Abdul Rastagar

Usually, they're testing to see if you understand how to launch a product but you are right, different hiring managers look for different things.  My recommendation is that rather than listing a long list of activities to try to catch every single item, you focus on the ones that you believe will drive the most impact. Start with trying to understand the goal (it's not always revenue) and then define the relevant KPIs and metrics. You'll want to show that you understand the difference between th ...Read More

Product marketers are bound to get the “describe a successful product launch you’ve done” question (or some other iteration of it). Be prepared to answer with outcomes rather than going through a checklist of activities. What were you trying to achieve and how did you measure progress? I think Sharebird is a great resource for learning. I’d try to absorb as much as possible here. But honestly, the best thing you can do to prepare for interviews is to practice over and over again with more senior ...Read More

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 you can do that, you’ve already impressed me so just stop right there. Any additional info I need, I will follow up with more questions and then we can dig into the details. If I’m interviewing you, I wan ...Read More

Love this question!  Obviously, always protect your employer’s confidential information. However, if you have done your work correctly, your messaging will inform all of the material and content you’ve developed. It would be reflected on your website, on your datasheets, on other public-facing content (press releases, blogs, etc.) But far more important than showing what you have produced is proving the impact that it had. Showing success metrics for messaging is one of the most difficult challe ...Read More

There seems to be a common thread among talented marketers who don’t do well in their interviews - responses sound generic, answers are often way too long and provide too much background information, and there is little to no focus on outcomes.  For product marketers, outcomes are the number one priority of their job so, in an interview, you must also be able to clearly articulate your own value and the outcomes you’ve achieved. Be specific. That signals to me that you get the strategic nature o ...Read More

 It's a legit question though I need more context to give you specific feedback. When you say 1st interviews, I assume you mean with the recruiter rather than the hiring manager. Sounds like your resume is good enough to entice them, but there's something going on in your interview answers that's not connecting the dots. How do you respond to questions - do you convince them that you have done the work you claim, do you provide enough depth and detail, do you show results and outcomes, do you pe ...Read More

The ‘product marketing skills’ question has been answered really well by a lot of others on Sharebird already so I will focus my answer specifically to the interview itself:  I always look for candidates who have a strategic mindset and who can articulate what success in their current role looks like. I interviewed one candidate once who really impressed me with her ability to paint ‘before and after’ pictures. It’s less common than you would expect and she completely differentiated herself beca ...Read More

I started out my career as a medicinal chemist doing research on breast cancer. There was only one success metric for me - did the novel compound I synthesized kill the cancer cells without killing healthy ones? Success was incredibly complex to achieve but quite straightforward to measure.  Conversely, as marketers, we often fall into a trap of measuring operational metrics that don’t actually measure outcomes. We get so wrapped up in reach and frequency that we often fail to answer whether we ...Read More

At the end of the day, there is only one way - lots of practice. Everyone has failed an interview at least once. I know I have on multiple occasions. But as the late basketball legend Kobe Bryant said, he never once hesitated to take a game-winning shot with time expiring because he had already practiced it thousands of times on his own. When it was time to win the game, everyone else was nervous while it was just yet another shot attempt for him. We can learn a lot from that mindset. Practice w ...Read More