7 essential questions to ask during Product Manager interview

image via https://www.wrike.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/software-product-management.png

I am an Architect at a Startup called as Egnyte and my daily job involves working closely with Product managers and translating their vision into reality. I had interviewed hundreds of engineering candidates during my tenure at Egnyte and sometimes I am asked to interview candidates outside my role. Recently I was asked to interview a Product Manager. I was like huh its been a long time I have interviewed a one and the Startup landscape has changed a lot these days. A good Product Manager these days can really make your product stand out from the competition and drive growth. How do I know he is the best candidate for the job?

I was one of the interviewers and was given 30 min. I usually want one hour but that day was packed with meetings. A day before the interview I started preparing for it and landed on to this master piece written by Ken Norton(@kennethn) How to hire a product manager. What he wrote 10 years ago is still relevant. Ken's article is very detailed and I can't ask all the questions so I jotted down 7 essential questions that I need to ask inspired from the article. Here is the list and I hope it can help others who are in my situation:

How do you decide what not to build?
What was your biggest product mistake?
How do you know when to cut corners to get a product out the door?
How do you decide where to cull features? What do you do with existing users using it?
How do you monitor and increase product engagement?
What is one key feature that you invented at your current job and are proud of? and how it contributed to growth and how did you measured it?
What is your number one concern about Egnyte product? (replace Egnyte with your company)

Enjoy!!

Comments

Consistency

Consistency is important as it makes people feel at home and instills trust in the brand. The iOS ecosystem makes it easy for people to transition from one device type to other because it has a consistent look and feel, actions and this way the brain doesn't have to apply any cognitive effort when moving from iPhone to iPad to a Mac. I learned about Keynotopia recently and was enlightened by its application. I saw the transition of a bootstrapped Startup to a consistent Enterprise Startup and this is why I see the importance of consistency introduction in every department at Startup as early as possible. The UX style needs to be consistent with the entire product line and a company-wide style guide maintained by the UX group is absolutely important from very early days of the Startup. Your button color, fonts, logos need to be consistent in each product and even company presentations. From the moment a customer lands on your Marketing website to the trial perio...

Adventures of a nature lover - 5 national parks in 14 days

To unplug from work and recharge myself I do a 2-3 week trip every year where I am unplugged. Few of the reasons I can totally unplug from work is Unlimited Vacation policy of Egnyte, Excellent support by the Infrastructure team Our ethos of pro-actively fixing issues before they become nuisance. TLDR; It's a long post so you can scroll down and first see see images if you need motivation to read it entirely. Me and my family like national parks and camping to recharge us as there is no cell phone coverage in parks and you are completely unplugged from technology most of the times. We have done many of the national parks nearby and this year we want to see glacier national park as the glaciers may disappear in 10-15 years so see them before they are gone. Behind every successful trip is a "Trip planner" and for our family its my wife, she researched and made a trip itinerary book. She booked camp sites 6 months in advance She researched trail...

IPhone will beat DSLR in long run

I started taking interest in photography recently and have accumulated a decent amount of gear but I am realizing that the ease of taking out your phone and clicking picture will beat the DSLR in long run. A friend recently visited me from NY and we wanted to take a family picture and I was setting up Tripod and Flash and doing settings changes and he was like leave all this, lets take a Selfie and that’s it, in 2 second the picture was done and he shared it on facebook in another 1 second. Now one can argue that DSLR would have clicked a better picture but DSLR has many things going against it:- Learning curve : I must have spent 200+hours on reading about photography but still cant take decent pictures as my bar is high. Not everyone is interested in spending this much time. Amount of gear to be carried : On hikes its a pain to carry your DSLR whereas your phone has to be anyway with you. Cognitive effort of tweaking the gear: You have to have a different lens/settings for d...

A startup guy

Search This Blog