 Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Product School webinar. Thanks for joining us today. Just in case you didn't know, Product School teaches product management, coding, data analytics, digital marketing, and blockchain courses online and at our 15 campuses worldwide. On top of that, every week we offer some amazing local product management events and host online webinars, live streams, and ask me anything sessions. Head over to ProductSchool.com after this webinar to check them out. Hello. I'm here to share with you what I've shared with a lot of people who've reached out to me about product management interviews, what it takes to really land a great PM job by accomplishing a great PM interview. And I tried to culminate all my advice into eight simple steps. So let's start with a little bit about me. So my name is John Morgan. I'm a Product Manager at Google. I've been at Google for a little bit. I've worked in a few different groups. I am currently a Product Manager in the Hardware Group, and I have been working on launching great products like the Pixelbook and the PixelSlate. Now, before we dive into this, I really like to ground the conversation around why people get into product management. I've given a few talks about product management, and one of the things I've identified is that people sort of have this aha moment when they want to get into product management, and they can visualize it and talk about it in a very unique way. I remember when I first saw this quote from Ken Norton, and it spoke to me. It really helped me understand that blend between business and engineering, that blend between technology and marketing. And every one of us who's interested in product manager sort of product management has this quote for themselves. And I offer the challenge to you to think about what this quote means to you and what is your own version of this quote. Now, that we've all seen why we think about being a product manager. The next step is how do you actually become a product manager? And one of the first questions I've always asked and I ask people is, do you have a product management on your resume right now? Are you a product manager right now and are you trying to change or are you trying to get into product management? If the answer is yes, awesome. You can get into product management anywhere. You can apply to large companies, small companies. It's simply a matter of having the right skills that they're looking for and getting through the interview. If not, sometimes it's a little harder. Sometimes you're restricted in where you might actually have a chance. Large companies may be a stretch. They're looking for titles. The recruiters and the screeners are sort of a gatekeeper. And that gatekeeper can make it so you don't even get to the interview. But you can also look to network. And if you network, sometimes you might get into a large company, but often it'll get you in the door for a smaller company. And that's really important because there you can do many jobs. You can be a product manager. You can also be a program manager. You can be half coder, half product manager. And the last advice I have on this is often the most important aspect of being a PM is getting in the door at somebody's large companies and small companies. You can look at your relevant advice. I've done marketing before. I've been coding before. You can get a job as a marketer or coder at a big company. Then you can go through and use one of the programs that they all have of doing a rotational program or doing a ladder transfer. They're all great ways to get into product management at the end of the day. Some might be quicker than others, but it's really up to you which one's going to work the best. Now, for those of you sitting here going, well, I sort of have product manager on my resume. It doesn't technically say it, but I'm totally doing that right now. That is awesome. And I truly believe you a lot of recruiters and screeners simply will see that as a no. And that sort of falls into the titles are super important for a lot of these large companies. So try to think about ways that you can position yourself and the ways in which you can find a route into these big companies. So now that we've understood sort of where you stand in terms of your background, let's talk about these eight steps to land a great product manager interview and leave everyone feeling happy. So the first step is a piece of advice I got from one of my professors in business school when I was preparing for my interview at Google for product management. I went to Professor Debar and I said, Hey, I'm interviewing for product manager at Google. I've heard a lot of crazy stories. Do you have any advice? And he told me a lot of stuff, but something that really stuck with me was he told me prep as you would for your hardest final. Now it's sort of it hit me differently. It hit me to my core. And so for me, what that really means is I research, I review and I do example problems and I repeat and I write them down and I just go through and I crank and I crank and I crank until for me everything that I've already been doing a second nature, I now have a process and a framework to use. So when someone asked me, Hey, how would you bring this product to market? I wasn't thinking through what I would would have done. I already knew the process I got to as I did it 20 to 30 times in my reviews. And that was really, really powerful because in an interview, they're looking for how you think and the more times you do it and the more times you write it down, the clearer you can convey how you think. So the next thing that I always recommend is be yourself. Everyone going to these interviews is going to be product managers. There's a lot of people. How are you going to differentiate? How are you going to stand out? How are you going to share who you are? Obviously in the dress code, don't wear a suit. No one in tech wears suits. Be yourself. I wear teachers to work all the time. I used to wear button downs. I actually, a lot of engineers are like, what are you doing? Now I'm wearing t-shirts. It's great. Be yourself. But most importantly, I always tell people when you're answering questions, if there's something that gets you excited, if you're brainstorming and you just get this idea in your head and you're jazzed about it, or you just solve the problem in a unique way you've never done before, just say that, talk to the interviewers, explain your excitement. If you're brainstorming best new way of transportation and you come up with a unicycle car and you're so jazzed about it, tell them because that type of passion, if you can be passionate in an interview, you can be passionate about anything and that's what they're looking for in product managers that are great. Next up, I always tell people is do your research. What separates the people that get jobs from people that don't do jobs, don't get the jobs are the people that have said, hey, I wish I did this. I thought I could do this. Someone told me to do this. I just didn't have time. I didn't do it. That's what separates you. So obviously read the cracking APM interview. It's a great book. It shows you not only how you can organize your thoughts, but also what are the frameworks that people have used to be successful? It's not going to even help. It's not going to just help you get in the door. It's going to help you be a great product manager when you are in the door. I always also tell people, understand the company. You need to know that company inside and out. Who's the CEO? How much money they're making? What industries are in at the end? What are the challenges they're facing? Where are they in the news? And I mean, you can do it in a lot of ways, but I always say to read some books. I have a book here about how Google works and also a little bit about how Amazon works, but there's so many more out there. And the last thing, which again, a little cliche of me coming from Google, Google it. There are so many people that are going to the same process that you're going through and they want to share what they've learned. They want to share what's worked, what hasn't worked. You can look at medium. There's classes on the product score school. You can go to the Slack channels. There are numerous amounts of Slack channels with PMs or people looking for interviews that will simply hear your questions, do mock interviews and want to interact with you. Now, after you've done your research, when you're there, you need to communicate clearly. Now, that means laying out how you're going to answer the question, explaining your framework, making sure you're following it, understanding your assumptions and questioning every step of the way, whether or not things make sense or you're following your process. Now, there's no right answer for any of these questions. So how you think is the most important thing that you're sharing. And so you need to be clear how you communicate that. Now, you could talk it, you could use a whiteboard, you could use a piece of paper, use what you feel comfortable doing, but don't be afraid to get out and use that whiteboard. Another thing that I always try to tell people is think outside the box, but don't forget the box. Now, all of these questions you'll be asked can be outrageous. And there's often a very obvious answer, and then a more unique answer. And product managers are challenged to understand all of the edge cases. They're challenged to predict where users are going to go in years to come to think about market trends that change, that no one knows is going to change. So when someone asks you, hey, today I have 10 stores with two tables in them. And in a year I want to grow to having 100 stores. Know that that quick math is cool, 10 to 100 times 10. That means 20 tables when I move in a year. Now don't get wrong, that's quick math. There's also going to be textbook explanations of how you launch a product. You're going to have logic, you can look for examples. But those are all the obvious answers. As a product manager, they know that you need to know that, but you also need to be creative. If you're launching and going from 10 to 100 in the next year, what else could impact that? Do you need to be a bigger footprint for your stores? Do you need to include a restaurant? Do you need to include a co-working space? How do you think about those things and how it impacts the number of tables that you need? Obviously I use the table example. There's so many other ways, but make sure that you're thinking outside the box, but also grounding yourself in what is the easy logical answer. Now the last thing, another thing that is always important is luck. Everyone needs a little bit of luck. Your interviewer could be having a great day, could be having a bad day, and it's really important that you understand that. Because for you, sometimes that mistake you made, the way that you recover is an aspect of your personality, an aspect of your logic that you never would have been able to get across, and that's luck. So just make sure that you know that there is an aspect of luck that goes into this. Now I was a little weary about including stuff about the technical interview, but what the hell? The first thing that I always bring up is don't worry about the phone screen. Technical is often not tested on the phone screen in depth. It's really something that is better tested in person. People will ask you high-level explanations. For example, how HTTPS works, I wouldn't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. Now when you're actually in there on site and you need to think about how you're going to interact with the engineer, I highly recommend a lot of things. And that is you're not going to learn the code in two weeks. If you don't know it, you're not going to learn it. You can get some ideas, but engineers will be able to see you right through a lot of that. Now obviously review some algorithms, write some pseudo code, go through that, but know where your boundaries are. Know what you don't know and admit it. Because for an engineer, their number one thing is making sure that you are standing there with them. You know your limits and they can trust you that not only are you representing their technical challenges to the other people in the organization well, but you're representing the other parts of the organization to them incredibly clearly and well. Because that is what really matters at the end of the day. And the last step that is just as important as any of the other seven is to have fun. Now interviewers do lots of interviews and they see lots of product managers and they get, I mean, they need to know who you are and you need to leave a lasting impression. And that's important because product management is hard and getting through step one to step two to step three, if you don't love these challenges, it's going to wear on you. So if you are in an interview where you're theorizing and hypotheticals of how do I get to the moon or if you have a limited budget, how do you do this? Or if you can break the laws of physics, how do you do this? Or can you estimate how many ping pong balls go into a 747? If you aren't having fun doing that with someone like minded to you or another product manager, the chances of you having fun doing the hard stuff, the stuff that impacts revenue, the stuff that impacts users, the stuff that impacts your day to day and other people around you, you're probably not going to have fun with the PM job. And if you're having fun, your interviewer is having fun. And if your interviewer is having fun, you're both going to leave feeling good. And that's the best thing that you can do in the interview. So just to review. First step is prepare as you would for your harness final. Review, repeat, and understand your frameworks that you yourself use, just so that you can represent them in a clear way in the interview. Step two, be yourself. Everyone comes in as interviews prepared, but what sets you aside? Why are you the person that gets excited? What is your passion? Step number three, do your research. What separates the people that get jobs, the people that don't get jobs, are the people that go that extra mile. Read that book, read that blog, reach out to someone and ask for a mock interview. Do your research. Step number four, communicate clearly. There's no right answer for any of these questions. And you need to explain how you think to the interviewer. That is the most important thing. Use whatever medium you need, voice, post it, whiteboards, whatever you need, be clear, use your frameworks. Step number five, think outside the box, but don't forget the box. You're going to be asked crazy questions, and often there's going to be a logical answer and there's going to be a different way for you to approach it. Don't forget the logical answer, but also remember as a PM, you have to think about all these edge cases. You have to think about where the environment's going, where the entire industry is going, where users could or could not use this. So make sure that you not only take the logical answer, but also think about those weird edge cases. Step number six, get lucky. There's an aspect of luck that goes into anything. As the saying goes, I'd rather be lucky than good. Step number seven, don't fear the technical interview. The biggest thing that you can do is understand that the engineers want to know that you are there with them, that you know your limits so you won't represent them, and that they trust you will represent the technical challenges to the best of your ability to the rest of the team, and you will represent the business challenges, the marketing challenges, to your best of your ability to them. And last but not least, have fun. Having fun is the most important aspect to me of any interview. When I leave an interview, where the person I've been interviewing had fun, I feel good. And that good feeling continues with me for the rest of the day, and I remember that interview. So thank you so much for taking the time to go through this with me. Feel free to reach out, more than happy to answer your questions, and good luck.