Lizzy Masotta

There are 2 main types of interviews for Product Management roles: Product case interviews Behavioral interviews (by cross functional partners like UX or Engineering, or by the hiring manager) With either interview type, the surest path to failure is when a candidate shows up and waits to be asked questions. A one-way dialogue doesn’t expose enough about a candidate to make a strong impression. Engaging in an interactive, two-way dialogue helps the interviewer get to know what it would be like t ...Read More

There are 2 exercises I use to evaluate bringing differentiation into the products I'm building. What sucks? User value mapping Where they originated I came up with these frameworks in collaboration with Paul Pedrazzi (SVP, Salesforce) while we were working on a 0 → 1 product for small business. We repeatedly re-visited the artifacts of these exercises throughout the product development lifecycle. What sucks? What the outcome will be A list of the Top 3 issues for your target user. How to do it ...Read More

They teach you something in the interview I once interviewed a woman who had extensive experience working for a telecommunications company. I have zero experience in telco – aside from being a customer of Verizon Wireless. I walked out of that interview having learned so much about telco companies, their business model, what they optimize for, how they segment their customers, etc. In the stories the candidate told about her work experiences she concisely weaved in the basics of the telco in a d ...Read More

I don’t believe in a universal end-to-end product development process. I believe there are key rituals and elements that should be present on every team to ensure great outcomes, but each team needs to tailor the development process to their unique situation. My must-have product development elements & rituals: Common Language - Your company should have a common language for the product development process. This is not a prescribed way to do product development for every team at the company ...Read More

Work in the open. Create a culture on your team that encourages sharing unfinished work and working live together. This will drive the highest quality bar for your team. If you wait until the end of development to QA too many problems will be compounded. Some rituals I use to encourage a high quality b ar throughout the entire product development lifecycle: Fresh Eyes - Once a week anyone in the Product Squad can demo unfinished work for the purpose of getting feedback mid-build. The phrase and ...Read More

Interview Red Flags During a Product Case Interview – If your interviewer is having to guide you through each section or prompt you with several follow up questions, that’s not a good thing. If a candidate clearly has never used the product (hint: always sign up for the product, do the free trial, or watch YouTube videos / demos). If one of the candidates questions at the end is something along the lines of “how do promotions work here?” If a candidate is unable to draw connections between their ...Read More

Engineers are part of your squad. They should be in the room for Problem Shaping, Live Prototyping, and Fresh Eyes. You should review your problem backlog regularly with your engineers and get their input and feedback. —Influence is the curiosity to get to the best solution— and engineers will undoubtedly think about things differently than you - leverage this to find the biggest problems and get to the best solutions. More about influence here: https://medium.com/@lizzymasotta/product-managemen ...Read More

There’s a ton of literature published on PM interviewing - frameworks, types of questions, types of interviews, etc. Your time is best spent introspecting, not obsessing over all the interviewing content. Memorizing frameworks won’t help you ace an interview. The more you know yourself, your strengths, and the takeaways from your prior experiences, the better you will do. Make sure you have answers to the following questions: Why do you want to leave your current role / company? Why do you want ...Read More

I love this question. Through my work at both Salesforce and Shopify this is something that comes up regularly because of our platform and healthy partner ecosystem.  Do the majority of my users need this? Are there problems with the partner meeting the needs of users today? Do we have the expertise and staffing to build this? Would building this natively unlock new value, new opportunity or a new market? If the answers to questions 1-3 are yes, then it warrants a discussion with your team. The ...Read More

Tell the interviewee what they want to hear up front Who are you? What type of interview is this? How long will this last? Will I be able to ask questions? What's the next step after this? Don’t ask leading questions. For example: “How do you work with engineering” gives away that you’re interested in their collaboration style with engineering. They will always answer this question with something like “I am really communicative with them and do all the right things!” To get the real answer here ...Read More