaky, you stop, you take a pause, you drill down, solve for it and move further. This approach is the safest approach to go ahead with it and will help you success at the end of the step during this interview. Well, we talked about success quite early in the process because these 10 actions are going to help you solve the use case in the right manner, in the right approach. But are these 10 steps going to help you solve the particular question in 30 minutes? And that is where the overall preparation step number three comes into play. Remember, I talked about you preparing for the use case for industry in first two weeks just to get the hang of the framework that you're going to use. But next one week is the time where you take another examples in the particular domains and start solving them with the time box approach. This is the step number three where you're going to come up with solving these use cases in a timely manner. You time box yourself to see if you are getting stuck at particular steps more than three minutes. If yes, which is that step? Why are you getting stuck? What is that which is causing you trouble? And then accordingly jot down those areas, again, go back to the framework, try and understand what could be done better and solve another use case with the time box manner. Your aim is to basically start up with solving this problem and give yourself 40 minutes time in the beginning. And from 40 minutes, you got to come to 25 minutes of the time where you solve this end to end use case. That's your aim. That's what you should be doing once you are thorough with this framework. Please note, while you are solving for this framework, I mean, in your head, you are crystal clear, but it makes sense that when you're solving this use frame, you think out loud because that's the reality. While you are solving for those use cases in your interview, your interviewer is going to ask you questions. He or she is going to trouble you with a lot of questions in between, or they are expecting you to think out loud. So when you're solving for the use case, they already understand what is going in your head. And hence, you need to adopt to this framework by thinking out loud while solving for these use cases for the industries that you are preparing in week one itself. If you ask me the right time split, this is going to be my answer. This much amount of time that one should be spending at each step while solving this interview. Believe you me, your job is to basically solve the entire use case in 30 minutes. And if I were to divide those 30 minutes, I would give maximum time towards solutioning because that's the creative aspect of particular use case. You can't be prepared with the solutions beforehand because you don't know the answer. But what you could be prepared is identifying your particular user segment and the problem that you want to solve for because that's what you are preparing in your first week. Get the industry, get the domain, understand their problem statements, understand the users. And hence, when your problem fits into one of those domains, you should be quick enough to come up with a user segment, their problem statement and give your product a mission and vision statement. Try and get done with this job within first 15 to 14 to 15 minutes, I would say, because last 20 minutes or 18 to 20 minutes of the time, I would want you to be keeping for coming up with the creative solutions, choosing one of those and then further build on MVP and interviewers should be convinced with your solution in this aspect. I think 18 minutes is a good time for you to think, justify your answers and come up with the solutions, those would impress your interviewer. So again, revising the time management, first five minutes are gone for the introduction, last 10 minutes are gone for the follow up questions that leaves you around 30 minutes to solve for the use case. Use first 13 to 14 minutes to come up with the user segment and their problem statements and use 15 to 18 minutes to come up with multiple answers or solutions and then select one of those and be creative in your own opinion and eventually kill the interview in the timely manner where you come across confident and pragmatic. Once this is done, your last step is to revise. This is again the most crucial step where once you're done with the fourth step, you just need to revise whatever you're done in last one month. You gather all your learnings, you gather your thoughts. This is very important as when you do this, during the interview, you appear concise and precise in your answers and explanations. This further boosts your confidence. You earn more time to think through whenever it is required because most of the time you're prepared. You back up your answers with a plausible and pragmatic explanation in the most logical way that your interviewers can understand you. Remember, you're not looking for the best solution. You're looking to solve a particular problem in the best possible logical and structured approach. And that is the key to crack your product sense execution type of interviews when there's a time to crack one. Alright, now once you are done with the preparation of product sense type of questions, let's proceed with product executions step by step. Well, product sense, I call it as mother of all interview questions because the preparation takes so much efforts in you that you don't have to prepare extraordinarily for product execution type of interviews. Your preparation for this type of interview is already taken care when you're preparing for product sense. Then what is the difference? I'll explain. Product sense is typically talking about the problems that you as a product manager would solve for. That means there is no existing product or barely there is a product which is solving this problem and how would you be taking a dig at it and try and fix that by giving you the solution. On the other hand, product execution is more or less that the product already exists. You are a product manager for that product and how are you going to solve for the success for that product? How are you going to measure the success for that existing product? Again, the preparation and the steps are more or less the same. It's just a slight shift in the way you're going to tackle this problem. And these are the steps that we would be solving for when it comes to product sense or product execution type of questions. Let's proceed. The question that we will be taking in order to solve the product execution question is, you are a product manager at Meta's Oculus Store. How would you measure the success of this product? Mind you, this very well resembles to other products which exist in market which is Google Play Store and Apple Store. So the approach that we would be taking is pretty much resembling the approach that we would take if we were to solve these two problems as well. Standard place, step one, reiterate the problem, ask clarifying questions. Now what is Oculus Store? Again, we are highlighting the key important words in the problem statement and trying to define them. In my opinion, the Oculus Store is a platform where different VR applications are made available for the users for their installations and subscriptions. There could be different types of applications, it could be free or it could be paid and they are mostly be usable on Oculus device. The difference here is, I divide the clarification questions and I keep them standard when it comes to execution into three buckets. Because this product is already existing, we need to understand the growth stage of the company and the product that it is already lying in. Do we need to analyze any particular segment between these problems? For example, are we looking at the complete Oculus Store or one of the categories and the catalog within that? And then at what stage as a product manager you are and you are joining this overall team to define the success? Am I joining this Oculus Store now or shall I be considering the case that I have been joining the product Oculus before it was going to be built? So where and at what point in time I start measuring the success at what growth phase? This is something that I would be asking as clarifying questions at step number one. Well, step number two is to basically find out the relevance. How is this problem statement that you are solving for or you are going to measure the success is relevant to mission and vision of Facebook or Meta. Again, Meta's mission and vision is to empower people to build community, bring them closer together. Oculus Store is basically by making the VR applications available for the use. They want to build a VR community where people can interact with each other on a daily basis and eventually they can come closer to each other. So there is a direct relevance in Oculus Store the way it is going to get built with the vision and vision of Meta the way it is solving for the current customer problems. The next step is basically step number three to seven. These are the steps which basically form the crux of solving this execution type of interview questions because the product already exists. It has its own ecosystem. It has its own users. It's solving for a particular use cases and it's also tracing various KPIs to make sure it is doing the right job that it is designed for. As a product and a candidate solving this interview, your job is to identify them and the best way to do that is to club them all together in the tabular structure, look at it from the bird's eye view and then take a dig at it. This is the layout that I come up with. I first identify the users then go to their use cases. These use cases are measured at different point in time because at the end of the day the organization or the product is going through the various phases of customer acquisition cycle be it acquisition, activation, engage, refer and then the revenue and at every stage these users are going through the particular set of activities and it's important that you measure their KPIs at each step. So you understand whatever you're building on top of it makes sense and this is the exact picture that I try to paint before solving this type of questions. Let's take an example. In Meta's case of Oculus Store, the users could be end customer who's interested in installing these apps. The second user base could be an Oculus app developer or a company responsible for developing such apps and the third one would be the platform Meta itself who's basically building this platform where developers can deploy their apps and end user can basically download that. Now going ahead with the use cases the major thing that the end user wants is that their favorite apps should be available on the Oculus Store and they should be able to install at ease. The developer on the other hand should have a platform where they deploy their applications at ease and the last one is basically the Meta as a platform they want both developers at the same time end users engage and interact so that they create the stickiness on the platform. Now your interviewer is asking you to basically come up with the North Star Matrix to define the success of a product and his or her expectation is that you give him or her a crisp matrix and KPIs but you can't just do that in one shot and that is the reason you need to major and list at least five to six KPIs per user segment and then narrow down and further grill down to come up with the North Star Matrix. In this case what we are going to talk about is various KPIs they attack to the particular growth phase of the product that it is lying in for example in case of customers when we talk about the acquisition we need to understand how many new registrations are happening on week on week basis are you getting new customers how many apps are getting downloaded are they repeat customers or how many of them are actually active customers are their users who's giving ratings or writing comments on the applications and what is the overall routing of the popular store or the apps those are basically handling on that from the developer's point of view we need to understand are there enough applications coming new on the platform on week on week or month on month basis are there updates happening on top of the apps is the app stable how many accounts are getting purchased for the development point of view from the different developers or the organizations as a platform one needs to major how many incidents are happening on the platform towards the stability what is the time that it takes for any new user or developer to onboard on the platform what is the overall nps of the platform when it comes to developers at the same time users so when I'm talking about this framework I'm talking about these users use cases I'm also going to explain all these KPIs to my interviewer this framework is the key to measure the success of all the live products in the product sense you use the case where you are more focused on customer acquisition because that is the time where you're thinking of building the product but that may not actually work out in product execution the product could be live and you could be asked to measure the success of the already live product and hence having this overall framework makes sense to take a next step once this part is explained to the interviewer and the feedback is asked the next step is basically select top three KPIs from the list of KPIs that you've already measured or explained I typically choose one KPI per user segment because that is how you are measuring and defining the overall ecosystem and for any product to be successful you need to have at least one KPI per dimension of the ecosystem so that you are making sense and you are looking at the holistic approach towards 360 degree in this example for me the most important KPI from the end user point of view is the overall Oculus 2 rating as a user am I only downloading the apps or am I also using them and after usage I'm giving them the rating from the developers point of view how many updates or bug fixes are happening over the platform I mean am I just simply deploying the apps or I'm continuously improving them to give better customer experience and from the Oculus store platform point of view I'm going to measure the overall active customers both developers and in users defining and having the stickiness on the platform so overall customer quotient or happiness quotient is healthy now why these three KPIs imagine a world where customers are super happy about the product there is going to be a demand if there is a demand there will be various development teams and developers incentivize to meet those demands and eventually earn revenue for their own earnings that's going to kick off the flywheel effect and if the flywheel effect kicks off the platform where this interaction is happening is the richest and the healthiest platform and hence having the active users is also one of the key points that a store should be making so in my opinion you should always select one KPI per user segment thinking the flywheel effect in mind and then go ahead with further drill down approach towards north star matrix once you could identify these three top important KPIs that one should trace to measure the success of the product the next step is to arrive at the north star matrix typically your north star should already be one of the KPIs of above three KPIs that you mentioned your north star matrix should be the common link between above three short listed KPIs and typically should be responsible for kicking off the flywheel effect that is a starting point of flywheel effect you should also be able to clearly define the mathematical expression when you define the north star matrix and just not arrived by the definition or explanation of it for example in the above three matrix that we chose for I choose north star matrix that has the most impact on end consumer that is overall ocular store rating weighted average rating the weighted average is really important imagine a word where there are more than 10,000 apps and single downloads with five star rating does that make sense or imagine a word where there are three apps with five star rating and 50 apps with two star rating is average going to make sense I think in order to neutralize the effect average could be very misleading so it is very important that when you talk about overall ocular store rating it's important that you tell your interviewers that you are going to negate the outlier effect by measuring this rating with the help of weighted average why do you think that is the important or north star matrix that tells you the overall engagement and the happiness quotient of the users on your platform meta already has two plus billion users active users on the platform oculus is a fairly new system it's a fairly new concept but its target audience is definitely two plus billion users and probably more than that and the only way to achieve that target is by making them happy with the content that you are providing on the platform and if you are going to measure that as I said earlier it's going to drive the demand which will be meant by the supply and overall it will help organization in the platform so in my opinion I should start measuring the overall ocular store rating and reviews or rather overall ocular rating and the way to measure those ratings is by customer reviews that they are leaving on the applications on this platform once I start measuring that that's when I measure them on week on week or month on month or the quarterly basis to ensure how is the trend happening on my platform am I going ahead in the positive direction am I going ahead in the negative direction or I'm just getting stagnant and I need to do something different this is the step that actually defines the core aspect of how to measure the success of your product your interview technically shall end here as soon as you come up with this north star matrix in the most convincing way this is the time where you should take a pause and ask for the feedback and see what your interviewers have to say on top of it though you have come up with a north star matrix your interview doesn't end here maybe there will not be additional questions by the interviewer but it's always recommended that you are prepared to answer further execution type of questions especially on failed matrix and what to do next based on your north star that you've identified I mean there could be questions there may not be but it's important that you already think in your mind typically of the bigger picture when you're tracing your north star matrix for example will it have an impact on any other important KPIs for the overall product will it have an impact on the average time spent per user will it have an impact on the overall engagement or will it have an impact on overall ratings what happens when your KPI is flying but it's having an adverse impact on someone else's KPIs these are the kind of questions that you should be prepared at back of your mind because those are the tentative questions your interviewers are going to ask you especially if they have last 10 minutes and they don't have any other questions to look for in my opinion the approach that you should be taking in solving those questions is link your north star matrix to the overall organization's NSM and see the overall impact and visualize the same if you are still contributing to the organization's success even at the cost of someone else's KPIs it makes sense to go ahead but at the same time you need to take a pause you need to start observing these KPIs gather the learnings share those learnings with the management and your counterpart where the metrics are taking hit take a conscious and collaborative call and decide the next steps that should be the answer that you should be driving when you are asked with these type of questions make sure your north star matrix is just not the north star for your product but it should have a clear contribution towards the overall product or the organization that you're a part of well that's my time for the day time for the closing statement even if we discussed about multiple frameworks and steps to arrive at the product sense and the type of execution sort of questions my simple ask to you is do not prepare for this type of product rounds to be successful in your interview prepare for them to be a better product manager because in my opinion if you are well prepared for this type of interviews you would do good in your product management job irrespective of you cracking the interviews this preparation in general is helpful for anybody to be better professional in individual product management journey and hence it's a good practice to follow and start solving these interview questions on a monthly or weekly basis it will only help you having that said I really want to thank you all again for your time feel free to share your feedback or reach out to me if you have any further questions on this email id given look forward to seeing you again ciao