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

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

15 answers

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VP of Product and Solutions Marketing at HubSpot

I like to ask PMM candidates to deliver their company's pitch. I'm not grading their pitch but rather the empathy and insight they display for and about their customers' challenges, the way they deliver it, and the storytelling ability of the candidate. There's no one answer to this that's stood out but it's the delivery that makes the difference. People who can clearly explain what pain point their customer feels and succintly how their company solves it (and can throw in some proof) are always the stand outs. The best answers are from the few people who aren't afraid to role play and pretend i'm a customer that they're pitching.

Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk

I often like to ask, “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” as well as, “In your last performance review, what were your opportunities to improve and how have you worked to address them?” I like the question “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” because it often helps me understand w...more

Product Lead (fmr Head of Product Marketing) at Square

Any interviews with me will involve a case - real world, but sanitized case questions like "you are the PMM for xyz product and your subscriber growth has slowed down [insert whatever metrics, scenarios] in the last 2 quarters. You need to get it back on track. What would you do to tackle this?" ...more

Senior Product Manager, Enterprise Cloud at Atlassian

Let me give you the one interview question, out of every interview I've ever been to, that literally stumped me. "Give me a time that you were the most creative". It stumped me at the time because I approach my role in PMM from a very systematic, repeatable, scalable, and data driven approa...more

Susan "Spark" Park

Head of Product Marketing, VR Work Experiences, Oculus at Facebook

I have started to ask "What is the biggest trade-off decision you had to make?" Most people go straight to themselves and a trade-off that they've had to make about a job or career path, not a company decision. One interviewee floored me when he talked about hard decisions on needing to lay-o...more

Director of Product Marketing at Klaviyo

My favorite question is "What would be your positioning statement for yourself as a product marketer?" I love that question because it shows me how comfortable they are with the basics of positioning, and it tells me a lot about the aspects of product marketing that they care most about. For ex...more

Ryan Van Wagoner

Head of Product Marketing at Forethought

I'd have to go with this classic: "Describe your process for launching a new product." Why? A product launch is the quintessential act of product marketing. It places the product marketer as the orchestrator between product, sales, customer success, and core marketing. If you understand how to s...more

GTM Lead at Benchling

I am going to provide a highly opinionated answer. Please forgive the strong tone, but I hope it will be more helpful for you than a generic response: For any question I ask, I want a short, succinct, and direct answer that tells me within the first 3-5 sentences what outcomes you achieved. If...more

VP of Product Marketing at Observe.AI

What is the role of product marketing, and why do you want to do the job. I care about not just what the answer is but also how candidates deliver it. Are they giving me a textbook answer or telling me a story about their proudest PMM experience or a project that significantly impacted the busine...more

Leandro Margulis

Head of Product Marketing at Prove

Well, the question of "What is Product Marketing" Could mean different things at different companies, but my answer is that we provide the voice of the market and the voice of the customer internally to the product manager so we can build products that resonate with our audience, and we are the v...more

Product Marketing at CloudBees

I have product marketing candidates give me the Who Cares and Why Is That Important pitch for their current product. Walk me through the positioning and messaging development, what resonates and why, stuff like that. Another key question I ask all candidates is what kind of non-profit or voluntee...more

Director of Product Marketing at PandaDoc

Here are some of my favorites: * Open-ended / ice-breaker: "Can you tell me about yourself / your experience?" * Motivation / Research: "Why are you interested in the company and this position?" If the answer is too generic / short, follow-up with "What do you know about the company?" *...more

VP of Marketing (previously Head of Product Marketing) at Thanx

Here are a few of the questions that I like to ask: - Tell me about a time that you influenced the product direction. - How do you define the role of product marketing? - What is the one thing that we can help you with, that you can take away from working here? I also agree with Carrie tha...more

VP, Product Marketing at Krisp | Ex-Sprinklr, YuMe

What is your superpower?! This one is great because it gives you insight into how a candidate perceives themselves. There's a self-awareness that comes through with the responses that allows for you to getting a sense of who they are an individuals and how they work in a team. The best example...more

Global VP Marketing at MOLOCO

My favorite question to ask is something along the lines of "Here's a big initiative we're planning to roll out, and whoever gets this job will own at least part of the planning and execution. How would you go about making the initiative successful?" A great answer always includes something li...more