What is your favorite product management interview question and the best answer you've heard?

My favorite interview question was asked by a hiring manager ~8 years ago when I interviewed for an Associate PM position at MuleSoft.

I was asked the following: "Imagine humans decided to take the moon and put it through a giant chopper/grinder. The mass that comes out of the chopper is being dumped on the surface of the earth. The question was - do you need an oxygen mask to climb on the top of this mass"

This is a quantitative question that is typically asked in the PM interviews, but more fun to think about :) The right answer is to show your logical thinking e.g. your approach, unknowns, corner cases, etc.

"Assume I don't know anything. Teach me something in the next two minutes about a topic you are passionate about - can be anything". This questions helps me understand how a person thinks on their feet, does storytelling, and uncover more about their passions as a human, that may have some interesting overlap with product work.

I have learned how to swing a gold club, calm down crying toddlers, and pick soil for any plant from asking this question.

Will add my favorite question to ask the managers of product managers (GPM, Director and above): "Tell me about a product manager you've worked with, and who's better than you and inspires you. What about them makes you say so?" Best answers usually involve leaders speaking about people on their team (reports etc), or someone more junior than them who they helped grow. If someone has been a people manager for a decade or longer, and they have never had a more junior person on the team who's better than them, this makes me probe more into their ability to lead, recognize talent and be humble enough to see that someone has better craft skills than they do. As a leader, you are guaranteed to have to lead people who are smarter, better and more talented than you. Having the humility to recognize that and work with it is key to scaling as a product leader and being able to attract and retain talented folks.

The question I love asking every candidate is "tell me the story of the most impactful thing you’ve ever worked on." I like this question for several reasons:

• It works for every level of experience. For experienced PMs, I’m expecting to hear about a very important product they worked on. For someone with little to no experience, they can tell me a story about something they worked on that was incredibly hard, impactful and meaningful to them without it needing to be related to product work.
• It allows me to get a sense of their storytelling ability. Are they able to structure a story effectively? Are they able to take me on a journey with a clear start, middle and end point? Are they able to do so succinctly?
• Lastly, it’s a really helpful way of assessing what they consider impactful and whether they've done something impressive that suggests they'll be a fit for the role.

I've heard so many great stories, but one that stands out was for an internship role at my last company: The candidate had not done any product work before, so he told me the story of how he volunteered to help out at a student tech conference. He felt he was bad at public speaking and wanted to watch people do it well. Within a couple of years he was in charge of the largest student conference in Canada and speaking on stage to thousands of people. He told an engaging story that showed me he'd achieved something truly impressive that we wouldn't have talked about if I would have just asked product questions.

For very role-specific hiring: "Knowing about the role, how does your experience and skillset fit the needs?" The best answer:

• Reflects the candidate really understands our company, has done research to know what might be top of mind and has taken the time with the recruiter to clarify the role, paid attention to what I explain about the role.
• Communicate clearly about their skills and have an elevator pitch for past experiences to create a cohesive story.
• Reflects a true passion for joining the team. Do you already see yourself in this role?

For general PM hiring: Some mix of: "What is a problem you deeply care about, why do you think it is interesting/important? How will you go about solving it?" It allows me to press on whatever skillset I am looking for. I can't give a specific best response but I look for strategic thinking in articulating a problem (vs. talking about a UX/UI pain-point), metrics-driven thinking, and end-to-end thinking in the solution (discovery, implementation, roll-out, all GTM considerations).

Design a product for drivers driving in rush hour.

I am betting every human stuck in traffic has once thought... “Dang this traffic sucks, I wish I could [insert idea].” The best answer I’ve heard is a tablet-sized visual, that is connected to the internet with key apps such as email, song playlist, podcasts, call functionality; along with the capability for partial self-driving in traffic. Once in rush-hour it kicks in, frees your attention to do other things, improves health of the driver by reducing both physical and psychological strain of commuting in rush hours and is highly scalable to autonomous-capable vehicles. I liked the answer because I’d buy this product 🤪 but also because the answer was (1) optimized for reducing real pain points (2) accounted for the future of driving (3) was a little wild, but not too out there. When I heard this answer I could tell the PM was both imaginative but grounded in solving real problems.

One question I love to ask is:

"Tell me about a time when a conversation with a customer made you realize that your product direction was wrong."

I have heard so many great stories about dispelling assumptions by talking to customers. One of my favorite stories was when a PM did generative research about the biggest problems their users faced with their product. They found that the feature that they were planning to spend the greater part of their upcoming capacity on was not mentioned at all! When the PM brought up the feature idea, users communicated that this feature was by no means at the top of their list. This PM found a whole new set of problems to solve that would be of higher value. 

'What is a project that you are proud of accomplishing'. I like asking this as one of the first few questions. The reason I like this question is for a few reasons: 

• When people think of their proudest accomplishment, they typically tend to share more, get into the details organically 

• By using this question as a jumping off point, you can go deeper into a number of areas like problem-solving, strategic thinking, communication, ability to influence and more

• Some examples include how do they proactively think through the different scenarios and plan accordingly, how does the candidate react when there is misalignment, how do they influence other team members, how do they communicate to exec stakeholders, when their assumption does not turn out to be true, how do they work with other team members to accomplish their goal and so on. 

With this format, I have had the best conversations including when a candidate talked about a difficult situation and how they persevered through the journey and as a result, how they have determined the team culture and environment that they can do their best work and drive business results.

In a product management interview, my favorite question came up: "What is the best product you have ever used, and why?" I took a creative approach and presented myself as the product. I detailed my skills, experiences, and the unique value I could bring to the team, framing my abilities and potential contributions in the context of product features and benefits. This approach wasn't just about showcasing my qualifications; it was about demonstrating my ability to think innovatively and market effectively - crucial skills in product management. This self-referential presentation resonated with the interviewers and played a significant role in my successful hiring. Given this was umpteen years ago :)

My non-negociable PM interview question is "Tell me about a product you love, and why. Now no product is perfect so how would you improve it?".

Here is why it is a must-ask question for any PM candidate I have interviewed:

• it tests storytelling: when PMs love something, they should be able to describe its value in ways that make the audience wanna go try it. If I didn't feel energy after the PMs describe what they love about a product, they were discarded. And to be clear: it's not about presentation style, it's about articulating value clearly, crisply so that I understand how my world would be so much better as a result of using a product.

• it tests attention to detail: the PM role requires both high-altitude thinking for doing strategy and vision work, and detail-oriented crafting to offer delightful user experiences. PMs who can't articulate the in-product workflows that make a product great or not so great don't "feel" the product and I discarded them as a result.

• it tests creativity: the how-to-improve part allowed me to test the ability for PMs to develop product solutions to problems in ways that are either pragmatic or innovative. Both ways are creative: there is a problem, PMs have to be able to create solutions.
  
  I cannot remember the best answer precisely because I interviewed 100s of candidates. That said, the one that stood out was improvements to Netflix to solve the can't-find-what-to-watch problem that did not involve recommendations based on usage but some kind of random-play of a movie/TV show that could have been recommended!

"Tell me more about your experience in building a product and your contributions to it. And tell me as you look back now, what are the things that you would do differently or would not do differently and why". As a Leader, the virtue that I value the most is continuous learning and the ability to reflect or introspect on growth and opportunities to improvise.

Most often this question leads the person to share variety of ways work getting more effective across all areas of People skills, Process leaks and core Product responsibilities.