Are you considering a career in Product Management, but feeling lost as to how you’re supposed to gauge whether or not the role would be a good fit for you?

Several people have asked me for advice on the topic, so before you jump into taking a pricey Product Management course – and for everyone who may not have a “PM friend of a friend” to ask for advice – here’s a list of 30 questions to ask yourself first. Answer them as honestly as possible, and by the end you should have a much better idea as to whether or not you’d be a good fit for a role in Product Management.

In a ‘former life’, were you:

1. That kid who did whatever it took to help your group finish a school project and get an A?

Product Managers have to do whatever it takes to build and ship the best products, even if it means getting your hands dirty sometimes and doing ‘nothing more’ than organizing a ton of meetings for the right people and taking all the notes, or using task management software that isn’t your preferred choice if engineering happens to find value in it.

2. That kid who did whatever it took to help your group finish a school project, get an A, then shined the credit and spotlight on the group (vs. yourself)?

Product Managers should naturally want to give credit to others. Taking full credit for other people’s work, and sometimes even what feels like your own work, won’t fly.

3. That kid who wanted to try everything, and probably did at least 8 different extracurricular activities after-school in a given week?

Product Managers should be naturally curious people, who — as a result of having tried many different things — are “jack of all trades” types. This doesn’t preclude excellence in one or two things, but tunnel vision and a narrow interest set are antithetical to great PMs.

4. That kid who got along well with many different social groups?

Product Managers have to get along with engineers, designers, sales people, happy customers, angry customers, and the CEO — to name a few. Hopefully you weren’t that kid in school who thought you and your 3 friends were the only people who mattered, and made fun of everyone else.

5. That kid who liked pretty much any subject in school, because learning and challenges were fun in and of themselves?

Product Managers thrive on problems that are challenging to solve. If you hated AP US History or Math because “it was just so hard and I HATE ‘hard’!” then this might not be the right job for you.

6. That kid who wasn’t afraid to talk about feelings, and encouraged your friends to also talk about feelings?

Product Managers aren’t therapists, per se, but sometimes customers will have very strong feelings about your product. You shouldn’t want to run away from feelings.

7. That kid who actually listened to your friends when they talked about feelings?

When customers are sharing their very strong feelings, Product Managers need to really really listen. When any coworker is sharing his or her feelings about the process, product, or anything else — PMs need to genuinely listen and make them feel heard.

Today, do you like to:

8. Write?

As THE central source of communication, you will be writing a ton (taking notes in meetings, cleaning up and distributing those notes to your team, email updates for individual teams as well as the whole company, product specs/project briefs, user stories, etc). You cannot dislike writing, or even be a slow writer. It’s your job to keep things moving, so sitting on email drafts for 3 days at a time definitely won’t work.

9. Research?

Many decisions will be left up to “your recommendation”, from which API to use to accomplish x task to which smaller company you suggest acquiring because it will be better in the long run than trying to build y feature yourselves. So you best be doing diligence and research before making those recommendations.

10. Keep up with the ‘latest and greatest’?

Back to that natural curiosity, PMs should be naturally curious about and interested in staying on top of the latest developments both in and out of their domain. If the thought of reading yet another TechCrunch article about a new messaging app sounds torturous, or you’ve never heard of Product Hunt, then you might have a hard time staying excited about Product Management.

Are you competent-to-good at:

11. Using Excel?

I mention Excel because most business and finance teams use Excel to some capacity, and Product Managers have to work with business and finance teams; therefore, some Excel-ing might be needed from time to time. Excel is also an easy way to capture and organize data.

12. Using task management tools?

Asana, Assembla, Basecamp, Hackpad, Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Teamwork, Trello, etc. — are you competent at using at least one of these?

13. Learning how to use new task management tools?

If you’ve used Jira before but not Basecamp, Trello but not Teamwork — could you pick another one up relatively quickly?

14. Learning new things in general?

If you’ve never used any task management tools ever, CONGRATULATIONS, I NEED TO HAVE YOUR LIFE. Just kidding. But seriously, if you haven’t, are you a fast learner in general?

15. Drawing things by hand or using software to visualize things?

Pointing at the air or making dramatic gestures with your hands can sometimes help you explain things better, but alternatively, 10 minutes of explaining something and being misunderstood could be easily remedied with a quick diagram on the whiteboard. You don’t have to be an amazing illustrator, but it definitely helps to be able to draw and diagram what you’re thinking in your head for others to see.

Are you really-good-to-amazing at:

16. Listening to others?

This might be the #1 most important “soft skill” for a Product Manager. If you’re often told that you’re shitty at listening to others, cut people off a lot, etc. — you should probably stop reading right here, because this is not the job for you.

17. Talking to people?

See “getting along with many social groups” above. Product Managers are constantly talking to different groups of people to facilitate communication, convey vision, and remove roadblocks. However, this does not mean you are the loudest voice in the room at all times in group settings, or literally speaking all the time. PMs know when to speak.

18. Diffusing tension?

People on your team are not always going to get along. Product Managers can’t be the ones fueling the flames; we have to manage egos and diffuse tension so the show can go on.

19. Handling stress?

This is a stressful job. You will not be able to hide in your corner with headphones on and simply go ‘heads down’ or ‘ride things out’. Everything will basically always be your fault; can you handle that kind of pressure without freaking out at people or getting crazy defensive?

20. Explaining things to others?

Do you have an uncanny ability to simplify the most intimidatingly complex thing so that even a n00b can understand it? Or is the other way around, where your explanation of even the simplest concept has everyone’s eyes glazed over in a cloudy haze of confusion and wishing-this-torture-would-please-hurry-up-and-end?

21. Prioritizing things?

There’s no room for indecision in a Product Manager. You have to be organized and rational enough to come up with a system for prioritizing ‘shit to be worked on’ that also works for your team and company.

22. Context switching?

You will get interrupted a lot. Deal with it, or don’t…

23. Noticing details?

You are the ultimate gatekeeper and owner of your product(s). Few, if any, inconsistencies or defects should get past your eagle-eye.

24. Selling narrative?

Product Managers are unofficial “salespeople”, in that we are constantly selling and promoting a product’s vision to stakeholders, team members, customers, the list goes on. And the most effective way to do this is to sell the story; the compelling, undeniable “why” that gets everyone excited and on board.

Do you dread:

25. Meetings?

Sorry. As the “chief facilitator of stuff”, some meetings will be unavoidable; you may even be in meetings more than most.

26. Being the one to have to schedule meetings?

If you’re used to other people scheduling things for you, or feel that scheduling meetings is “an assistant’s work — this is beneath me!” then you’re going to be disappointed. Product Managers are often the ones scheduling meetings, because it’s our job to make sure everyone is synced, not anyone else’s.

27. Being the one to have to lead meetings?

The job really isn’t going to work out if you absolutely hate the idea of having to lead meetings — especially when you put many of those meetings on people’s calendars in the first place.

28. People telling you their problems?

If this sounds like the worst thing that could ever happen to you… well, somehow you made it this far down the list, but godspeed!

29. Having to make decisions (about anything: what to wear, where to take your date for dinner, what to do this weekend)?

See above on “prioritizing things”. If even the smallest decision in your personal life can take a huge toll on your well-being, then Product Management will probably be the end of you.

30. Change?

Product Managers have to be adaptable, and ready to roll with the punches. If you’re a stickler for “doing things the way they’ve always been done” and feel anxiety at the thought of having to switch directions / priorities / task management tools / chairs frequently, then this ain’t gonna work out for the long haul.

If you’ve gotten through all 30 questions and don’t feel like running away, awesome! You might just make a happy Product Manager someday :)

Landing an interview for any job that you want feels awesome. In your case, if you’re reading this, maybe that job is for the role of Product Manager.

So what can you expect from the interview ahead of you?

To start, recognize that you won’t be able to anticipate every single question. That’s okay. Blindly cramming hundreds of Quora responses or stacks of product management books right before your interview isn’t really an effective strategy, and the sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.

Instead, you should focus on just the concepts and questions that you are most likely to encounter. You also need to understand, at a high level, the motivations of those who will be interviewing you; why might they need a Product Manager to come and fill this role in the first place? What are they looking for?

Having interviewed at a variety of places now from smaller startups to bigger tech companies, I’d like to share two resources that I wish I’d focused on during my interview prep process:

1. Ken Norton’s essay, How to Hire a Product Manager
   
2. Madhu Punjabi’s blog post, The Product Management Interview

That’s it. Given limited time and capacity, these are the only two resources you need familiarize yourself with in order to understand what will generally be expected of you from the PM interview. 

Let’s review why. 

You need to know what they’re looking for

At a high level, what is the role of a Product Manager? What kind of people make good Product Managers? What, therefore, might an interviewer be looking for? You need to figure this out before you head into that interview, and there’s no resource that answers these questions as succinctly or straightforwardly as Ken Norton’s classic essay, How to Hire a Product Manager. 

Drawing from the points in Ken’s essay that overlap with what I’ve personally experienced, here are the qualities and skills that interviewers generally seem to care about:

• Your overall intelligence and creativity. Are you well-spoken? If I ask how you would improve x feature with very little time to think about it, how thoughtful and creative will your response be? Can you think on the fly? (cue market sizing exercises…)
• How technical you are, to a reasonable extent. Are you technical, or technical enough to work with engineers and gain their respect? Even if you didn’t write any of the code for it, can you explain how x API works? Can you articulate the business considerations that influenced the way y feature was built?
• How you handle process. Are you good with process-y things like prioritizing features or making sure the right meetings happen amongst the right people? Have you done lean/agile/scrum with a team before, or implemented some successful version of those processes from the ground up for your team? Are you rigid about doing things a certain way, or can you adapt to what your engineering team and stakeholders need and keep it all from turning into a shit show? Which goes hand in hand with…
• How you handle people. Can you inspire and convince people to do things, even when it seems like they don’t really want to at first? Are you an effective communicator? Someone on your team is stirring the pot and spreading negativity; what do you do? Some particularly disgruntled users are very publicly leaving negative reviews and blowing up the support ticket queue; what is your instinctual response? How do you deal with this?
• Your ability to take things from nothingness to somethingness. This one is probably the most straightforward: are you capable of shipping and/or have you shipped things before?

You need to know what they might ask

Once you’ve wrapped your head around the nuances and requirements of the role (intelligence, creativity, technical fluency, knack for process, people skills, ability to ship things), you need to prepare for some of the questions that you might actually get asked. 

The best resource for common PM interview questions – in my humble opinion – is Madhu Punjabi’s blog post, aptly titled The Product Management Interview. These questions “tie it all together”, testing your propensity to be an effective Product Manager for a specific company. This means you have to do your homework not only on what the role of a Product Manager is, as we went over earlier, but also on the specific company you’ll be interviewing with. 

Madhu is, by the way, a kickass Product Manager at Pinterest. 

These are the 8 questions she recommends preparing for. I can vouch and say that I’ve been asked every single one over the course of my interviewing experience:

1. Why do you want to work at this company?
2. How would you improve the product?
3. What is your favorite feature or product and why?
4. What are the 3 metrics that our company cares about?
5. You have to choose between feature X and feature Y, how do you decide?
6. How would you test a feature?
7. Tell me about a time where you had to convince someone who didn’t report to you to work on something? 
8. Do you have any questions for me?
   

I highly recommend visiting her post directly for even more advice and insight into what interviewers are looking for, specifically, with each question. 

Recap

The PM interview doesn’t have to feel like a scary black box. Though the role tends to call for a wide range of qualities and skills, most companies are looking for the same general things in a PM candidate: intelligence, creativity, technical fluency, knack for process, people skills, and the ability to ship things. 

Additionally, most companies will ask some version of the 8 questions covered in Madhu’s blog. 

Focus on preparing for those 8 questions. Read Ken’s essay. Be able to articulate your own experiences – especially those that are applicable to the role.

Then take a deep breath.

Don’t sweat the rest. 

A year or so ago, I decided to try writing on Medium as my primary platform. It was mostly an enjoyable experience, and I even got one of my posts published in a Medium publication called The Launchism. That was pretty cool :)

Originally posted by ignitetheliight

That said, I kind of miss having a place that feels more like “home”. On Medium, I felt weird being too honest or personal, but that’s kind of a shame because being too honest and personal is sort of what I do. I think it’s why people connected to some of my earliest posts here on the blog, anyway. 

Still, I think I covered some interesting topics on Medium like how you can compare the evolutionary abstraction of the Starbucks logo to the process of learning to write better code, or ways that Snapchat can further monetize itself. 

If you’re interested in any of those posts by the way, this is what I spent some of 2014 plus some of 2015 writing about, with gaps in between that I’m not so proud of but oh well:

Let’s Talk About Snapchat

What the Music Industry Can Learn from Tech

Why I’m Working on Kyndrd

I Launched My PRE “Pre-Launch” Page Yesterday (published in The Launchism)

5 Surprising Jobs That Could Help You Be a Better Product Manager

Why I’m Obsessed With Blue Ocean Strategy

Progressive Reduction is Everywhere

The Road to Product Management

When Success Eludes You

Have Good Intentions… But Make Even Better Choices

It feels good to write here though, so I think I’m back to writing here. And anything I write that feels sort of smart-y (like the stuff that the rest of the Medium community writes), I’ll post to Medium too.  

Also, I redesigned this page! Think it feels cleaner and better now. 

Oh, and I moved to LA!

😎