文字记录 · CC BY 3.0

Gayle McDowell 的《如何攻克产品经理面试》

本页标题、字幕、摘要和阅读笔记为已保存的 AI 译文，可能有误。时间戳与来源一致，可展开查看原始字幕，并对照原视频核对。

Gayle McDowell 讲解产品经理面试，涵盖职业转型、个人介绍、行为问题和产品思维。

Product School · 发布于 2017-11-07 · 1 小时 15 分钟 · 英语 · 许可证：CC BY 3.0 · 来源：在 YouTube 上观看

转录来源：Vidleaf上的自动语音识别（可能包含错误）。AI标点由Vidleaf添加；保留原始措辞和时间戳锚点。原始转录可在下方获取。

AI生成的摘要

演讲者是《Cracking the PM Interview》的作者，拥有计算机科学背景和 Google 面试及招聘委员会经验，经营 Career Cup 并与公司合作进行招聘改革，包括收购辅导，使她能够反复面试同一个人，并将她的看法与其经理的看法进行比较。她将 PM 定义为产品管理，将 APM 定义为入门级、通常为轮岗制的角色，将 PM 描述为管理产品而非人员，对开发人员有领导力但不一定有管辖权，并称完美的 PM 是一个神话，涵盖技术、产品、业务、领导力/执行和行业技能。本批次涵盖候选人在 PM 面试中应如何展示自己，从爱好和自我介绍到行为问题和产品设计问题：爱好几乎从不会有坏处，除非它们对你产生不良印象，技术爱好是加分项，而自我介绍不应基本上是简历的走查。对于行为问题，候选人应使用工作和全局问题的网格准备故事，回答实际问题，传达积极信息，使用 nugget first 或 SAR/STAR 等结构，说“我”而不是“我们”，并在失败故事中真实且情感上脆弱。它还涵盖产品洞察、估算、案例和杂项问题、公司业务指标，以及 PM 面试如何比咨询案例更依赖直觉和结构，并建议少做面试准备，多做根本性提升。

根据文字记录生成。请对照原始视频检查链接段落。

带时间戳的章节摘要

演讲者背景和会议设置

[0:00] 演讲者是《Cracking the PM Interview》的作者。
[0:10] 她拥有计算机科学背景，拥有学士和硕士学位，并曾在 Google 工作，在那里她进行面试并任职于招聘委员会。
[0:16] 她创办了Career Cup，一个围绕技术面试的Q&A（问答）论坛，并撰写了《Cracking the Coding Interview》《Cracking the PM Interview》和《Cracking the Tech Career》。
[0:41] 她与试图改革招聘流程的公司合作，包括推出面试培训并在工程和产品管理部门创建结构化招聘流程。
[0:53] 初创公司经常聘请她进行她所谓的收购辅导，在收购或收购式招聘面试中，工程师和 PM 像典型候选人一样接受面试。
[1:20] 这项工作为她提供了不寻常的数据，因为她可以反复面试同一个人，并与他们的经理交谈，将她的看法与他们实际做的事情进行比较。
[1:34] 幻灯片在线地址为 go.gale.com/pmprepslides，或者人们可以发送电子邮件至 gail@gail.com，主题为 PM Prep（作为一个词），以获得包含幻灯片、讲义和其他材料的自动回复。
[1:54] 拍摄幻灯片照片是可以的。

PM 和 APM 角色定义

[2:09] PM 是一个缩写，可以表示产品管理、助理产品经理、项目管理或项目管理。
[2:28] 演讲者将重点关注产品管理和助理产品管理，而不是项目或项目管理，尽管有一些重叠。
[2:39] 助理产品经理角色通常面向应届毕业生或职业生涯早期的人，尽管并非总是如此。
[2:50] APM 是一个入门级 PM 角色，通常具有轮岗成分，是一种培训类项目。
[2:57] 产品经理管理产品，而不是人员，通常不是人员管理角色。
[3:06] PM 的工作包括弄清楚用户是谁、功能是什么，以及如何以及何时发布。
[3:20] PM 对开发人员有一定的权威和领导力，但不一定对他们有实际管辖权。

完美 PM 的神话

[3:38] 完美的 PM 会结合技术、产品、业务、领导力/执行和行业技能。
[3:43] 产品技能涉及思考用户是谁以及需要什么功能。
[3:43] 业务技能是你在 MBA 中可能学到的东西，例如营销和广告。
[4:00] 行业技能因产品而异；对于金融软件公司，它们意味着金融技能。
[4:21] 基本上不可能带着所有这些技能进入产品管理，所以完美的 PM 是一个神话。
[4:50] 为了接近完美的 PM，评估你拥有五个桶中的哪些以及你需要获得什么。
[5:02] 在面试中，人们经常错误地假设存在神奇的转移性，即拥有某个属性意味着面试官会知道它。

围绕背景刻板印象进行自我介绍

[5:17] 人们会根据你的背景做出假设，因此候选人不应假装刻板印象不存在。
[5:48] 除了种族主义和性别歧视之外，其他基于背景的刻板印象也会影响候选人的看法。
[6:07] 在收购背景下，他帮助了一个背景是艺术家、然后是人机交互学位、然后是 UI 设计师、然后是一家拥有两名员工、产品精美的公司创始人的人。
[6:54] 这种背景让人们假设是设计而不是数据分析或艰难的商业决策，尽管他想做产品管理。
[7:28] 既然没有人会认为他设计能力差，他就需要重塑自己的推介方式，以推销商业、数字、产品经理思维以及领导开发人员的能力。
[8:09] 他修改了自己的推介方式，尽可能多地引入数字和商业决策，让设计几乎成为事后才考虑的事。
[8:21] 新的推介让听众看到一个全面发展的产品经理，同时也深刻理解设计。
[8:47] 对于来自客户支持背景的人，人们会假定其具备客户同理心和沟通能力，但可能不认为其有技术能力或执行力，因此应推销战略和技术技能，而不是过度推销那些被假定的优势。
[10:22] 对于有市场营销背景的人，人们会假定该候选人完全不懂技术。

转型进入产品管理

[10:31] 市场营销知识对成为产品经理非常适用。
[10:38] 营销技能是否相关取决于营销的哪一方面。
[10:48] 营销可能会过度推销事物，这对一个会过度推销的产品经理来说是危险的。
[11:12] 转型进入产品管理的开发人员可能不太擅长营销，这是一个问题。
[11:28] 开发人员常被刻板地认为不善于沟通，演讲者称这有些不太公平。
[11:37] 申请产品管理的开发人员不需要推销自己构建的酷炫算法。
[12:18] 如果你没有技术技能，就去学一些，比如参加10周或10小时的Codecademy课程，而不是去读计算机科学学位。
[13:07] 招聘经理常常纠结于为什么一个充满热情的产品管理候选人没有花几个小时学习编程。
[13:15] 产品技能可以通过写博客和剖析新发布的产品来获得，从而完善产品思维。
[13:46] 来自其他行业（如投资银行）的人应该找一家重视这些金融技能的公司。
[14:20] 仅仅为了进入产品管理而读MBA是一种非常昂贵的方式，每年学费约50K，再加上机会成本。
[15:02] MBA在其他方面有帮助，比如建立人脉和信誉，但不要仅仅为了产品管理而去读。

MBA的价值与硅谷的偏见

[15:24] 要对自己职业的声望以及你目标中的MBA项目保持现实态度。
[15:33] 从像谷歌这样的顶级公司转到排名较低的MBA项目不会有帮助，反而意味着倒退一步。
[15:44] 你无法从弱势项目获得所需的人脉；如果真要读MBA，就去读真正好的项目。
[15:51] 读MBA的一个主要原因是信誉和人脉，而这与学校的声望密切相关。
[16:04] 就学习而言，有许多比正规教育更高效的方式，比如在线学习。
[16:20] 硅谷存在一些MBA偏见；人们平均持正面态度，但也有不少人持负面态度，所以要避免给人留下傲慢的印象。
[16:44] 好的MBA项目提供人脉网络和大公司招聘产品经理的招聘人员，但初创公司的招聘人员不会大量前来。
[17:03] 瞄准沃顿毕业生的初创公司，尤其是非常小的初创公司，往往处境不佳，可能真正需要的是工程师。

面试行为问题与简历推介

[17:41] 讨论涵盖了面试过程中的行为问题。
[17:44] 准备好快速过一遍你的简历，无论什么职位、什么面试。
[17:54] 一个重大错误是讲得太久；一般最多两分钟。
[18:03] 大多数人的推介基本上没问题，只要长度合适。
[18:16] 一个还行的推介可以只是从A点走到B点再到C点。
[18:22] 按时间正序进行，不要倒序，因为倒序非常令人困惑。

推介结构：成功信号与爱好

[18:32] 包含简短的“成功展示”——展示成功的信号，而不仅仅是发布功能之类的成就。
[18:53] 被前经理挖走不是一项成就，但表明你做得非常好；如果是大学老友挖你，那说明不了什么。
[19:25] 提及爱好；它们几乎从不会对你不利，除非它们对你产生负面反映，而这种情况很少见。
[19:47] 技术爱好是加分项，比如上Coursera的机器学习课程或在业余时间开发一个应用。
[20:14] 一个看似非技术的爱好——鸡舍——在候选人透露他建造了一个机械臂在夜间捕捉鸡时变得相关。
[20:40] 那个鸡舍项目表明他亲自动手，学会了实际建造东西，这对产品经理来说是相关的。
[21:11] 跑步爱好之所以重要，是因为他报名参加了100英里超级马拉松，在30英里处伤了脚踝后仍坚持跑到60英里。
[21:55] 超级马拉松的故事表明他工作极其努力且坚持不懈，这是你希望雇佣的人所具备的品质。
[22:23] 出色的推介会用一个信息把这一切串联起来，例如：一个亲自动手、坚持不懈、热衷于让人的故事鲜活起来的产品经理。
[23:14] 思考面试官会对你产生什么假设，并加以纠正，以展示更全面的背景。
[23:28] 让故事鲜活起来意味着增添色彩，比如加入亚马逊是因为你对Kindle感到兴奋，并且热爱阅读和学习，而不是罗列职位。

推介与简历走查

[23:52] 推介不应基本上就是简历的走查。
[23:55] 一个别人仅凭你的背景和简历就能给出的推介是可以的，但不会对你有帮助。
[24:02] 能够做出出色的推介是很棒的。

准备行为面试故事

[24:17] 候选人应准备好回答关于主动性、冒险和失败的典型行为面试问题。
[24:34] 一个有用的方法是用网格，以工作或简历片段为列，以领导力挑战等全局性问题为行。
[25:00] 尽量为每个单元格填入一个故事；有些重叠没关系，把每个故事浓缩成一个关键词有助于将故事与面试官的问题匹配起来。
[25:32] 另一个有用的方法是从优势和劣势清单入手，以唤起对故事的记忆。
[26:14] 好的行为面试故事往往是十分具体的互动，而不是宏大的全局性事件，这使得在没有提示的情况下很难回想起来。
[27:06] 回答应当切中实际问题，但许多候选人到此为止，没有传达出他们想对自己做出的正面信息。
[27:50] 更好的故事会说明具体挑战是什么，以及候选人采取了哪些方式应对，而不只是字面上回答问题。
[28:09] 第三，结构要清晰，这样即使前两点没做到，至少你还有良好的结构。

行为面试故事结构

[28:22] 先讲要点意味着问题的答案就是第一句话。
[28:53] 先讲要点能让听者分清信息主次，也能帮助你聚焦于正确的细节。
[28:59] 以故事的简短关键词开头是通用的良好沟通建议，不仅适用于面试。
[29:11] 另一种结构通常称为 SAR 或 STAR：情境、行动、结果，通常以要点作为开头。
[29:42] 常见的行为面试错误是行动部分太少；大部分时间应当用于讲述所采取的行动，而不是情境。
[30:04] 另一个错误是没有信息：一个关于给客户群发邮件列表的故事，无法体现这个人的任何特质。
[31:14] 更有力的回答会针对每位客户定制信息，例如先给一位重要客户打电话，并告诉他们自己是第一个被联系的。
[32:03] 这种做法表明你理解人，并且愿意根据沟通对象来定制信息。

面试中用“我”而不是“我们”

[32:20] 过度使用“我们”而不是“我”的现象在担任领导角色的人、大多数产品经理和女性中尤为突出。
[32:32] 只有在确实是团队共同努力时才说“我们”，但许多候选人在面试中使用笼统的“我们”。
[32:44] 即使这是自己的项目、根本不可能有其他人参与，人们也会说“我们”。
[33:07] 面试官要招的是你，而不是你的团队，所以要清楚说明你的位置、你做了什么，以及你如何影响了团队。
[33:24] 绝不要把别人的功劳据为己有，但当那是你自己的行动时，就说“我”。
[33:35] 这种模式往往相当二元：以“我们”开头的回答通常会全程都是“我们”，所以要注意你开头几句话。
[34:03] 至少准备五个主要故事，覆盖领导力错误网格，并填入情境、行动和结果。
[34:20] 了解每个故事传达出关于你的什么信息，并准备好谈论你有哪些不同的做法。

在面试中回答失败类问题

[34:40] 准备好回答关于你会有什么不同做法、错误、失败和弱点的问题，面试官往往偏爱这类问题。
[34:57] 不要粉饰不好的部分；面试官主要想看你是否真的会承认失败。
[35:26] 一个常见的假设是，担任重要职位、做出重要决策的人不可能完美，必定真正失败过；这对非常有经验的人来说有一定道理，但对经验较少的人则有些不公平。
[35:48] 面试官还想看你实际是如何应对糟糕处境的，而不只是你是否承认它。
[35:56] 如果处理得当，失败故事可以让你看起来好得多，而不是只被视为可能把自己搞砸的风险。
[36:08] 要真实并展现情感上的脆弱，选择一个有说服力、重要且在某种程度上改变了你的失败。
[36:27] 大约 95% 的情况下，候选人的故事太弱，需要加强；只有大约 5% 的情况下，失败可能过于严重。
[36:44] 针对不同性别的建议：通常男性通过展现更多情感上的脆弱会表现更好，例如放柔声音，承认事情令人受伤或很难。
[37:23] 对女性来说，表现得过于情绪化可能适得其反；取决于个性，要更清晰、更具体地说明发生了什么，而不是更加情绪化。
[37:58] 无论你是男性还是女性，最好的故事都能与人产生连接，并表明那件事很难，且在某种程度上改变了你。

产品设计面试问题

[38:16] 产品设计问题是典型产品经理面试问题的核心。
[38:28] 常见形式包括为残障人士设计、重新设计最喜欢的应用，或改进给定产品。
[38:53] 面试官看重沟通能力、用户同理心、在良好直觉平衡下的有边界创造力，以及总体产品洞察力。
[39:14] 标准方法从界定用户是谁开始。
[39:39] 确定具体细节，比如确切年龄；像两岁到 10 岁这样的范围太宽泛，因为两岁孩子和 10 岁孩子差别很大。
[40:36] 明确使用场景，因为即使对三岁孩子来说，也有不同目的，比如教抓握、娱乐或教颜色。
[41:15] 对于儿童产品，父母和年幼的兄弟姐妹也是需要留意的利益相关者。
[41:37] 面试官基本上会勾选候选人是否恰当界定了用户，所以不妨稍微做得过头一点。
[41:49] 然后讨论用例、问题和目标，包括像扔笔或踩笔这样的意外用途。

产品经理面试中的最爱产品问题

[42:33] 产品侧问题要求你说出某个类别中最喜欢的产品，比如移动应用或实体产品。
[42:46] 在像谷歌这样的大公司面试时，准备一个该公司的产品或子产品来讨论，并解释你会如何改进它。
[42:57] 永远不要在没有为所有这些类型的问题准备好答案的情况下参加产品经理面试，因为它们非常常见。
[43:13] 你选择的产品最好是你实际使用并喜爱的，而不仅仅是别人觉得酷的东西。
[43:38] 准备好定义用户是谁、为什么别人使用它、竞争和替代方案是什么，以及存在哪些问题。
[44:04] 字面上回答问题的答案，比如称Uber方便且比出租车便宜，是有效的，但无助于你脱颖而出。
[45:18] 你想要的答案不仅是真实的，而且真正展现出洞察力，这是这些问题的棘手之处。
[45:53] 一个有力的例子是一位候选人论证Snapchat类似于现实世界的交流，因为它是短暂的，不像被记录的在线交流。

产品洞察与选择要讨论的产品

[48:07] 一个有效的答案是展示独特视角、体现产品经理技能的答案，尽管这种洞察真的很难获得。
[48:54] Pinterest的设计以图片为主，把图片放在首位，并在很大程度上隐藏文字。
[49:15] 灵感主要来自图片，而文字对获得灵感帮助不大。
[49:28] Pinterest主要围绕事物的创造，这需要视觉图像，而不是更基于文字的知识。
[49:48] 如果你缺乏一个扎实的洞察答案，你可以退而求其次，谈论产品解决的用例以及它如何有效应对这些问题。
[50:10] 并非所有产品都是平等的；像Reddit这样的社交产品非常难，因为它们缺乏清晰的用例，而Uber有非常清晰的用例和问题。
[50:59] 你可能不想选择你最喜欢的产品，而是选择一个你能真正谈论用例以及它如何解决问题的产品，这样就能讨论它如何能变得更好。
[51:25] Pinterest非常擅长激发灵感，但在展示如何实现方面不那么擅长，因为链接经常失效，而且它不提供指导。
[51:52] 演讲者很想让Pinterest能筛选出有明确步骤的内容，类似于按知识共享许可筛选谷歌图片。

产品经理面试中的估算问题

[52:26] 估算问题常被称为脑筋急转弯，但它们不是脑筋急转弯。
[52:36] 关于谷歌禁止这些问题的说法是不真实的；脑筋急转弯多年前就被禁止了，但这些不是脑筋急转弯。
[52:52] 这些被称为估算或费米估算问题，它们实际上是解决问题。
[53:05] 面试官用算法问题来面试开发者的智力，而对产品经理则退而使用估算问题。
[53:20] 许多人认为，粗略估算数字的能力是产品经理的一项根本重要技能。
[53:42] 面试官想知道你能与数字打交道，不害怕数字；除非面试官特别糟糕，否则他们不会看最终答案。
[54:00] 要应对这些问题：提问以消除歧义，构建你的方法，分解组成部分，然后进行标准检查。
[55:23] 正确定义问题并避免做出糟糕的假设，是面试官真正在寻找的东西之一。
[55:33] 在脑海中准备多种结构通常很有用，比如从人口开始或从机场开始。
[56:19] 你最好对美国人口有基本了解，如果没有，向面试官提问是合理的。

市场规模估算：假设与合理性检查

[56:35] 使用像300百万这样的大局整数来代表美国人口，而不是精确数字。
[56:54] 在估算美国售出的书籍时，对人口进行细分，例如按教育水平或收入。
[57:20] 在某个时刻，你必须确定具体数字，例如一个典型的好大学毕业生、有好工作的人每月读多少本书。
[57:40] 注意不要假设你的朋友代表所有人；一位受访者根据他的朋友假设典型的美国人每月读四到六本书。
[58:11] 一位杜克大学的新毕业生假设六分之一的美国人拥有一架三角钢琴，这说明了从自身背景进行概括的风险。
[58:31] 面试官对假设的数字不会过于挑剔，只要你能表明你明白自己不是典型的人。
[59:02] 选择合理的假设并做基本的支撑工作，例如指出你每月读大约四本书，但你在朋友中并不典型。
[59:34] 整个估算应该花几分钟，而不是20分钟。
[59:40] 对结果做基本的合理性检查，例如Gmail的$15十亿除以300百万人约为每人$15，这高得不合理。
[1:00:30] 一个重大错误是迷失在无关紧要的细节中。
[1:00:39] 说出边缘情况，比如书籍被多次销售或图书馆采购，显示出意识，即使你随后认为它们不是重要因素而忽略。

疯狂的假设和案例问题

[1:01:36] 有些人做出疯狂的假设，比如六分之一的美国人拥有一架三角钢琴。
[1:01:41] 另一个假设是普通美国人每月大约乘坐六次商务航班，演讲者对此表示怀疑。
[1:01:54] 演讲者指出，普通美国人年收入达不到200,000美元，所以这类假设行不通。
[1:02:01] 大多数人在假设上都没问题，但有些人会做出离谱的假设，所以你应该自我检查一下。
[1:02:09] 案例题和杂项问题五花八门，可以涵盖许多不同的问题。

构建开放式面试问题

[1:02:23] 候选人可能会被问到问题解决类问题，例如当已发布的功能或新的注册流程导致收入下降时该怎么办。
[1:02:38] 其他问题包括在X和Y之间做选择、挑选更好的策略、向用户群体营销产品，以及为产品定价。
[1:02:44] 亚马逊尤其会问很多定价问题。
[1:02:49] 还有头脑风暴类问题，例如尽可能多地说出你能用回形针做的事情，以及关于某事物在五年、十年或十五年后会怎样的未来类问题。
[1:03:06] 当其他方法都不奏效时，你通常可以退回到界定问题是什么，尽管这并不适用于每个问题。
[1:03:21] 先找到一个结构，然后在这个结构内求解，通常都行得通，甚至对回形针问题这类问题也是如此。
[1:03:33] 对于回形针问题，你可以把思路结构化为：标准用途、在保持形状完整的前提下改变形状、使用多个回形针，以及通过熔化来利用原材料。
[1:04:02] 即使你没有想出最多的点子，你很可能也想出了一些不同的点子，而且这是一种有条理、有方法的思考方式，演讲者喜欢这种方式，也愿意为此招人。
[1:04:14] 试着找到一个结构并推动讨论，同时仍然要绝对倾听面试官的话。

面试沟通与框架

[1:04:24] 目标是承担大部分发言并自己推动讨论。
[1:04:29] 只要有任何机会，都要展现对用户的同理心。
[1:04:35] 试着通过发表聪明的评论来展现洞察力。
[1:04:42] MBA式的框架可以读一读，但它们其实并不是重点。
[1:04:52] 例子包括客户购买决策过程、营销组合、SWOT分析、5C以及波特五力模型。
[1:05:07] 面试官几乎从不指望你把某个框架套用到问题上，因为除非你面试的是MBA专属岗位，否则并不要求你有MBA学位。
[1:05:17] 框架可以帮助你了解框架是什么样子，并揭示你可能没想到的方面。
[1:05:47] 不要盲目挑选一个框架，也不要削足适履，因为问题几乎从来都不是这些框架之一。
[1:05:58] 然后涵盖用户获取和活跃度等宏观指标。

研究公司业务指标

[1:06:09] 值得研究的有用指标包括客户获取成本、收入、利润和利润率。
[1:06:15] 这些指标不仅有助于回答假设性的产品、发布和定价问题，在面试特定公司时也很有用。
[1:06:28] 在很多情况下你拿不到这些指标，这没关系——能拿到就去做。
[1:06:35] 对于较大的公司，你也许能拿到其中一些指标，或者即使拿不到该公司的指标，也能拿到类似公司的指标。
[1:06:44] 对于一家你拿不到数据的广告支持型公司，你仍然可以大致了解广告能赚多少钱，以及它们在什么时候赚得更多或更少。
[1:06:58] 还要考虑公司的优势、劣势、目标，以及他们可能不那么重视的事情。
[1:07:11] 有些公司非常注重收入，而许多初创公司则注重扩大用户群，因此要让产品改进与他们关心的事情保持一致。
[1:07:49] 一家用户增长良好、却反复尝试各种变现策略的公司，是一个很好的信号，说明他们还没搞明白赚钱这件事。
[1:08:03] 走进面试时，要对他们尝试过什么、什么有效、什么无效以及他们可能会尝试什么有基本了解。

产品经理面试的直觉与结构

[1:08:14] 顶级咨询公司的面试通过幻灯片提供案例数据，这与产品经理面试不同。
[1:08:35] 产品经理面试更多基于直觉，因为产品经理在现实生活中缺乏数据。
[1:08:43] 产品经理不可能花3百万美元去研究某件事，所以他们说出自己的想法以及理由。
[1:08:57] 在产品设计和改进中，要愿意运用直觉、为自己的观点提供依据，并在有相反数据时改变方向。
[1:09:16] 要了解你自己是谁，以及别人会对你有什么假设，并在可能的情况下弥补宏观层面的缺口。
[1:09:28] 每个人都应该至少学一点编程，但要关注用户，并明确表明你关心用户。
[1:09:40] 为你的方法找到一个结构，这样即使想法失败，你也能展现出自己是一个有条理、有方法的思考者。

费米估算的时间限制

[1:09:59] 演讲者开放提问环节。
[1:10:09] 一位听众问，费米估算问题是否必须在两分钟内解决。
[1:10:19] 演讲者不会说两分钟，并建议大约五分钟作为大致的参考。
[1:10:25] 时间取决于问题和其他因素，但大致是五分钟，或者可能更少。

产品经理角色：大公司 vs 初创公司

[1:10:42] 产品经理的职责因公司而异，甚至在同一家公司内部也各不相同。
[1:10:48] 在微软或亚马逊，产品经理的职责范围可以从客户代言人和与营销相关的工作，到非常技术性的规格文档撰写。
[1:11:22] 大公司的产品经理拥有多得多的资源，在某些方面更专注于真正的产品经理工作，即通过一份规格文档解决一个问题。
[1:11:41] 初创公司的产品经理身兼多职，可能会参与写代码、做更多营销工作，或与客户交流。
[1:12:02] 这个角色在不同公司和公司的不同阶段会有很大差异。

成为优秀的APM候选人

[1:12:45] 找到一个真正能发挥你优势的职位，比如技术技能、金融或对音乐的热情。
[1:13:12] 开发者在许多产品上都可以同样出色，但产品经理这个角色与产品本身是什么关系更紧密。
[1:13:30] 要清楚自己的表达和优势，并准备好故事。
[1:13:46] 有些人花好几个月过度专注于面试准备，却没有思考如何从根本上成为更好的候选人。
[1:13:57] 少做一点面试准备，多做一些让自己成为优秀候选人的事，比如学习编程，或阅读关于产品设计的书籍和博客。

公共部门到私营部门的PM转型

[1:14:32] 公共部门是一个模糊的类别，所以面试官可能不知道这个角色实际涉及什么。
[1:14:40] 公共部门的PM可能处理过大量官僚事务，也许不是特别技术性的工作。
[1:14:47] 面试官可能会怀疑公共部门的产品管理意味着非常不同的东西，并会深入探究你实际做了什么。
[1:15:00] 要非常准备好阐述你做了什么以及产品经理角色是什么。
[1:15:09] 建立可信度，因为人们会对公共部门经验做出负面假设。

[0:00] 好的，非常感谢大家前来。我是《Cracking the PM Interview》的作者，我知道我至少看到过一本在流传。但再多介绍一下我的背景，我来自计算机科学背景，读了学士、硕士，然后在Google待了一段时间。在那里做了大量面试。我是招聘委员会的成员。然后出来做自己的事情。创办了Career Cup，这算是一个……Q&A论坛吧，我想你可以这么说，围绕技术面试，写了《Cracking Coding Interview》、《Cracking PM Interview》，以及第三本书《Cracking Tech Career》。

[0:31] 我做的其他一些事情，我提到是因为它们稍后会在我要讲的一些内容中出现，所以先给一些初始背景。他们正在试图改革招聘流程、组织结构。所以推出面试培训，在工程和产品管理等方面建立结构化招聘流程。然后我要提到的另一件事，因为它有很多故事会用到，就是我经常被初创公司雇来做我称之为收购辅导的事情。所以当初创公司经历收购或收购式招聘面试时，他们的工程师和PM会像典型候选人一样被面试。

[1:09] 如果你是直接从外面申请的。所以我会告诉你们我在那里看到的一些事情，一些来自那里的故事。因为这给了我一个……非常有趣的数据视角，我可以反复面试同一个人，我可以真正与他们的经理交谈，看看我的看法与他们实际做的事情如何对应，诸如此类。所以我提到的一些故事将在这个背景下。所以只是先给这个初步提醒。废话不多说，幻灯片已上线。人们总是问这个。所以幻灯片在go.gale.com/pmprepslides。

[1:42] 或者如果那太长记不住，给我发邮件，gail@gail.com，主题为PM。Prep，这是一个词，必须是一个词，那会给你立即自动回复，包含幻灯片、一份讲义，我想我稍后会展示，以及一堆其他不同材料。然后人们反正都在这样做，但拍照没问题。我知道人们用拍照来记录幻灯片上的内容，所以那完全没问题。好的。怎么了？一些快速定义。所以PM可以指很多不同的东西。它是一个缩写，所以可以指产品管理。可以是助理产品经理，我想技术上应该是APM。

[2:22] 有时人们也用PM来指项目管理或项目群管理。我要讲的是产品管理和助理产品管理。所以不是项目经理或项目群经理，尽管这些事物之间有一些重叠。助理产品经理角色是一个产品管理角色，但通常面向应届毕业生或职业生涯早期的人。通常不总是，但通常。不过它确实是一个入门级PM角色。

[2:52] 通常有轮岗成分，但确实是一种培训类项目。所以，PM，产品经理，是管理产品，不是管理人。谢谢。正如你们许多人所知，但如果你不知道，管理产品不一定——事实上，我通常会说它不是人员管理角色。你的工作是弄清楚诸如谁是用户、有哪些功能、我们将如何发布、我们何时发布所有这些事情。你对开发者有一些权威、一些领导力，但不一定真正对他们有权威。

[3:27] 所以这些都是非常非常相关的东西。话虽如此，让我们谈谈什么是完美的PM？你想成为什么样的人才能成为PM？所以完美的PM有这些特质。技术技能，他们有产品技能，所以能思考谁是用户。我们需要哪些功能？这类事情。他们有那种商业技能。所以这些是你在MBA中可能会学到的东西。你了解营销之类的，你知道，广告，不管是什么。你有领导和执行事情的能力。

[4:00] 然后你还有我所说的行业技能。我的意思是，如果你是一家金融软件公司的产品经理。行业技能就意味着金融技能，诸如此类。所以行业技能显然会因实际产品而异。但这大概就是典型产品经理的样子。而问题在于，基本上不可能带着所有这些技能进入产品管理领域。你就是……如果你因为做金融而具备行业技能，你可能并不具备……

[4:34] 技术技能，通常如此。所以很难同时拥有所有这些不同的技能。因此完美的产品经理是个神话。所以我要问大家一个问题：当你考虑在产品管理领域找到一份工作时，你如何尽可能接近完美的产品经理？所以你要想一想，好吧，在这五大类中，你具备哪些？你需要获得哪些？然后从面试的角度来看，还有另一件事。我会对你做出什么假设？

[5:05] 所以这最后一点是很多人会忘记的。我猜，人们会假设存在这种神奇的迁移性：如果你有某种特质，我就会知道你具备这种特质。而实际上——你知道，现实中，实际发生的情况并非如此。人们会根据你的背景做出假设。所以我先从偏好说起：我是个非常直率的人。我会实话实说，不会粉饰世界的现实，这并不是说这些是世界的优点。只是说存在这些刻板印象。而当你作为候选人思考时，你不能只是……

[5:42] 假装，或者你可能不想假装这些刻板印象不存在。所以我说的不只是种族主义和性别歧视这类真实存在、正在发生的事情。我也在说来自你背景的其他刻板印象。所以，没关系。呃，我尽量说得更具体些。具体的故事。所以当时我在一个收购情境中，我在帮一个人做准备。他的背景是，我最初带他过了一遍他所谓的初始“推介”。也就是他两分钟左右的简历概述。基本上就是，嗯……

[6:23] 我曾是一名艺术家。然后我回到学校，拿到了人机交互（HCI）学位。然后我去了……你看，我去做了UI设计师。设计、设计、设计，然后我创办了这家公司。如果你看这家公司的产品，它很美。非常、非常美的产品。我不确定它的用例是什么，但那是个很美的产品。他把它发展到了区区两名员工。好吧。所以……

[6:54] 你听到这些，不会觉得这是我想让他分析数据的人。我想让他做定量分析。他能做出真正艰难的商业决策。你，好吧，我们有一个很棒的UI设计职位空缺给你。你为什么不來面试那个职位？但问题是，他想做产品管理。他不想做设计。他想做产品管理。但他背景的一切都在大声宣告设计。对吧？这并不意味着他不能做这些其他事情，但当你的背景就是在大声宣告设计时，人们会据此做出假设。

[7:27] 所以他当时想考虑的是，好吧，看，当他思考这个推介时，对他背景的这种整体看法，不可能让任何人离开时觉得，这家伙设计很烂，对吧？他们会听到艺术、设计、设计、设计、设计。他需要思考的是，我如何把自己推销成：我能做业务。我能处理数字。我能当产品经理。我能真正从产品本身去思考，超越……你知道，它的美观。我能领导开发人员。所以我们需要重塑他的背景，重塑他做事的方式，把重点放在那上面。

[8:03] 于是他把自己的推介改成了这样：嗯，我，你知道，他讲了，他给出了这个整体看法，但他尽可能多地引入了数字和商业决策。而设计部分，与他最初开始的地方相比，几乎成了事后补充。你听完这个新推介离开时会觉得，这太棒了。这里有一位产品经理，不仅会做所有产品经理的事和领导工作等等，而且他还真正、真正懂设计。多么出色、全面的候选人。

[8:36] 所以这就是你思考自己推介的方式：你要想一想，人们会据此做出什么样的假设？所以如果，如果你一直，如果你是从客户支持的角度进入产品管理，或者试图进入这个职业、这个领域。是的。我们可以在高层次上想一想，你可能听说过的那种与……相关的技能和特质，也就是，你知道，聪明且能把事情做成。所以如果我看到一个人是客户支持，有客户支持背景，我会基于他们假设什么？

[9:15] 有人吗？对。客户同理心。太棒了。我喜欢产品经理有这一点。我还会假设什么？不是说人们……那很好。在工程方面。是的，可能不太懂技术。做客户支持的人往往不知道如何编程。这并不意味着这是真的。我只是会做出那个假设。我还可能假设什么？出色的沟通能力。是的，出色的沟通能力。那太棒了。但也许他们并不是真正的执行者。

[9:47] 所以这并不意味着这些东西不真实，但如果你要来做客户支持，你要确保你真正推销的是，比如，我能做战略。我能做这些事情。我会假设你有沟通技巧，你有客户同理心。这并不意味着你想隐藏这些，但你不需要过度推销这些。时间有限。你要真正专注于推销沟通能力，你知道，技术技能，如果你有的话，诸如此类。那市场营销呢？

[10:22] 所以，如果我在面试一个从市场营销背景转到产品管理的人，我会假设什么？完全不懂技术。是的，完全不懂技术。马修·诺里斯。市场营销知识，这对做产品经理非常非常适用。你有数字感吗？也许擅长数字。这取决于市场营销的哪一侧。有些市场营销，是的。有些市场营销，不是。我正要这么说。是的，也许形式重于实质。也许他们甚至会过度推销一些东西，当一个产品经理过度推销东西时，这可能非常危险，对吧？

[10:55] 所以，你知道，你要考虑这类事情。好的。看看我的幻灯片能不能再次正常工作。嘟-嘟-嘟。那……开发呢。想转型到产品管理的开发者。或者19的二月。可能不太擅长市场营销，这会是个问题。这对开发者来说，实际上是成为产品经理之前的一项重要技能。埃弗里特社区。沟通能力一般，是的。你知道，事实上，我实际上会认为开发者被刻板印象化了。

[11:28] 我实际上认为这有点不公平，但开发者常常被刻板印象化为沟通能力差。谢谢。当然懂技术。这意味着，如果你是一名申请产品管理的开发者，你不需要推销你构建的那个很酷的算法。看，我们会明白你可能来自编程背景。如果你是营销人员，如果你是客户支持并且做过一些编程，你提到了算法这个词，太棒了。对吧？就像现在你会想，哇，你实际上很懂战术。我没想到。所以你要考虑你来自哪里，以及你如何推销你实际上有一点背景。

[12:04] 那就是死路一条。我觉得Google Slides就是运行不正常。好的。谢谢。所以。所以你要考虑的不仅是如何展示自己，还要获得这些其他……所以，你知道，对于，如果你没有技术技能，就去获得一些技术技能。这不需要，你知道，你不必花好几年好几年回学校拿计算机科学学位，你可以在Codecademy上那个10周或10小时的课程。那是可行的。

[12:37] 对吧？不，你不会成为伟大的开发者。你不会能够发布自己的应用。但那是可行的。对很多招聘经理来说，他们很难理解，你是产品经理。你说你真的很想进入产品管理。你说你对技术充满热情，为什么你还没有……花几个小时学习如何编程。你怎么解释这一点？现在我知道现实中人们很忙，他们不优先考虑，他们没时间去做，等等等等。但从招聘经理的角度来看，他们常常卡在这一件事上。所以如果你不会编程，就去获得那一点点技术技能。

[13:12] 嗯，产品技能，你要获得产品技能。嗯，显然，你知道，产品学校。你知道，你可以开始写博客。开始拿新发布的产品，开始剖析它们，谈论产品决策并提出新东西。这会帮助完善你的产品思维。并且实际上展示出来。行业技能是很多人，如果你要进入产品管理，而你不是试图进入产品管理，而你不是以开发者的身份来的，你很可能来自另一个行业。

[13:46] 投资银行，类似这样。找到一个你了解的领域，找到一家会重视这些金融技能的公司。那是一条好路。因为现在你有了别的东西。不，你没有开发技能，所以你可以获得一点那方面的技能。你没有产品经验，但你是从一个拥有宝贵技能的角度来的，那就是行业技能。对于商业技能。当然，还有NBA。我要说，例如，我自己有MBA，我也要给出这个建议，看，如果你读MBA的唯一目的是进入产品管理。

[14:25] 那是一种非常昂贵的方式。那是两年。你在放弃。那不只是学费，在顶级MBA项目中每年大约50K。还有机会成本，你放弃了100K的薪水，那很昂贵。呃，你还能用两年时间做什么，如果你说我要花$250,000和两年时间。来打入产品管理，你还能做什么？你可以用这些钱创办一家公司。对吧？所以如果仅仅是从进入产品管理的角度来看，MBA也许不是最好的路径。

[15:02] 如果你想为了其他目的去做这件事，比如建立更好的人脉网络、建立可信度、学习等等，那就是另一回事了。只是不要仅仅为了 BPM 去做这件事。那工作量很大。那要做的事情很多。话虽如此，如果你确实有 MBA 学位，或者你想出于其他原因去读，它确实对你有帮助，尤其是如果你去的是顶尖 MBA 项目。我说过我是个相当直率的人。你要现实地想一想，在职业和声望方面你处在什么位置，以及如果你是从谷歌工程师，或者某个其他顶尖公司出来，却要去一个排名相当低的 MBA 项目，那不会对你有帮助。你不会得到你需要的人脉网络。你不会得到正确的东西。你这是在往下走一大步。如果你要去读，你就要去一个非常非常好的 MBA 项目。

[15:51] 所以你真的要诚实。读 MBA 的主要原因之一就是建立可信度和构建人脉网络。而现实地说，这与学校的声望密切相关。如果你想去学习，有很多比正规教育高效得多的学习方式。你可以在线学习。在线学习的工具太多了。坦率地说，我不认为你真的需要去几乎任何学校学习。你去是为了表明你已经学到了，因为你可以通过任何其他、无数种其他方式来学习。但如果你去读 MBA，要注意硅谷对 MBA 有一点偏见。

[16:27] 我实际上认为总体上人们对 MBA 平均而言还是正面的。但也有很多人持负面看法。所以这就像是正负相抵后偏正面，但仍然有很多负面看法。你真的要非常非常小心，不要给人留下傲慢之类的印象。你可以加以利用。好的 MBA 项目有很多建立人脉的机会。招聘人员会来那里。但来那里招聘产品经理的是大公司的招聘人员。如果你想去初创公司，那就得靠你自己了。

[16:58] 他们不会大批来到 MBA 项目。所以你真的只能靠自己。我还要说的是，很多初创公司，我从我在沃顿的朋友和同辈那里看到的，那些确实专门瞄准……沃顿毕业生的初创公司，往往尤其是那些非常小的、这么做的公司。往往并不是实际上处于最佳位置的那些。他们是那些以为 MBA 能拯救一切的人，而这些人可能本应优先招工程师，却去读了 MBA，结果总体而言并不好。所以你真的需要自己主动去抓住那些招聘机会。

[17:35] 补充一下。我想谈谈面试流程。首先稍微谈谈行为问题。我之前稍微谈过自我推介。你要做的一件事就是准备好快速过一遍你的简历。顺便说一句，这对任何职位、你做过的任何面试都适用。要准备好做这件事。我看到人们犯的一个重大错误就是他们在这里讲得太长了。他们大概最多讲两分钟。一般来说。而且，你知道，我得说大多数人的，只要长度合适，基本上都还可以。

[18:10] 偶尔我会看到特别出色的。大多数人只是中规中矩，然后也就没问题了。你基本上就是给我讲了简历的整个故事。所以你可以通过从 A 点到 B 点到 C 点这样走一遍，做出一个还行、不错的自我推介。按时间正序讲，不要倒序。倒序非常非常令人困惑。而且这意味着你最后讲的是你职业生涯最开始的东西。按时间正序讲。谈谈、点出一些成功的迹象。我说的成功迹象，其实不是指一项成就。我指的是稍微不同的东西。成功迹象可以包括成就。可以包括发布一个功能之类的。

[18:47] 但广义上是指能证明你一直很成功的事情。所以比如。哦，我在亚马逊待了 X 年，然后我离开去加入一家初创公司，因为我的老经理把我招过去和他一起干。这不是一项成就。被招过去不是你完成的事情。但当我听到这个时，我知道你一定做得非常好，你的老经理才会真的把你招过去和他一起干。当然，如果那是你大学时的老朋友，那说明不了什么，对吧？但这确实证明你在亚马逊足够成功，以至于有人把你招走。

[19:23] 所以想一想你能展示成功的快捷方式。然后第三，最后，想想你的爱好。所以任何爱好你都不妨提一下。大多数情况下不要提。除非你认为你的爱好可能会对你产生不好的印象，那……我想这有可能发生，但很少见。它几乎永远不会伤害你。但想一想你是否真的能把它变成加分项。所以任何技术类爱好都会是加分项。比如上 Coursera 的机器学习课程，业余时间开发应用。我面试过的一个人，他的爱好是……

[20:00] 嗯，他一开始先讲了他的爱好，比如他有一个鸡舍，我就想，好吧，不错。提一下那个。呃，我是说，这不算什么，有点疯狂，有点古怪有趣，随便吧，当然可以提，但结果发现他，他好像直到第三次模拟面试才提到，他在鸡舍做的一件事，尽管他看起来不是技术背景，是他造了某种，我猜是机械臂，我猜是用来在晚上把鸡困在里面，困在鸡舍里之类的。我对鸡一无所知，但基本想法就是这样。他造了一个能在天黑时上下移动的机械臂。

[20:37] 嗯，这对产品经理来说其实相当酷。突然间，他就展示出，尽管不是程序员，他也亲自动手了。他学会了如何做某件事。他学会了如何实际构建某个东西。这对产品经理来说非常相关。我不在乎那是养鸡，但那确实很相关。我认识的另一个人喜欢跑步。完全相关。除非你也许在跑步，除非你也许在面试一家与跑步紧密相关的公司。也许在Fitbit就会相关。我不知道。但跑步那部分并不重要。但事实证明……

[21:11] 他报名参加了一场100英里的超级马拉松，实际上就是跑100英里，而不是像骑车100英里那样，那太弱了，对吧？而是真正连续跑100英里。所以就像连续四场马拉松。在实际比赛中，经过所有那些训练后，他最终不得不在大约60英里处退出。那仍然是跑了60英里，这太疯狂了，因为在30英里处他伤了脚踝，所以这个人做了大量疯狂训练才到达那里。然后跑了30英里，这太疯狂了。伤了脚踝，而不是放弃，他好像又继续跑了30英里，直到最后他意识到继续跑下去可能从医学上并不可取。

[21:50] 所以，除了可能对自己健康缺乏判断力之外，他所做的是展示了他工作极其努力。他不会放弃，当……你知道，很容易说让这个成为放弃的借口，呃，那种坚持，你知道，那种越过真正艰难选项而不放弃，天哪，我希望我雇用的人有这种品质。我想要一个有毅力、不放弃、诸如此类的人。想想你的爱好。通常这些看起来完全不相关的事情都有某个小部分它们是相关的。所以把这些带进来。

[22:23] 真正出色的推销者会把所有这些都带进来，并且他们有一个信息。他们有一个类似，我是一个产品经理，喜欢亲自动手，非常坚持，对让人们的故事活起来充满热情。所以如果你能有某种信息在那里。对很多人来说很难，但那些可以成为非常非常有力的推销。有时那些信息通过你讲故事的方式流露出来。而其他时候，我见过人们在我问“跟我说说你自己”时开始说。

[22:58] 你知道，我做产品管理X年了，或者也许我正在进入产品管理。而我喜欢产品管理的地方在于用它让人们的故事活起来。有时这是一个非常明确的信息。你可以用任何一种方式。你要像之前谈到的那样思考你的推销。我会对你有什么假设？你如何纠正这一点以展示你有更全面的背景？你的通话有五分钟。所以让人们的故事活起来意味着不是“我在亚马逊工作了三年，我在这个团队工作，我推出了这个，然后之后我去了微软，我做了这个，然后我做了这个，我做了这个”，而是“你知道，我加入亚马逊是因为我对Kindle超级兴奋，我爱阅读，我爱学习”，把那种色彩带入你的故事，而不只是干巴巴的，基本上不是对你简历的走查，对吧，如果你给出的推销基本上是我能

[23:58] 鉴于你的背景，看你的简历？那没问题。只是不会帮到你。如果你能做出这些出色的推销，那很棒。下一部分是准备好讲出色的故事。所以典型的面试问题，行为问题，告诉他们你做了某某事的时候，当你展示主动性时，当你冒险时，当你失败时，诸如此类。所以你要准备好谈论这些东西。好的。

[24:30] 第一件事就是准备好谈论这些东西的方法。我发现对人们真正有用的是创建这个小网格。横跨列的是每份工作或你简历的主要部分。所以那可以是一个，当然是任何工作。如果你在多个团队工作过，每个团队可以是不同的部分。如果你在业余时间经营一个马戏团，那是你简历的另一部分。然后向下行是大局问题、领导力挑战、诸如此类。填进去，试着用故事填满每个单元格。

[25:04] 再见。你不可能用完全不同的故事填满它。那没关系。会有一些重叠。很多故事既适合领导力也适合错误，诸如此类。但试着尽可能多地把它们放进去。如果你在充实完之后能把它归结为一个关键词，那会让你更准备好能够找到匹配面试官所谈内容的故事。我发现对人们找到故事超级超级有用的另一种方法是从优势和弱点列表开始。

[25:36] 你可以在我的书里找到一个。网上也有很多。但拉出一些优势和弱点列表，然后过一遍那个列表。你的优势和弱点是什么？那是你无论如何都想准备好的问题。作为面试官我不喜欢这个问题，但它会被问到，所以无论如何你都要准备好。但这做的是，当我问一个关于你展示主动性的时间的问题时，你有真正带出特定信息的故事。这对人们找到故事可能超级超级有用，特别是因为很多人思考他们故事的方式是像这些巨大的大局事情，这个产品发布的故事。而很多好的行为故事是非常非常具体的互动。

[26:21] 这是发生在某一天的事情，当时有人因为你展示的方式、你给出的反馈而生气了。而当人们只是在回想发生过的事情时，往往很难想起这些故事。所以从优势和劣势入手，真的非常有用，可以帮你唤起记忆。所以你看，是的，你知道，我算是个爱冒险的人。我确实有毅力。好，让我找一个能展示我坚持不懈的时刻。所以这样做的好处是……当你这样去想的时候，你的故事就有了清晰的信息。

[26:55] 所以当你思考一个回答时，你要想的是，你说的这件事的实际内容、信息是什么？然后你是怎么说的？所以。回答通常应该真正回答所问的问题。所以如果我问的是主动性，那它就应该确实是一个主动性的例子，对吧？而很多候选人就停在这里了。他们会想，“我找到一个符合那件事的故事了吗？太棒了。很好。”而不够关注“这真的传达了你想要传递的关于你自己的信息吗？”所以我会问某人一个例子，关于他们……我开场常用的一个通用问题是，“跟我讲讲一个技术上的……”这通常是针对开发者的。“跟我讲讲一个技术挑战。”

[27:36] 当然，我，嗯……我比较有挑战性的技术项目之一是我构建了一个FTP服务器，它做了X、Y和Z。不错。挑战是什么？然后故事就有点平淡无奇了。更好的故事是，你知道，真正有挑战性的是这件特定的事情，而以下是我采取的方法。所以你要让你的故事不只是字面上回答问题，还要传递那个积极的信息。这就是为什么那些优势、基于优势来构思故事，会非常有用，因为信息对你来说非常非常清晰。这就是你选择那个故事的原因。

[28:09] 然后第三件事是结构要好。即使你在前两件事上失败了，至少你可以有一个好的结构。所以我很喜欢两种结构，它们实际上有点相辅相成。第一种是我称之为“先给核心”。这意味着对我所问问题的回答就是第一句话。跟我讲讲你展现主动性的时刻。当然，让我跟你讲讲我在大学里开设的那门课。现在我知道，当你在讲你的大学有这个问题、它的课程设置，你去找了这位教授以及其他种种事情时，挑战将围绕一门课展开。我可以对你给我的信息进行优先排序，因为我知道你要说什么。而且，你会专注于正确的细节，因为你心里已经清楚，重点是你开设的这门课。

[28:59] 顺便说一句，这是通用的良好沟通建议。这对很多事情都适用，不只是面试。用你即将讲述的故事的简短关键词开头。另一个。就是常说的SAR或STAR，非常相似的东西，但就是情境、行动、结果。而且你通常会用那个核心来开头。所以听起来是这样的。你说情境，你说你采取的行动，然后那些事情的结果。不过你还要考虑的另一个部分是那个信息。

[29:33] 这与那相辅相成。所以我在行为面试中看到的大错误，我一遍又一遍看到的错误，是行动太少。一个故事的重点，当我问你与队友的冲突时，故事的重点不是冲突是什么，而是你如何解决的？你采取了什么行动来处理那个问题？重点是行动这件事，而不是情境。你谈论的大部分时间。你讨论的大部分时间就是行动本身。所以专注于行动。

[30:04] 另一个错误是没有信息。所以，嗯……一个例子是，我问某人，跟我讲讲一个……跟我讲讲工作中一个高压情境。他们告诉我，当然，所以……我们有一个供应商，是Amen。他是，你知道，他们供应一些产品，而他们落后于截止日期，落后于他们的截止日期，最终产生了这个后果。

[30:35] 对我们来说，我们也无法按时完成我们的交付物。然后详细讲这里的产品是什么、为什么、等等等等，所有这些，其实并不重要。他们告诉我，所以我拿到了我们所有客户的名单。我给他们所有人都发了邮件。我告诉了他们情况。最终，我们失去了一个客户，但留住了其他客户。你从这个人身上了解到了什么？所以他们给人发了邮件，他们会用邮件？嗯，他们可能有一份名单。

[31:07] 好吧，你对这个人一无所知。一个更有力的回答是这样的，所以，你知道，我做的第一件事是我知道我们有几个非常重要的客户，他们不仅重要，而且非常爱发声。我知道他们是我们在市场上的关键影响者。我知道我真的需要先针对他们。所以对于我们其中一个客户，我知道他们……真的很想知道自己是第一位的。他们想知道自己是优先的。所以我给他们打了电话，而且我不只是先给他们打了电话，我还让他们知道我是先给他们打的。我确保他们知道他们是我第一个打电话的人。

[31:43] 下一个人。我知道他们……想要掌握所有事实。我知道，如果他们觉得我在隐瞒什么，就会感到沮丧。所以我做得有些过头，确保把产品的各种细节、正在发生的情况都告诉他们，甚至包括他们其实并不真正需要知道的细节，只是为了让他们知道自己已经掌握了所有可能的信息。当你这样处理时，你听到的是：天哪，这是一个……理解人的人。而且他们愿意根据交谈对象来定制信息。这些是我希望PM身上发生的事。所以，我们会思考信息是什么。

[32:16] 然后我看到的第三个错误是，我发现这个错误非常非常普遍地出现在很多人身上。不成比例地，我看到它出现在担任过领导角色的人身上，而大多数产品经理都是如此，女性也是如此。所以，那就是人们说“我们”而不是“我”。所以，当真正是“我们”、真正是团队时，你应该说“我们”。但很多人在面试中发生的情况是，他们使用这种全局性的“我们”。我看到人们说“我们”，即使那实际上全是他们做的。我的意思是，我真的见过人们说“我们”，当那是他们自己的项目，而且实际上不可能有其他人参与时。

[32:51] 而它仍然是，好吧，我们落后于计划了。是我。所以真正关注你的措辞。你说“我们”，它就应该意味着“我们”；当那真的是你做的事时，说“我”。当你谈论领导力时，我们谈论的是你的团队，诸如此类。我不是在雇用你的团队。我是在雇用你。所以领导力很重要，与团队的互动很重要。但你仍然应该阐明你的位置是什么、你做了什么、你如何影响团队、他们如何反应。基于此，但你应该尽量使用“我”。

[33:24] 现在，你当然永远不想把别人做的事归功于自己。那真的非常糟糕。但当那是你自己、是你自己的行动时，你应该说“我”。而很多人会退回到“我们”。我发现这往往相对二元。意思是，当我听到一个回答以“我们”开头时，它通常整段都保持为“我们”。所以要非常仔细地注意你在回答中说的前几句话。如果你听到自己在说“我们”，就要非常小心你回答的其余部分。确保通过说“我”来纠正。

[33:57] 好，然后把这些都放在一起。做出这种网格。所以这是，所以拿，你想要有，我会说，至少五个主要故事，是你非常擅长讲、更愿意讲的。覆盖那些领导力错误的故事，就是之前那个网格。并填写这里的这个小网格。所以谈论情境、行动、结果，知道信息是什么。这说明了你的什么？这如何表明你是一个更好的PM？然后还要准备好谈论你做了什么不同的事。这是一个太常见的问题。

[34:32] 所以拿你真正想要被追问的五个故事，并能够填满整个网格。所以。还有最后一件关于你会做什么不同的事。所以，你知道，错误、失败、诸如此类、弱点。为这些东西做好准备，面试官。这是……面试官最喜欢的一些问题，要非常非常准备好。而……这里最重要的事情是不要粉饰坏的东西。当我问你失败时，当面试官问失败、错误、诸如此类时，他们主要寻找的一件事是：你真的会承认坏的东西吗？

[35:11] 我做很多面试官培训，那时我会问人们他们最喜欢的问题是什么。总有人说错误或失败。我问他们为什么，他们在寻找什么，而最重要的是：我想知道这个人会承认失败。第二件事是，如果你真的失败过，就有一种假设：如果你真的担任过重要职位、做过重要决定，你不可能完美，所以你肯定真的失败过。如果你没有真正失败过，你过去就没有真正产生过影响。我认为，对于一个非常有经验的人来说，这……有些公平。

[35:44] 对于经验较少的人来说有些不太公平，但这是一个常见的假设。然后他们还想看到你如何回应那些坏的东西。所以不只是你会不会承认，而是你在那种情况下实际如何回应？这些故事——很多候选人把它们想成：我如何通过回答这些问题而不把自己搞砸？那真的是错误的角度。如果你用正确的方式处理，这些故事可以让你看起来好得多得多。所以你要做的是真实。你要有点情感上的脆弱。

[36:15] 我稍后会谈到这一点。你希望它是某种引人注目的、重要的东西。并且在某种程度上改变了你。几乎总是。我会说几乎总是。我会说95%的情况下，候选人的故事太弱了。有百分之五的时候，那个失败像是，哦，也许那太多了。但95%的时候是，好吧，你需要把它加强一点。嗯……这里我要进入带性别视角的建议了。我是一个相当直率的人。

[36:50] 通常情况下，男性会做得更好。通过更加、通过刻意让自己在情感上更加脆弱。这些是那些你失败的地方。你搞砸了、你让团队失望了、你不得不解雇人、发生了不好的事情。你不想走进去时表现得好像这完全没有在情感上触动我。你实际上想要在情感上稍微更脆弱一些。平均而言，这些只是平均值，这取决于你作为一个人，但通常男性想要在情感上稍微更脆弱一些。这意味着诸如放柔你的声音、承认事情伤害了你、承认那很难。

[37:23] 她的女性这取决于你的个性。这些只是一般化的概括。但对于女性来说，如果你进来时超级情绪化，那可能会适得其反。所以你必须审视你的个性，你给人什么印象，如果你一开始就给人更情绪化的印象，放大情感脆弱性可能不会对你有多大帮助。你想要的是更清晰、更具体地说明发生了什么，而不一定是更情绪化。男性，可能想要放大情感。情感的一面。再说一次，这基于你的个性，但也部分基于人们拥有的刻板印象。

[37:58] 所以要注意这些事情。最好的故事能建立连接。无论你是男性还是女性，最好的故事都能与人建立连接。它们表明它们表明这是——你知道，很难，它在某种程度上改变了你。好的。下一个主题，产品设计。所以把那些偏软性的东西放一边。算是把产品设计放一边。所以这算是PM问题的关键，典型PM问题的关键。这些可以是很多不同的东西。有一整套问题是，你会如何为空白残疾设计空白？盲人、聋人等等。

[38:34] 所以B，你知道，有大量的人会问那样的问题。有，你知道，你会如何设计你最喜欢的应用？有大量那样的问题。然后还有挑选这个特定产品。你会如何设计这个？或者你会如何改进这个东西？或者有时候，你知道……第一个问题，你会如何设计一个更好的空白？所以对于这些问题，面试官寻找的是沟通能力。这始终是任何面试问题的一部分，沟通。还有用户同理心。在某种程度上还有创造力，但那在某种程度上被良好的直觉所平衡。所以这算是这种有边界的创造力。

[39:08] 本质上，归根结底就是好点子。然后是通用的产品洞察力。所以。思考这些问题的标准方式。定义用户是谁，所以当你在设计一个谷歌产品、不管是什么时，定义那个用户是谁，在这里问一堆问题。所以。如何设计一支笔。你从哪里开始？你是谁？儿童。哦。

[39:39] 多大？这是一个非常重要的问题。我见过有人，我问过这个问题，然后我说：“好吧，我让你假设。”那么我们假设什么年龄？三岁。这完全合理。我见过有人说，好吧。年龄两岁到10岁。现在，两岁的孩子。就像这样。一个10岁的孩子就像在写论文。对吧？那是一个疯狂的大范围。现在，正如我要说的，作为面试官，我个人实际上会建议不要问那样的问题，因为我认为它有点偏向父母。

[40:18] 但不幸的是，这种事情。经常发生，你知道，对候选人来说。你知道，要真正意识到那些用户是谁。三岁的孩子。现在我们往哪里走？事先。谢谢。他们会用这支笔做什么？是的，我的意思是，这有点重要。所以，即使对一个三岁的孩子来说，也有不同的使用场景。你是想教他们如何正确握笔吗？那是非常不同的一类事情。它应该是有趣的吗？它应该是教他们关于颜色的吗？人们使用笔可能有 lots of 不同的事情。而随着你提高年龄，这一点就更加真实了。

[41:00] 一支笔，你知道，一个八岁的孩子可能有很多不同的用途。进入成年人，对吧。我让你设计一个计算器。那么，谁在使用它？在哪里？在工作中？在家里？当你为儿童设计产品时，儿童是，那是一个用户。当我说用户是儿童时，但父母也是。他们那个18个月大的小弟弟也是，他拿到了它，现在正在吮吸它。这是另一个，你知道，至少是你想要意识到的利益相关者。你想要意识到他们的墙壁、诸如此类的东西。所以你想要真正、真正小心用户。

[41:37] 一个主要的事情，面试官基本上有这个复选框，他们会想，“这个人是否恰当地定义了用户？”要非常、非常确保你真正、真正恰当地定义了用户。在这里稍微过一点头。确保你搞定了用户。然后讨论他们的使用场景、问题、目标。那将是诸如墙壁之类的事情。意识到这个问题。意识到某物的毒性。意外的使用场景，比如把笔扔过房间、踩到它、诸如此类的事情。一支对三岁孩子来说超级脆弱的笔不是一支很好的笔。

[42:07] 它不是一支能用很久的笔。然后你着手设计它。然后你做这个整体的总结。而且……不要忘记用户。不要忘记用户。对此要真正、真正清楚。在任何甚至带有一丝产品设计、产品意味的事情中，你想要做的一件事，某件你在思考如何做某事的事情，定义那个用户，确保那真正、真正清楚。所以，然后还有另一件事，另一种流行类型的问题，而这些从根本上说是产品侧的问题。

[42:39] 但这只是，你知道，你最喜欢这类产品中的哪一个？比如移动应用、实体产品等等。还有那家公司的产品。所以特别是如果你正在面试像谷歌这样的大公司，要有一个产品，有一个子产品可以谈论。然后你会如何改进它？永远、永远、永远、永远、永远不要在没有准备好所有这类问题的答案的情况下走进产品经理面试。大错特错，因为这是非常常见的问题。谢谢。所以你应该了解每个类别中你的产品。

[43:12] 你为什么喜欢它？它应该是你使用的东西。不应该是……“哦，我奶奶用这个很酷的东西。”现在，如果你有孩子，也许可以勉强过关，一个给你孩子的产品，仅在你确实经常与它互动的情况下，也许可以。但理想情况下，它应该是你使用并且喜欢的东西，而不仅仅是别人觉得酷、你觉得做得好的东西。定义用户是谁。当然，你应该是用户之一，但可能还有其他使用场景。

[43:43] 为什么其他人使用它？你应该能够谈论竞争对手是谁。有哪些替代产品或解决方案。存在什么样的问题？始终准备好谈论你为什么要改进它。你会如何规划？记住这一点。这整件事的重点是你要展示你是一个好人。加拿大。很多这些答案字面上回答了问题，这些答案并非不合理。它们实际上完全合理、有效。它们对你毫无帮助。

[44:14] 事实上，我会说这是其中很大、很大的一部分。举个例子。你最喜欢的产品是什么？嗯……有人说到哪里？听过这个答案很多很多次。Uber或Lyft，其中一个。你为什么喜欢它？天哪。方便。当然。更便宜，是的，比出租车便宜。酷。还有什么？易于使用，是的。

[44:45] 这些都是有效的答案。我的意思是，如果我在和……你知道，我妈妈说话，我试图向她推销，嘿，你完全应该，你知道，下载Uber或Lyft。什么，什么，什么，我为什么要那样做？哦，超级方便。你知道，拿起手机，点个按钮就能下单，真的很方便。比出租车容易多了，之类的。这些绝对是有效的答案。但当你听到这些时，你不会觉得，哇，这真是一些有趣的见解。我觉得你会成为一个好的产品经理。任何人都会给出这个答案。糟糕的产品经理，永远不该当产品经理的人也会给出同样的答案。

[45:18] 你想让自己看起来像个好候选人。你想给出不仅真实，而且真正展现洞察力的答案。这就是这些问题的棘手之处。所以让我们找个人来试试，好吧，让我举个例子说明什么是洞察。我面试过的一个人谈到了Snapchat。那是三年前。所以Snapchat不算新，但比现在要新。他们给出了一个答案。

[45:51] 大概是关于……Snapchat，他们谈到现实世界中的交流本质上是短暂的。我对你说的话，除非是在这个语境中，否则不会被记录。我可以做任何事。我可以做个鬼脸。我可以说些蠢话。我可以说些冒犯的话。没人知道。对吧。这让人们自由得多。一旦你打开摄像机开始记录一切，你就会对自己做的事稍微小心一些。而在线交流本质上是记录下来的。

[46:22] 它改变了人们的行为方式。短信和所有其他这些东西永远无法完全类似，因为——你知道自己被看着，你知道你做的任何事都可能反过来咬你。他们论证说，Snapchat更接近模拟现实世界的交流。因为它允许人们说一些临时的话。他们还谈了一些具体的实现方式。但他们的核心部分是，看，这比其他的在线交流更、更接近现实世界的交流。那种答案展现了洞察力。它展示了对交流如何影响人们、记录如何影响人们的理解。那展现了洞察力。

[46:59] 这是件有趣的事，我从朋友那里收到一些有趣的图片。喜欢它的正当理由，但它没有向我展示关于你的任何东西。那么有人想试试他们最喜欢的……网站吗？Pinterest。很好。你为什么喜欢它？它是……我的意思是，这就是我的担忧。好的。也有很多种类我可以选择。还有资本。好的？

[47:30] 所以允许——更好。是的。好的。所以让你可以探索东西，创建自己的墙之类的。再见。完全有效的答案，这不是要为难你。那是我要给我妈妈的答案。对。实际上，我真的应该开始用它。我妈妈实际上非常懂技术。但这就像经典例子。不，说真的，她拥有电气工程博士学位。她实际上真的、真的很懂技术。是我继父。还在学电子邮件。全都被记录下来了，对吧？

[48:02] 所以是的，这种答案就像，你知道，这是一个有效的答案。真的很难获得那种洞察力。来展示一些像是，这是一个真正独特的视角，真正展示了产品经理技能。那么有人再来一个。你可以选Pinterest或其他东西。是的。哦，阿拉。谢谢。我使用它的原因之一。第四。是因为我在我的国家长大。复制粘贴社会。嗯，但是——网上的东西。

[48:33] 注意。能不能把这一点讲清楚，以及为什么它也会延伸到灵感获取上。所以如果我想获得灵感，拜。对。继续。看看。表格，或者我可以查一下，嗯，我会如何设计我的混音。好，好，好。好，这是个不错的开始。不过我们再聊多一点。Pinterest 在他们的设计中做了什么，帮助你获得灵感。谢谢。

[49:05] 图片为主。所以这就开始变得更多一点了，对吧？就像他们真的专注于把图片放在最首要的位置，并且基本上把文字隐藏起来。因为我们获得灵感的方式，实际上是通过图片。文字实际上并不能真正帮我们获得多少灵感。在很多情况下，尤其是你可以说 Pinterest 很大程度上围绕的是事物的创造，而你确实需要那些视觉图片来激发创造东西的灵感。而不是专注于知识，那会更加以文字为基础。所以你要真正试着思考，你如何才能展示一些东西，不只是字面上说出你为什么喜欢某样东西，而是真正带出产品洞察，而这很难做到。

[49:43] 但这些才是真正非常出彩的答案。现在，如果你做不到这一点，你仍然可以退而求其次。如果你觉得自己没有一个真正扎实、能展现洞察的答案，或者即使你有，你仍然可以退而求其次说，这里是 Pinterest 解决的使用场景。以及他们如何以非常有效的方式做到这一点。那仍然会做得相当不错。当你在考虑这些时，当你在考虑你想谈论什么产品时，有一件事要注意。并不是所有产品都是生来平等的。有些产品真的非常非常难做。

[50:14] 所以，很多时候社交产品非常难。很难谈论为什么 Reddit 是你最喜欢的网站。因为没有那么清晰的，好吧，这是我的使用场景，以及 Reddit 如何解决我的使用场景。因为使用场景就像是找乐子。除非你能给出一个真正说明它为什么帮助你找乐子的答案。但这很难，因为没有那么清晰的使用场景。Uber，有一个非常清晰的使用场景和问题，你可以谈论它如何解决这个问题。Pinterest，

[50:45] 是社交的。但它仍然开始有一些使用场景。一些清晰的，这是一个问题，而这是 Pinterest 如何解决它。所以，要注意，当你在考虑你想在这里谈论什么产品时。你可能并不真的想拿你最喜欢的那个。你想拿一个你能够真正谈论使用场景以及它如何解决这些问题的产品。因为这样你才能开始谈论它怎样才能更好？它怎样才能更好地解决那个问题？所以我可以谈论 Pinterest。我一直喜欢做的一件事，我喜欢创造。

[51:16] 你可以看看我的 Facebook 上的东西，但我迷上了木工，我迷上了，你知道，做那种疯狂精致的蛋糕，而 Pinterest 很棒。它全都是关于创造。但它不擅长的一件事是，它非常擅长激发灵感。但它不那么擅长的是，好吧，但我怎么到达那里？我怎么做那件事？它和你知道的，它来自哪个网站有一些关联，但非常弱。那个网站经常，你知道，链接是失效的。它不提供那些说明。我真的很希望能在我真正看着，让我实际做这件事的时候，能够按有清晰步骤的东西来筛选。

[51:55] 想想 Google Images，你可以筛选那些，你知道，具有某些知识共享许可之类的东西。我很想在 Pinterest 上能够筛选。为了，这是我实际如何做那件事。反正已经有那么多图片了，让我按那个东西来筛选。这样我实际上就不只是获得灵感，还能着手执行。呃，但很多社交产品并不那么容易做到这一点。所以只要注意这一点。好。下一个话题，估算题，这个会稍微快一点，所以这些就是你听说的那种脑筋急转弯。它们不是脑筋急转弯。

[52:30] 如果你听说过像 Business Insider 这样的网站说，你知道，Google 禁止了这些问题，那完全不属实。Google 并没有禁止这些问题。有人要么被错误引述，要么说错了，我不知道是哪一个。并且说 Google 禁止了像这样的脑筋急转弯。这些不被视为脑筋急转弯。而且，脑筋急转弯很多很多年前就被禁止了。但这些不被视为脑筋急转弯。这些叫做估算题，费米估算题。它们实际上是解决问题。不是脑筋急转弯。人们要找的是……

[53:01] 基本的智力衡量。聪明程度。你知道，如果人们本质上是通过算法题来面试智力开发者的。如果对产品经理你没法那样做，他们就退而求其次用这些。所以他们在考察聪明程度，他们在考察，很多人觉得，粗略估算一个数字的能力从根本上来说是产品经理的一项重要技能。因为你想知道做这个功能是否重要，我们应该预期多少用户，甚至有多少人需要根据这个属性来筛选。

[53:37] 所以很多人觉得粗略估算是从根本上重要的特质。他们还想知道，你可以和数字打交道，你不害怕数字。所以这就是人们在考察的。他们不是，除非你有一个非常非常糟糕的面试官，极其糟糕的面试官，他们不是在考察最终答案。他们可能甚至都不知道实际的最终答案。所以应对这些问题的一种方法是，在这里真的真的相信我。这些是解决问题。它们不在于你得到的数字，它们是解决问题。所以，首先你要问一堆问题来消除任何歧义。构建你的方法，有一个结构。

[54:10] 把这些组成部分拆解开来，然后做标准检查。那么，我们拿这样一个问题来举例：每天有多少架飞机飞越美国上空？谢谢。你想知道什么？只是夏季的航班，还是——所有飞机。好问题。所有飞机。我觉得都可以。国内和国际的。两个都是好问题。你怎么定义飞机？比如直升机算不算在内？我字面上指的是飞机，还是泛指航空器？

[54:45] 嗯，我指的是纸飞机，对吧？大概不算。但无人机呢。好。有没有介于两者之间的东西？这些重要吗？我用了一个很奇怪的表述，“飞越美国上空”。那么这指的是字面上的、比如横跨全国的航班吗，指的是在美国某地起飞和降落的飞机吗，即使它是在，你知道的，沿着海岸飞——是的。旧金山到圣迭戈，诸如此类。一架从中国起飞、在旧金山降落的国际航班，它算飞越美国上空还是不算？

[55:19] 所以你要定义这些东西。你要非常、非常小心。要特意去定义这一点。这实际上是面试官在考察的事情之一：你能否恰当地定义一个问题？并且不做出糟糕的假设。然后你提出一个结构。如果可能的话，在脑子里对多种结构有个概念往往很有用。所以，你可以从这样一个视角来处理“每天有多少架飞机飞越美国上空？”这个问题：人？有多少人需要坐飞机，他们需要多频繁地坐飞机？

[55:50] 还有，除了人之外，还有别的东西需要飞吗？或者你可以从机场的视角出发。所以是两种不同的方法，两种都可能行得通。我不知道哪一种会更容易。我不知道哪一种会更好。反正哪一种更好其实并不重要。但在脑子里对两种不同的方法有个概念会有帮助。然后你开始拆解这些组成部分。所以假设我在做“美国每年卖出多少本书”，而你已经对那意味着什么做了一些定义。那么，美国有多少人？你最好对美国人口有个基本概念。

[56:24] 如果你没有，那这件事——我认为是可以向面试官提问的。尤其是如果你不是来自美国，没有基本概念就更情有可原了。但要使用一个宏观的整数。不要用那个确切的答案，312 百万之类的。用 300 百万。我们这里谈的是非常、非常粗略的数量级。所以是 300 百万人。好。那么你通常会把它拆解开来。你通常会以某种方式对它进行细分。嗯，对于美国卖出的书，我会做的可能是按教育水平来细分。

[56:58] 或者按收入。但大概会按教育水平。所以我大概会说，好，我们取大学毕业生，我们取那些，再取那些没上过大学的人。也许我们想弄清楚怎么处理那些辍学的人。也许在大学毕业生中，我们想按收入进一步细分。也许一开始就该按收入细分。我不知道。但你对那个人群做了细分。然后你要采用一些基本的概念。在某个时候，你基本上得想出一些数字。那么，一个来自好大学、有一份好工作的典型毕业生，每个月读多少本书？

[57:35] 我不知道。在某个时候你会说，我和我的朋友们是这样的。但要小心，你要真正明白，这是你和你的朋友，不是所有人。我在一次面试中遇到一个人……根据他的朋友来假设典型美国人读书的情况。大概每月读四到六本书。我认为这比实际情况要夸张得多。我还认识另一个人，被问到美国有多少钢琴调音师？

[58:08] 而且，嗯……更糟的是，这个人是杜克大学的新毕业生，而杜克大学本来就有一种刻板印象，就是有很多富家子弟，而她假设每六个美国人中就有一个拥有一架三角钢琴。哇，我很确定不是这样的。所以你要非常、非常小心。人们对于你假设什么数字并不会过分挑剔，只要你不表现出完全无法理解你并不是那个典型的人。对吧？好，所以你假设像你这样的人每月读四本书，而实际上是两本。

[58:46] 好。那是非常、非常无关紧要的。当你假设是六本，而实际上连一本都不到，那就有点更成问题了。因为那样我就会想，你作为一个产品经理，是不是无法设身处地为别人着想，无法意识到你并不是那个典型的人？大多数情况下，你只要挑选合理的东西、做出假设就行。做基本的论证来支撑它们。我想大概是……我是一个相当活跃的读者。我每月大约读四本书。但我知道我对我的朋友来说是不寻常的。我预计典型美国人更接近四本，更接近一本。

[59:20] 或者一个有一份高薪工作的典型大学毕业生读的更像是多少？做基本的论证，但这没什么大不了的。然后你继续往下做这件事。总数，你可以练习这个，但总的时间应该是……几分钟就能解决，而不是 20 分钟。这些不是耗时很长的事情。几分钟。我们来做这个。然后你做检查。这是很多人忘记的一个重要部分。所以如果你算出，你知道，Gmail，你在计算 Gmail 赚多少钱，你得出，你知道，$15 十亿。

[59:53] 也许你对那是多少钱没有很好的感觉，但15十亿美元除以300百万是多少？有人替我算过，我不知道。我想大概是，我不知道，每人15美元，差不多。那很多。Gmail 绝不可能在所有美国人（并非所有人都是 Gmail 用户）中每人赚15美元。绝不可能。所以做一个基本的 Java 合理性检查，检查一下。这就是那个，如果你从第二步对其它方法有了想法，那通常就非常有用。

[1:00:25] 所以做一个基本的 Java 合理性检查。所以我把这些都过了一遍。好，人们犯的主要错误是迷失在次要细节中，跑去计算一些根本不重要的东西。如果你说出像一年卖出多少本书，然后你只是引入，嘿，我们是否应该担心被多次售出的书？那真的很有用。

[1:00:55] 但那样你可能就不需要在意。比如，那可能不是一个大因素。我们是否应该担心图书馆每年使用、购买多少本书？我不这么认为。我支持它们的理由，再说一次，这来自一位作者，但作为作者我无法想象那会构成很大的销量。所以对于整个图书销售市场来说，它可能不是销量的很大一部分。但你提出这一点，你甚至意识到这些小边缘情况，这显示了积极的东西。

[1:01:27] 所以，记住，想想这个其它数据来源，比如那些其它图书销售来源，但你仍然可以忽略它们。你不必计算所有东西。然后那些疯狂的假设，每六个美国人中就有一个家里有三角钢琴，对吧？每，你知道，有人假设普通美国人每月大约乘六次商务航班，我就想，天哪。我不认为普通美国人一年乘六次商务航班。我是说，普通美国人可不是年收入200,000美元。

[1:01:59] 那根本行不通。所以，你知道，大多数人在假设上还可以，然后有些人做出疯狂的假设。所以就在那里试着检查一下自己。好，最后一件事，我想，是这类案例和杂项问题。这些五花八门。你可以问很多不同的问题。所以这些是你可以被问到的一些基本问题类型。你可能会被要求做那种解决问题的事情。所以你推出这个功能，结果是这样。你会怎么做？你推出这个新的注册流程，收入下降了。

[1:02:34] 你会怎么做？所以能够处理这样的事情。我们应该做 X 还是 Y？什么会是更好的策略？你会如何向这个用户群营销这个产品？你会如何给这个产品定价？亚马逊尤其会问很多定价问题。你会如何推出这些东西？然后还有这些奇怪的头脑风暴问题。你会如何，你知道，尽可能多地列出你能用回形针做的事情？有时是未来主义问题。你认为这个东西五年、十年或十五年后会在哪里？有一个巨大、巨大、巨大的桶，你知道，问题的想法。

[1:03:06] 所以，当其它一切都不行时，你通常可以退回到一些主要的东西。定义问题是什么。对所有这些事情并不都适用。它不适用于，你知道，尽可能多地找出你能用这个回形针做的事情，但这种结构通常有效，找到一个结构然后解决它。即使对于像尽可能多地列出你能用回形针做的事情这样愚蠢的问题，你也许至少能做的是，好，让我们先想想回形针的标准用途，然后想想通过改变回形针的形状但基本保持其完整你能做的事情。让我们想想如果我们可以使用许多回形针，你能用那个做什么？

[1:03:53] 然后让我们想想你能用回形针的原材料做什么，比如把它熔化。那是一个结构，对吧？它不是你能使用的唯一结构，但它是一个结构，你可以开始那样处理它。即使你没有想出最多的事情，你可能也想出了一些不同的想法。至少我要说，那是一种非常有条理、有方法的思考方式。我喜欢有条理、有方法的人。我想雇用他们。所以至少你能做到那样。所以试着找到一个结构。然后试着推动讨论。试着成为那个人，这并不意味着你不听面试官。绝对要听面试官，但你想成为说大部分话的那个人。

[1:04:26] 你想推动那个讨论。对用户有同理心。如果可能的话，如果有任何机会向用户展示那种用户同理心，就展示出来，那真的很重要。然后试着展示洞察力。试着找到一些东西说，天哪，那是一个聪明的评论。所以有一些框架你可以阅读。如果你喜欢框架，你可以阅读这些框架。那是你在 MBA 课程中学到的那种东西。但那真的真的不是重点。所以这些是像客户购买决策过程和营销组合、SWOT 分析、5C、门户、高力量这样的东西。

[1:05:01] 这些你都可以读。对某些人来说，这可能有用。读一读也没什么坏处。但面试官几乎从不指望你拿这些框架中的一个去套用到某个问题上，因为除非你面试的是MBA专属岗位，否则没人指望你有MBA背景。不过这些框架的用处在于，让你大致了解针对一个问题，框架可能长什么样，同时也让你思考一些你或许没想到的方面。所以，当你要推出一款产品时，你会考虑投放渠道吗？

[1:05:32] 我记得那是四个P之一。你会考虑五个C的各个方面吗？我已经记不清了，但比如客户之类的。你正在思考一些你或许没想到过的事情。所以你可以看看这些。只是别像俗话说的那样，硬把方枘塞进圆凿。别盲目地挑一个框架就往里套，因为几乎从来都不是这些框架中的某一个。然后就是没有指标。所以，宏观指标、用户获取相关的东西、活跃度，也就是人们在做什么，以及所有跟钱有关的东西。

[1:06:09] 获取一个客户的成本是多少？公司的收入是多少？利润是多少？利润率是多少？诸如此类。做这些事情非常有用，不仅是在思考一个假设的产品、你会如何发布某个东西、如何给某个东西定价时有用，而且在你去具体公司面试时，了解该公司的这些指标也很有用。在很多很多很多情况下，你实际上拿不到这些指标。这没关系。能拿到就拿。对于规模较大的公司，你或许能拿到其中一些数据。在某些情况下，即使你拿不到那家公司的指标，你或许也能拿到类似公司的指标。

[1:06:44] 所以，假设有一家公司靠广告维持运营。好，你拿不到关于它的信息，但你能不能大致感受一下广告能赚多少钱、什么时候赚得多、什么时候赚得少？另外你可以思考的是，这家公司的优势、劣势和目标，以及他们可能不那么优先考虑的事情。所以某些公司非常在意某些事情。有些公司非常非常专注于收入。有些公司非常专注于，你知道，很多初创公司非常专注于扩大用户群。

[1:07:21] 当你走进那场面试，思考产品的改进时，理想情况下你希望与他们对产品改进的方向保持一致。他们在意的是扩大用户群。也许他们并不在意收入那一块。这很难说，因为那家初创公司还没在利润上做出任何成绩，只是一直在大力增长用户，公司内部可能越来越有一种声音在说，我们真的得把利润这件事搞明白。如果你看到一家公司用户增长相当不错，并且不断尝试不同的变现策略，那是一个很好的信号，说明他们还没搞定赚钱这一块。

[1:08:03] 也许你希望带着一些基本想法走进去，比如他们试过什么、什么有效、什么没效，也许还有他们可能会尝试的一些东西。对这类指标要有普遍的了解。在这些面试中要明白，如果你做过顶级咨询公司的咨询面试，那些面试是这样的，你知道，你拿到一个案例，然后你说，嗯，你知道，我真的很想了解一些关于客户获取产品的信息。他们就说，哦，你知道什么？我们有一张幻灯片正好展示了这些信息。产品经理面试不是这样的。

[1:08:35] 产品经理面试更多是基于你的直觉。所以，你知道，你并没有这些数据，因为这就是产品经理的日常。你没法花3百万美元去研究某个东西，从而得出一个新想法来塑造某个东西的战略，而是，嗯，我是这么想的，这是我坚信的，这是我坚信的理由。所以，当你在思考产品设计、改进之类的事情时，你希望走进去时，你知道，你希望走进去时愿意运用你的直觉，并且能支撑自己的观点，在遇到反驳时能改变方向。不，我不是说遇到反驳，我是说当你遇到相反的证据时。然后把其他一切都忘掉。清楚你是谁，以及人们会对你有什么样的预设。

[1:09:19] 所以要清楚，这些宏观的东西中，哪些你有很好的覆盖，哪些你也许覆盖得不错但可能不那么明显。然后尽可能去弥补差距。每个人都应该学点编程，如果还没学的话，至少学一点点。但记住要关注用户。如果用户的身份多少相关，就要明确表明你是那个关心用户的人。然后，如果可能的话，为你的方法找到一个结构。这样即使其他一切都失败了，你的想法很烂，随便怎样，至少你已经证明了你是一个有条理、有方法论的思考者。

[1:09:52] 而且希望这个结构实际上也能带来更好的内容，但至少你已经证明了你确实是以有条理的方式进行沟通的。那么，说到这里，我很乐意开放提问。好的。哦。是的。我是不是听到你说第一个问题是你必须在两分钟内解决？我不会这样。所以问题是，你必须要在两分钟内解决费米估算问题吗？我不会说两分钟。我会说五分钟左右是一个不错的通用大致范围。

[1:10:25] 这取决于问题和其他一些因素。但是的，大约在五分钟的范围内，可能更少。是吧？在大公司做PM和在初创公司做PM有什么不同？所以大公司的PM和初创公司的PM。PM的角色，到处都是五花八门。你可以在微软或亚马逊有一个PM角色，在整个公司里做的事情截然不同。

[1:10:56] 你会在微软有一个PM，就想想我在那里有过的具体朋友，其中一个在做真正的客户布道工作。他们非常接近做市场营销。他们与客户大量交谈，做高层次的 messaging。然后你有另一个PM，在做低层次的非常非常非常非常技术性的写规格。所以它们可以是一个巨大巨大的范围。从大局来看，我会说大公司的PM有更多的资源。

[1:11:28] 所以他们更专注于……他们在某些方面更专注于真正的PM工作，这么说其实很有问题，但他们更像是，这是这个东西，我在解决这一个问题，这是我的规格。初创公司的PM更多地是戴多顶帽子，这本来就是PM的核心，所以我不想说那不是核心PM工作，但他们可能会在需要时跳进代码。他们可能会跳进来做更多的市场营销工作。他们可能会出去和客户交谈。所以他们可能做更多的事情，但这在不同公司、公司阶段等等之间可以变化很大。

[1:12:10] 是的。所以对于正在面试市场营销评审的人，你有办法为内部PM角色学习，对于更大的科技公司，你会建议他们如何学习并成为一个真正伟大的团队而不仅仅是一个好的团队？所以，关于面试APM角色的问题，你如何成为一个真正伟大的候选人，而不仅仅是一个还行的？

[1:12:40] 我的意思是，很难说，因为那里有太多可说的了。我想我会考虑的一件事是找到一个真正能发挥你……比如找到合适的角色，找到一个真正能发挥你优势的角色。所以有些人，如果你超级技术，找一个真正技术性的角色。那些是非常非常有价值的技能。如果你非常擅长金融或者你对音乐非常有热情，找到那个真正能发挥它的角色。开发人员在很多方面可以被安排到许多不同产品中的许多不同角色，并且同样出色。

[1:13:20] 我不会说在技术栈中有多个角色，但在做这个的产品、做那个的产品中同样出色。产品经理角色更多地与产品是什么相关联。如果可能的话，找到一个真正适合你背景的角色，然后你知道我谈到的很多其他事情，真正清楚你的信息传递，你的优势是什么，准备好故事。你知道，有时候人们，我这么说很讽刺，但有些人把太多重点放在面试准备上，花几个月又几个月又几个月做面试准备，而没有太多思考，比如，我如何真正从根本上让自己成为一个更好的候选人。所以我会，我会鼓励人们少一点面试准备，多一点，让自己成为一个伟大的候选人。所以那就是学习编程，那就是，你知道，对于产品经理，阅读关于产品设计的书，阅读关于产品设计的博客，现在就开始做，让自己真正成为一个更好的候选人，而不仅仅是一个在面试中看起来更好的人。是吧？

[1:14:19] 你会给一个在公共部门做过产品管理并想转到私营部门的人什么建议？所以我会给一个在公共部门做过产品管理并想转到私营部门的人什么建议。公共部门很模糊。我最初的想法是公共部门的产品管理。你可能一直在与很多官僚主义打交道。你可能没有在做超级技术性的东西。产品管理角色本身，我想知道公共部门的产品管理是否意味着非常非常不同的东西。所以作为面试官，我会有点像是，好吧，你真正在做什么？而不是如果你在谷歌是产品经理，我有点所以我会非常准备，真正能够阐明你做了什么，那个产品经理角色是什么。

[1:15:08] 并建立可信度，因为人们会对在公共部门工作过的人做出负面假设。

查看英文原始字幕

[0:00] Alright, well thank you all so much for coming. So I'm the author of Cracking the PM Interview, which I know I saw at least one copy floating around. But to tell you a bit more about my background, I come from a computer science background, did bachelor's, master's, and then was at Google for a while. Did a ton of interviewing there. I was on the hiring committee. And then kind of broke off onto my own thing. Started Career Cup, which is sort of a... Q&A forum, I guess you could say, around technical interviews, wrote a Crackling Coding Interview, Crackling PM Interview, as well as a third book, Crackling Tech Career.

[0:31] Some of the other things I do, which I mention because they're going to come up a little bit later on in some of the things I talk about, so just give some initial context. who are trying to reform their hiring process, structure things. So rolling out interview training, creating a structured hiring process across engineering and product management and all that. And then the other thing that I'll mention, because it has a lot of stories that will come in, is I often get hired by startups to do what I call acquisition coaching. So when startups go through acquisition or acqui-hire interviews, they The engineers and the PMs get interviewed just like typical candidates would.

[1:09] if you were just applying off the streets. And so I'll tell you about a few of the things I've seen there, some stories from that. Because it's given me a... very interesting sort of look at data where I get to interview the same person repeatedly, I get to actually talk to their manager to see, how my perception maps to what they're actually doing, things like that. So some of the stories I'll mention are going to be in that context. So just giving that initial kind of heads up. Without further ado, slides are online. People always ask this. So slides are online at go.gale.com/pmprepslides.

[1:42] Or if that's too long to remember, shoot me an email, gail@gail.com with the subject PM. Prep, that is one word, must be one word, and that'll give you immediate auto response with the slides, a handout that I'll, I think I'll show later on, and a bunch of other different materials. And then people are doing this anyway, but pictures are fine. I know people use pictures to record content on the slides, so that is totally fine. Okay. What's up? some quick definitions. So PM can refer to a lot of different things. It's an abbreviation, so that can mean product management. It can be an associate product manager, which I'm I guess it would technically be APM.

[2:22] And sometimes people also use PM to refer to project management or program management. I'm going to be talking about product management and associate product management. So not project manager or program manager, although there is some overlap between these things. The associate product manager role is a product management role, but it's typically for new grads or people early in their career. Typically not always, but typically. It's certainly an entry level PM role though.

[2:52] often has a rotational component, but certainly a training kind of program. So, the PM, the product manager, is managing the product, not the people. Thank you. As many of you all know, but if you don't, it's managing product is not necessarily In fact, typically I'd say it is not a people management role. And your job is to figure out things like who are the users, what are the features, how are we going to launch, When are we going to launch all these kinds of things? You have some authority, some leadership of the developers, but not necessarily actually authority over them.

[3:27] So that's all very, very relevant stuff. That said, let's talk about What is the perfect PM? Who do you want to be to be a PM? So perfect PM has these kind of attributes. technical skills, they have product skills, so they can think about who is the user. What features do we need? These sort of things. They have the kind of business skills. So these are the kind of things you might pick up in an MBA. You understand things about marketing and all, you know, advertising, whatever it is. You have the ability to lead and execute on stuff.

[4:00] And then you also have what I call industry skills. What I mean by that is if you are a product manager for a A financial software company. Industry skills would mean financial skills, something like that. And so industry skills are obviously going to vary depending on what the actual product is. But that's sort of what the typical PM looks like. And the thing is that it is essentially impossible to enter product management. with all of these skills. You just... If you have industry skills because you are doing finance, you probably don't have...

[4:34] technical skills. typically. So it's really hard to have all of these different skills. So perfect PM is a myth. So a question for you all, when you think about landing a job in product management is How do you come as close to the perfect PM as possible? So you want to think about, okay, so of those, you know, five big buckets, what of these things do you have? And what do you need to acquire? And then from the purpose of interviews, there's this other thing. What am I gonna make what am I gonna assume about you?

[5:05] So this is a, this last thing is something that a lot of people forget. kind of assume, I guess, that there's this magic transferability where if you have some attribute, I'm going to know that you have this attribute. And that's in--. you know, realistically, that's not actually what happens. People make assumptions based on your background. So I'm going to start preferences by saying I'm a very blunt person. I'll tell it like it is and I'm not going to sugarcoat the reality of What the world is like and this is not saying this is not these are good things about the world. It's just saying there are these stereotypes that happen. And when you're thinking about, it being a candidate You can't just...

[5:42] pretend or you probably don't want to pretend like these stereotypes don't exist. And so I'm not just talking about you know, racism and sexism, these kind of things, which are real, which are happening. But I'm also talking about other stereotypes from your background. So, That's okay. Um, I'll try to be more specific. specific story. So I was, doing in an acquisition context, I was helping somebody prepare. who His background was, I walked him through initially his kind of initial, what I call pitch. So his two-minute kind of walk through his resume. And it's basically, well...

[6:23] I was an artist. And then I went back to school. and got a degree in HCI, so human computer interaction. And then I went to... See, I went to be a UI designer. Design, design, design, and then I started this company. And if you look at the company's product, It was beautiful. Very, very beautiful product. I'm not sure what the use case was in this and that, but it was a beautiful product. that he grew to a whopping two employees. Okay. So...

[6:54] you hear that and you don't think you know what this is someone I want analyzing data. I want him doing quantitative analysis. He can make real hard business decisions. You Okay. we have a great UI design role open for you. Why don't you come interview with that? But the thing is, he wanted to do product management. He didn't want to do design. He wanted to do product management. But everything about his background screamed design. Right? and That doesn't mean he can't do these other things, but when you have a background that just screams design, People are going to make assumptions based on that.

[7:27] So, What he wanted to think about there is, okay, look, there's no way when he thinks about this pitch that this overall view of his background, that anyone's going to walk away thinking, This guy sucks at design, right? They're going to hear art and design and design, design, design. He wants to think about how do I sell myself as like, I can do business. I can do numbers. I can be a PM. I can think really about the product beyond... you know, the prettiness of it. I can lead developers. And so we need to kind of reshape his background and reshape his how he did things to Focus on that.

[8:03] And so he changed his pitch into being a like, Well, I, you know, He talked, he gave this overall view, but he brought in numbers and business decisions as much as he possibly can. And the design piece was. was compared to where he started with was almost an afterthought. And you walk away from this new pitch being like, This is awesome. Here we have a PM. who can not only do all the PM stuff and the leadership and stuff, but he really, really understands design, too. What an awesome, well-rounded candidate.

[8:36] And so that's the way you want to think about it with your pitch is you want to think about What kind of assumptions are people going to make based on that? So if, If you have been, if you're entering product management from, or trying to enter the career, the field from a perspective of customer support. Yep. We can think at a high level of, skills and attributes of this thing you probably heard about withage. which is, you know, smart and can get things done. So if I see someone who's a customer support, has a customer support background, what am I going to assume based on them?

[9:15] Anyone? Right. Customer empathy. Fantastic. I love that in a PM. What else am I going to assume? Not that people that's good. in engineering. Yeah, probably not very technical. Customers for people tend not to know how to code. Doesn't mean it's true. I'm just going to make that assumption. What else might I assume? Great communication skills. Yeah, great communication skills. That's fantastic. But maybe they aren't really executors.

[9:47] So that doesn't mean these things aren't true, but if you're going to come to customer support, you want to make sure that you're really selling the like, I can do strategy. I can do these things. I'm going to assume that you have communication skills, that you have customer empathy. It doesn't mean you want to hide those things, but you don't need to oversell those things. There's limited time. and you want to really focus on selling the communication, you know, the the technical skills if you have any, things like that. What about marketing?

[10:22] So if I'm interviewing someone who's coming from marketing background into product management, what am I going to assume? non-technical at all. Yeah, not technical at all. Matthew Norris. marketing knowledge, which is very, very applicable to being a product manager. Do you have a number? Maybe good with numbers. It depends on what side of marketing. Some marketing, yes. Some marketing, no. I was just about to say. Yeah, maybe style over substance. Maybe they even oversell some things, which can be really dangerous when you have a product manager who oversells stuff, right?

[10:55] So, you know, you want to think about these kind of things. All right. See if my slides want to work again. Do-do-do. What about... development. Developer who wants to transition into product management. Or February of 19. Probably not so good at marketing, which is going to be a problem. That is an actually important skill for a developer. before a product manager. Everett Community. Average communicator, Yeah. You know, in fact, I would actually argue that developers are stereotyped.

[11:28] I actually think it's unfair somewhat, but developers are often stereotyped as being poor communicators. Thank you. Certainly technical. That means that if you're a developer applying for product management, you don't need to sell that cool algorithm you built. Look, we are going to get that you could come from a coding background. If you're a marketer, if you're a customer support and you've done some coding, You mentioned the word algorithm, fantastic. Right? Like now you're like, whoa, you're actually tactical. I did not think that. So you want to think about how do you, where are you coming from and how are you going to sell that actually you have a little bit of background.

[12:04] And that's death. I think the Google Slides is just not working properly. Okay. Thank you. So. So you want to think about not just how you present yourself, but also getting these other So, you know, for a, if you don't have technical skills, get some technical skills. It doesn't take, you know, you don't have to spend, years and years, going back to school to get a computer science degree, you can do the 10 week or 10 hour, you know, like course on Codecademy. That's something.

[12:37] Right? No, you're not going to be a great developer. You're not going to be able to launch your own app. But that is something. And for a lot of hiring managers, it's hard for them to wrap their head around You are a product manager. You say that you really want to enter product management. You say that you're passionate about technology, Why haven't you... taken a few hours to learn how to code. How do you justify that? And now I know realistically people are busy, they don't prioritize, they don't get around to doing it, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the perspective of a hiring manager They often get stuck in this one thing. So if you don't know how to code, get those little bit of technical skills.

[13:12] Um, Product skills, you want to acquire product skills. Well, obviously, you know, product school. You know, you can start blogging. and start taking new products that are launched and start dissecting those and talk about product decisions and proposing new things. and that'll help refine your product thinking. and also actually show it. Industry skills are something that a lot of people, if you're entering product management, and you're not are trying to enter product management, and you're not coming at it as a developer, you may well be coming from another industry.

[13:46] iBanking, something like that. Find a field that you know find a company that will value those finance skills. That's a good way in. because now you have something else. No, you don't have the development skills, so you can get a little bit of that. You don't have the product experience, but you're coming at it from a perspective with a skill that's valuable, which is industry skills. for business skills. There is, of course, the NBA. And I'm going to, for instance, by saying I have an MBA myself, I and I'm also going to give the advice that, look, If you want to get an MBA for the sole purpose of breaking the product management.

[14:25] That's a really expensive way of going about it. That's two years. You're giving up. That's not just tuition, which at a top MBA program is going to be like 50K a year. But it's also that opportunity cost, you're giving up a, 100K salary, that's expensive. uh what else could you have done with two years of your if you're saying i'm gonna spend $250,000 in two years of my time. to break into product management, what else could you do? You could start a company with that. Right? So maybe an MBA isn't the best path to go about if it's solely from the perspective of getting into product management.

[15:02] If you want to do it for other things, building better network, establishing credibility, learning, et cetera, that's a little bit different thing. Just don't, from this, solely do BPM. It's a lot. It's a lot to do. That said, if you do have an MBA or you want to do it for other reasons, it does help you, particularly if you go to a top MBA program. I said I'm a pretty blunt person. You want to think realistically about where are you in your career, prestige, wise and what MBA program are you going to if you are going from a your Google engineer and you know or some other top company and you're going to a pretty low ranked MBA program it's not going to help you You're not going to get the network that you need. You're not going to get the right things. You're taking such a step down. You want to go to a really, really good MBA program, if you go at all.

[15:51] So you really want to be honest. And one of the major reasons to get an MBA is to establish credibility and build a network. And that is hugely tied to the prestige of the school, just realistically. If you want to go to learn, There are many way more efficient ways to learn than formal education. You can learn online. There are so many tools to learn online. You don't, frankly, I don't think you go really to almost any school to learn. You go to show that you've learned because you can learn any other, any number of other ways. But if you go through an MBA, be aware that Silicon Valley has its little bit of MBA bias.

[16:27] I actually think it's still overall actually people are on average positive about MBAs. But there are plenty of people who are negative. So it's like it balances out to positive, but there's still a lot of negativity. You want to be really, really careful you don't come off as arrogant or anything like that. You can take advantage. Good MBA programs have a lot of networking opportunities. Recruiters come there. But it's recruiters from the big companies that come there to recruit product managers. If you want to go to a startup, you're on your own.

[16:58] They don't come in large numbers to MBA programs. So you're really, really on your own. And what I'll say is also a lot of the startups, what I've seen from my friends, from my peers at Wharton, the startups which did really target... Wharton grads are often, particularly the very small ones who did that. are often not the ones in actually the best positions. They're the ones who thought an MBA is going to save everything and who probably need to prioritize engineers instead tackled MBAs and did not work out well generally said. So you really you really need to put on yourself to tackle those recruiting opportunities.

[17:35] Add. I want to talk about the interview process. So first up is talking a bit about behavioral questions. So I talked a little about the pitch. One thing you want to do is you want to be ready to give a quick walk through your resume. This is true, by the way, for any role, any interview you've ever done. Be ready to do this. So, major mistake I see people do is they just talk way too long here. They're talking like two minutes max. generally. And, you know, there's, I'd say most people's are, as long as they're the right length, are basically okay.

[18:10] Every once in a while I see exceptional ones. Most people are just kind of in this and then it's fine. You basically just told me the whole story of your resume. So you can do the okay, fine pitch by just walking from point A to point B to point C. Go in forward chronological order, not reverse. Reverse is very, very confusing. And it means that the last thing you talk about is the stuff from the very beginning of your career. Go forward chronological order. Talk about, hit on quick shows of success. What I mean by a show of success, I don't actually mean an accomplishment. I mean something slightly different. A show of success can include accomplishments. It can include launching a feature, something like that.

[18:47] but it's broadly things that demonstrate that you've been successful. So something like. oh, I spent X years at Amazon and then I left to join a startup after my old manager recruited me out to join him. That is not an accomplishment. Getting recruited out is not something that you accomplished. But when I hear that, I know you must have been doing very well for your old manager to really recruit you out to join them. Now, if it's your old friend from college, it doesn't say anything, right? But it is a demonstration that you were successful enough at Amazon to have somebody recruit you out.

[19:23] So think about quick ways you can show success. And then third, lastly, think about your hobbies. So any hobby you might as well mention. Don't, for the most part. Unless you think that your hobby might reflect poorly on you, which... I suppose it could happen, but it's rare. It'll almost never hurt you. But think about if you can actually make it a positive. So any technical hobby is going to be a positive. So taking Coursera class on machine learning, building app on the side. Somebody I interviewed was, his hobby was...

[20:00] Well, so first he started off with his hobbies, like he has a chicken coop and I'm like, all right, cool. Mention that. uh i mean it's not it's kind of crazy it's kind of quirky fun whatever like sure mention it but as it turns out he was he like only by like the third mock interview did he mention that one of the things he's done with a chicken coop though he was seemingly non-technical was he built some sort of like i guess mechanical arm to i guess trapped the chickens inside it, inside their coop at night or something like that. I don't know anything about chickens, but that was the base idea. He built an arm that can go up and down when it's dark.

[20:37] Well, that's actually pretty darn cool for a product manager. All of a sudden, he just showed that despite not being a coder, he got his hands dirty. He learned how to do something. He learned how to physically build something. That is really relevant for a product manager. I don't care that it's chickens, but that's really relevant. Somebody else I know loves to run. Totally relevant. Unless you're maybe running, Unless you're maybe interviewing for a company that is doing something very tied to running. Maybe at Fitbit it would be relevant. I don't know. But the running piece didn't matter. But as it turns out...

[21:11] He had signed up for a 100 mile ultramarathon, which is actually running 100 miles, not like biking 100 miles, which is wussy, right? But actually running 100 miles straight. So like four marathons back to back. During the actual race after all that training he ended up having to quit around mile 60 Which is still running 60 miles which is insane because at mile 30 he hurt his ankle so this guy Did this insane amount of training to get there. Then ran 30 miles, which is insane. hurt his ankle and rather than giving up, he like kept going for another 30 miles until finally he realized it's probably not medically advisable to actually keep going.

[21:50] So in addition to perhaps a lack of sense about his own health, What he did was he showed he works incredibly hard. He doesn't give up when... you know it's very easy to say let this be an excuse to give up uh that persistence that you know that pushing past really hot hard options and not giving up gosh i'd like to have that in somebody i hire i want to have someone who's persistent doesn't give up stuff like that Think about your hobbies. Often these things that seem totally irrelevant have some little piece that they are relevant. So bring those in.

[22:23] The really great pitchers bring all that stuff in and they have a message. They have a like, I'm a product manager who... loves to get my hands dirty, who is very persistent, who... is passionate about bringing people's stories alive. So if you can have some sort of message there. hard for a lot of people, but those can make really, really strong pitches. Sometimes those messages come out kind of through the way you tell the story. And other times I've seen people start off when I say, tell me a bit about yourself. Say.

[22:58] You know, I've been in product management for X years, or maybe I'm breaking into product management. And what I love about product management is using it to bring people's stories alive. Sometimes it's a very explicit message. You can do it either way. And you want to think about your pitch as I talked about earlier. What am I going to assume about you? And how do you correct that to show that you have a more well-rounded background? five minutes for your call. So bringing stories alive means not a i worked at amazon for three years and i worked on this team and i launched this and then after that i went to microsoft and i did this and then i did this and i did this but a you know i joined amazon because i was super excited about kindle i love to read i love to learn it's bringing that kind of color into your stories that's not just a dry just not essentially the walkthrough of your resume right if if you're giving a pitch that i could basically

[23:58] given your background, looking at your resume? It's fine. It's just not going to help you. If you can do these great pitches, that's awesome. The next piece of this is being ready to give great stories. So typical interview questions, behavioral questions, tell them about a time when you did such and such, when you showed initiative, when you took a risk, when you failed, some things like that. So you want to be ready to talk about that stuff. All right.

[24:30] First thing is just ways to be ready to talk about that stuff. What I found to be really useful for people is create this little grid. And across the columns is every job or a major chunk of your resume. So that can be a, certainly any job. If you worked on multiple teams, each team could be a different chunk. If on the side you run a circus group, that's another chunk of your resume. And then down the rows are big picture questions, leadership challenges, things like that. Fill that in, try to fill in every cell with a story.

[25:04] Bye. You're not going to be able to fill it in with all different stories. That's fine. There's going to be some overlap. Lots of stories fit into both leadership and mistakes, something like that. But try to get as many there as possible. If you can boil that down into a single keyword after you're done kind of fleshing out, that'll make you a lot more ready to be able to find a story to match whatever the interviewer is talking about. The other way that I found to be super, super useful for people to find stories is to actually start from lists of strengths and weaknesses.

[25:36] You can find one in my book. There are many online as well. But pull up some lists of strengths and weaknesses and just go through that list. What are your strengths and weaknesses? That's a question you want to be ready for anyway. I don't like it as an interviewer, the question, but it is asked, so you want to be ready for it regardless. But what this does is mean that when I ask a question about time out of time when you showed initiative, You have stories that really bring out particular messages. That can be super super useful for people to find stories especially because the way that a lot of people Think about their stories are like these huge big-picture things the story of this product launching. And a lot of good behavioral stories are very, very particular interactions.

[26:21] It's something that happened on one particular day when someone got mad about the way that you showed it, you gave feedback. And it's often hard for people to remember these stories when they're just thinking about stuff that happened. So starting from strengths and weaknesses can be really, really useful to just jog your memory. So you see, yeah, you know, I am kind of a risk taker. I do have persistence. Okay, let me find a time that I can show that when I am persistent. So what's nice about that is it's... It comes when you think about it that way you have a clear message in your story.

[26:55] So when you think about an answer. you want to think about, well, what is the actual content of the message of the thing you're saying? And then how do you say it? So. Responses should generally answer the actual question. So if I'm asking about initiative, it should actually be an example of initiative, right? And that's where a lot of candidates just kind of stop. They're like, "Have I found a story that matches that thing? Awesome. Great." And not enough about, "Is this really delivering the message you want to send about yourself?" So I'll ask someone about an example for when they... One of my generic questions I'll start off with is, "Tell me about a technical..." This is often for developers. "Tell me about a technical challenge."

[27:36] Sure, I, um... One of my more challenging technical projects was I built an FTP server which did X, Y, and Z. Cool. What's the challenge? And the stories just kind of fall flat. The better stories are, you know, and what was really challenging about was this particular thing and here are the ways I went about. So you want your stories to not just literally answer the question, but also deliver that positive message. That's why those strengths coming up with stories based on strengths can be really useful because the message is really, really clear to you. That's why you pick that story.

[28:09] And then the third thing is be well-structured. Even if you fail at these first two things, at least you can have a good structure. So there's two structures that I like a lot, and they actually go kind of hand in hand. The first one is what I call nugget first. And this means that the answer to the question I ask is the very first sentence. Tell me about a time when you showed initiative. Sure, let me tell you about the class I started in college. Now I know when you're talking about how your university had this problem, its curriculum, and you went to talk to this professor and all this other stuff, the challenge is going to be around a class. I can prioritize the information you're giving me because I know what you're getting at. And moreover, you will focus on the right details because you already have it in your mind that the point is this class you started.

[28:59] And this is, by the way, general good communication advice. This works for a ton of things, not just interviews. Start off with the quick keywords of the story you're about to tell. The other one. is what is often called SAR or STAR, very similar things, but Situation, Action, Result. And often you'll preface that with that nugget anyway. So this is what it sounds like. You say the situation, you say the actions you took, and then the result of those things. The other piece you want to think about though is that message.

[29:33] That goes hand in hand with that. So big mistakes I've seen with behavioral things, mistakes I see over and over and over again, is too little action. The point of a story, when I ask you about a conflict with a teammate, the point of the story is not what was the conflict, it's how did you address it? What were the actions that you took to handle that problem? The point is this action thing, not the situation. The bulk of the time talked. about that you discussed is the action itself. So focus on the action.

[30:04] The other mistake is no message. So, um... you an example of that is I asked somebody, tell me about a... Tell me about a high pressure situation at work. And they tell me, sure, so... we had a supplier who was Amen. who was, you know, they're supplying some product and they were falling behind deadline, behind their deadline, and that ended up having this consequence.

[30:35] on us where we couldn't meet our deliverables as well either. And then to go into detail about here's the product and why and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, that doesn't really matter. They tell me, so I got a list of all our customers. I emailed all of them. I told them the situation. In the end, we lost one customer, but retained the others. What have you learned about this person? So they emailed people, they know how to use email? Um, They maybe had a list.

[31:07] All right, you've learned nothing about this person. A stronger answer is something like, So, you know, first thing I did was I knew we had a couple of really important customers who aren't just important but highly vocal. And I knew that those were our key influences in the market. I knew I really needed to target them first. So with one of our customers, I knew that they... really like to know that they're first. They want to know that they are a priority. So I called them and not only did I call them first, but I let them know that I called them first. I make sure that they knew they were the first ones I called.

[31:43] Next person. I knew that they... want to have all of the facts. I know that they get frustrated if they think that I'm holding things back. So I went overboard to make sure I gave them all sorts of details about the product in what's going on, even details that they actually didn't really need to know, just so they knew that they had all the information possible. When you approach it like that, you're hearing Gosh, this is a person who... understands people. And they are willing to customize messages depending on who they're talking to. Those are things I'd like to happen to PM. So, we will think about what are the messages.

[32:16] Then the third mistake I see is, I see this very, very commonly for many, many people. disproportionately I see it for people who are have been in leadership roles which is most product managers, as well as women. So, and that is people saying we instead of I. So, you should say "we" when it's truly "we," when it's truly a team. But what happens for a lot of people in interviews is they use this global "we." I see people saying we. even when It's really all them. I mean, I literally seen people do we say we when It is their own project and literally nobody else could possibly have been involved.

[32:51] and it's still well, we were falling behind schedule. It's I. So really focus on your wording. You say we, it should mean we, when you say, when it's really something you did, say I. When you're talking about leadership, We're talking about your team, things like that. I'm not hiring your team. I'm hiring you. So leadership matters, that interaction with your team matters. But you should still be articulating what your place was, what you did, how you influenced the team, how they reacted. based on that, but you should try to use I.

[33:24] Now, you, of course, do not want to ever take credit for something someone else has done. That's really, really bad. But when it's yourself, when it's your actions, you should say hi. And a whole lot of people fall back to we. And what I found is that this tends to be relatively binary. Meaning that when I hear an answer that starts off as we, it usually stays as we the whole time. So pay very careful attention to the first few sentences you say in answer. If you hear yourself saying "we," be really careful about the rest of your answer. Make sure to correct by saying I.

[33:57] Okay, and then put all this together. make this kind of grid. So this is, so take, You want to have, I'd say, at least five major stories that you're really well-talked prefer to talk about. Stories that cover those leadership mistakes that earlier grid. and fill in this this little grid here. So talking about the situation, the action, the result, Know what the message is. What is this saying about you? How does this show that you are a better person? PM. And then also be ready to talk about what you do differently. That's just such a common fault question.

[34:32] So take your five stories that you really want to be followed on. and be able to fill in that whole grid. So. There's this last thing about what would you do differently. So, and you know, mistakes, failures, things like that, weaknesses. Be ready for this stuff, interviewers. This is... some of the interviewer's favorite questions, be very, very ready for it. And The... Most important thing here is don't sugarcoat the bad stuff. When I ask you about failures, when an interviewer asks about failures, mistakes, things like that, one of the major things that they're looking for is will you really admit to bad stuff?

[35:11] I do a lot of interviewer training, and that's when I ask people what their favorite questions There's always somebody who says mistakes or failures. I ask them why, what are they looking for, and it's The big thing is I want to know that the person will admit to failures. A second thing is if you've really failed, there's an assumption that If you've really been an important positions. making important decisions, you can't be perfect, so you must have really failed. If you haven't really failed, you haven't really had impact in the past. I think that's-- somewhat fair when you have a very experienced person.

[35:44] somewhat unfair for someone with less experience, but that is a common assumption. And then they also want to see how do you respond to that bad stuff. So not just will you admit to it, but how did you actually respond to it in that situation? These are stories-- a lot of candidates think about these as, how do I not screw myself up by answering these questions? And that's really the wrong perspective. These stories can make you look much, much better if you tackle them the right way. So what you want to do is you want to be real. You want to be kind of emotionally vulnerable.

[36:15] I'll talk about that in a little bit. You want it to be something that was compelling, that was significant. And that changed you in some way. Almost always. the I'd say Almost always Tucson. I'd say 95% of the time. Candidate stories are too weak. there's five percent of the time when that failure is like, ooh, maybe that's too much. But 95% of the time it's, Okay, you need to amp that up a little bit. Um... This is where I'm going to get into gendered advice here. I'm a pretty blunt person.

[36:50] Typically, men will do better. by being more by making a point of being more emotionally vulnerable. These are things that where you failed. where you screwed up, you let the team down, you had to fire people, something bad happened. And you don't want to go in acting all like this did not emotionally touch me at all. You actually want to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable. On average, these are just averages, it depends on you as a person, but typically men want to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable. That means things like softening your voice, admitting that things hurt you, admitting that it was hard.

[37:23] Her women It depends on your personality. These are just generalizations. But for women, if you come in being super emotional, that can backfire. So you have to look at your personality how do you come across if you come across more emotional in the first place Amping up the emotional vulnerability is probably not going to help you a whole lot. You want to be just clearer, more specific about what happened and not necessarily be more emotional. Men, Probably want to amp up the emotional. emotional side. Again, this is based on your personality, but also a bit on stereotypes that people have.

[37:58] So be aware of those things. The best stories connect. Whether you're a man or woman, the best stories connect with people. They show that They show that this was-- you know, hard that it changed you in some way. Okay. Next topic, product design. So putting away all the soft-ish. Kind of putting away, product design. So this is kind of the crux of PM questions, of the prototypical PM questions. These can be a lot of different things. There is a whole set of questions which is, How would you design blank for the blank disability? Blind, deaf, et cetera.

[38:34] So B, you know, there's a huge number of people who ask questions like that. There's, you know, how would you design your favorite app? That's a ton of questions like that. And then there is a pick this particular product. How would you design this? Or how would you improve this thing? Or sometimes, you know... That first question, how would you design a better blank? So With these questions, what interviewers are looking for is communication. That's always a piece of any interview question, communication. But user empathy. to some extent creativity, But that's kind of balanced by good instinct. So it's kind of this bounded creativity.

[39:08] Good ideas, essentially, is what it comes down to. And then general product insight. So. standard kind of way of thinking about these questions. Define who the user is, So when you're designing a Google product, a whatever it is, define who that user is, Ask a bunch of questions here. So. How to design a pen. Where do you start? Who are you? Children. Oh.

[39:39] How old? It's a really important question. I've seen people and I've asked this question, And I said, "Okay, I'll let you assume." So what age are we going to assume? Three. That's perfectly reasonable. I've seen somebody who said, OK. age two to 10. Now, Two-year-old. It's like this. A 10 year old is like writing essays. Right? Like that was a crazy big range. Now, as I will say, as an interviewer, I actually personally would advise against a question like that because I think it's kind of has a bias towards parents.

[40:18] But unfortunately, this stuff. happens a lot for you know, for candidates. You know, be really aware of who those users are. Three-year-olds. Now where do we go? beforehand. Thank you. What are they going to use the pen for? Yeah, I mean, this kind of matters. So there are, even for a three-year-old, there are different use cases. Are you trying to teach them how to hold a pen correctly? That's a very different kind of thing. Is it supposed to be fun? Is it supposed to be teaching them about colors. There's lots of different things people could be using a pen for. And as you ramp up the ages, that is even more true.

[41:00] A pen, you know, an eight-year-old could have many different uses. go into adults, Right. I asked you to design a calculator. Well, who's using that? Where? At work? At home? When you're designing a product for children, The children are, that's one user. When I say that the user is children, But so are parents. So is their little brother who is 18 months and got a hold of it is now sucking on the It's another, you know, at least stakeholder that you want to be aware of. You want to be aware of their walls, things like that. So you want to really, really be careful about the user.

[41:37] One major thing, interviewers have basically this checkbox where they're like, "Has this person properly defined the user?" make very, very sure that you have really, really properly defined the user. Go a little bit overboard here. Make sure that you got down the user. Then discuss their use cases, problems, goals. That's going to be things like the walls. Be aware of this issue. Be aware of toxicness of something. unexpected use cases like throwing the pen across a room, stepping on it, stuff like that. A pen that's super fragile for three-year-olds is not a very good pen.

[42:07] It's not one that's going to last very long. And then you go about designing it. And then you do this overall wrap up. And... Don't forget the user. Don't forget the user. Be really, really clear about this. There's one thing you want to do in anything that even has a width of product design, product to it, something. where you're thinking about how to do something, define that user, make sure that's really, really clear. So, then there's another thing, another poppy type of question, and these are fundamentally product-side questions.

[42:39] But it's just, you know, What's your favorite product of this type? So mobile app, physical product, et cetera. Also product from that company. So particularly if you're interviewing for a company like Google, a big company, have a product, have a subproduct there that you can talk about. And then how would you improve that? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever walk into a PM interview without having questions ready, answers ready for all of those types. Big, big mistake, because you're such a common question. Thank you. So what you should know about your product from each of those categories.

[43:12] Why do you love it? It should be something that you use. It shouldn't be... "Oh, my grandma uses this cool thing." Now, You can maybe get by with if you have kids, a product for your children, only to the extent that you're really interacting with it a lot, Maybe. But it should ideally be something that you use that you love, not just other people think is cool and you think is well done. Define who the users are. You should be one of the users of course, but there might be other use cases.

[43:43] Why do other people use it? You should be able to talk about who the competition is. What are the alternative products or solutions? to that. What kind of issues are there? always be ready to talk about why do you improve it. How would you program? Remember that. Point of this whole thing is You want to show that you are a good person. Canada. A lot of these answers literally answer the question, These answers are not unreasonable. They're actually perfectly reasonable, valid answers. They do nothing to help you.

[44:14] And in fact, I'd say that's a huge, huge portion of them. So, Example of this. What's your favorite product? Um... Someone goes where? Heard this answer many, many times. Uber or Lyft, one or the other. Why do you love it? Amen. Convenient. Sure. Cheaper, yeah, than taxis. Cool. What else? Easy to use, yeah.

[44:45] Those are all valid answers. I mean, that's what I would, if I'm talking to... you know, my my mom and I'm trying to sell her on, hey, you should totally, you know, download Uber or Lyft. What, what, what, why should I do that? Oh, it's super convenient. you know, pull up your phone, you can click a button and order, it's really convenient. A lot easier than taxi, stuff like that. Those are absolute valid answers. But when you hear that, you're not like, Wow, that's some really interesting insight. I think you make a good PM. Anybody will give the answer. Terrible PMs, someone who should never ever be a PM will give that same answer.

[45:18] You want to make yourself look like a good candidate. You want to give answers that aren't just true. but actually show insight. And that is the tricky piece of these questions. So Let's have someone take a, well, let me give an example of insight. a Somebody I interviewed. is was talking about Snapchat. And this was three years ago. So Snapchat was not new, but newer than it is now. and they gave an answer.

[45:51] which was It was something about how... snapchat they talk about communication in the real world is inherently ephemeral. I say something to you, unless it's in this context. It's not recorded. I can do whatever. I can make a funny face. I can say something stupid. I can say something offensive. Nobody knows. Right. And that makes people so much freer. As soon as you turn on video camera and start recording everything, You're a little bit more careful about what you do. And online communication is inherently recorded.

[46:22] And it changes the way people act. And text messaging and all these other things will never quite resemble that because-- You know you're being watched, and you know that anything you do can come back to bite you. Snapchat, they argued, went a lot closer to resembling-- real-world communication. because it allowed people to say things that were temporary. And they talked a little about the specific implementation of that. But their core part was, look, this is resembling real world communication. much, much more than other online communications. That kind of answer showed insight. It showed an understanding of how communication affects people, how recording effects people. And that showed insight.

[46:59] This is a fun thing, I get some funny pictures from my friends. Valid reason to like it, but it doesn't show me anything about you. So someone want to take a whirl. at their favorite Um... website. Pinterest. Great. Why do you love it? It's... I mean, that's my concern. Okay. also have the a lot of varieties I could choose. and capital. Okay?

[47:30] So allow-- Preferable. Yeah. Okay. So allows you to kind of explore things, create your own walls and something like that. Bye. Perfectly valid answer, and that's Not to be hard on you. That's the answer I'm going to give to my mom. Right. Actually, I should really start using it. My mom's actually incredibly technical. But it's like the classic example. No, seriously, she's like a PhD in electrical engineering. She's actually really, really technical. She's my stepfather. Still learning about emails. It's all recorded, right?

[48:02] So yeah, so this kind of answers like that's, You know, it's a valid answer. It was really, really hard to get that insight. to show something that's like, this is a really unique perspective that really shows that PM skill. So someone take another world. You can take Pinterest or a different thing. Yeah. Oh, Allah. Thank you. one of the reasons I'm using it. Four. is because I've grown up in my country. copy and paste society. Um, but-- things that are online.

[48:33] Look out. can that in and why it extends to inspiration as well. So if I want to get inspired, Bye. Right. Go on. look at. tables or I can look up um, how, I would design my mix. Well, well, well. Okay, so that's a good start. Let's talk about more though. What is it that Pinterest did in their design that helps you get inspired. Thank you.

[49:05] Image heavy. So that's starting to get a little more, right? Like they really focused on, putting the images first and foremost there, and pretty much hiding the text. Because the way we get inspired, is really through images. Text doesn't actually really help us a whole lot to get inspired. by a lot of, particularly you can argue Pinterest is heavily around creation of things and you really need those visual images to inspire creating stuff. as opposed to focusing on knowledge, which is going to be much more text-based. So you want to try to really think about, How can you show things that don't just literally say why you love something, but really bring out product insight, which is it is hard to do this.

[49:43] But those are the answers that really, really shun. Now, if you can't do this, you can still fall back. If you don't feel like you have a really solid answer that shows insight, or even if you do, you can still fall back on, Here are the use cases that Pinterest tackles. And here's how they go about doing that in a very effective way. and that'll still do a pretty good job. One thing to be aware of when you think about these, when you think about what product you want to talk about. is Not all products are created equal. Some products are really, really hard to do.

[50:14] So, and a lot of times the social products are very hard. it's very hard to talk about why Reddit is you know, is your favorite website. because there isn't as clear, well, here's my use case, and here's how Reddit goes about solving my use case. Because the use case is like having fun. Unless you can give an answer that really talks about why it helps you have fun. But it's hard because there's not as clear use cases. Uber, there's a very clear use case and problem, and you can talk about how it solves that Pinterest.

[50:45] is social. but it still start to have some use cases. some clear This is a problem and this is how Pinterest solves it. So, Be aware that when you think about what product you want to talk about here. You may not truly want to take your favorite. You want to take something which has where you can really talk about use cases and how it solves those problems. Because that's how you can then start talking about how could it be better? How can it be better at solving that? So I could talk about Pinterest. One of the things I've loved to do, I love to create.

[51:16] whether you can look at my Facebook thing for this, but like I've gotten to woodworking and I've gotten into, you know, making kind of, crazy fancy cakes and Pinterest is awesome. It's all about creation. But one of the things it's bad at is It's really good at inspiring. But what it's not as good at is, okay, but how do I get there? How do I do that thing? And there's some linkage to you know, what, site it came from, but it's very weak. That site's often, you know, the links are dead. It doesn't give that instructions. I would love to be able to when I'm really looking at, let me actually do this, to actually filter by things that have clear steps.

[51:55] Think about Google Images has You can filter for things that are you know, have certain Creative Commons licenses, something like that. I would love to be able to filter on Pinterest. for Here's how I actually do that thing. There's so many images anyway, let me filter on that thing. So I can actually not just be inspired, but also go about executing on that. Uh, But a lot of the social products are not that easy to do that with. So just be aware of that. Okay. next topic estimation questions this one will be a little bit faster so These are the kind of the things that you hear about as brain teasers. They are not brain teasers.

[52:30] If you've heard websites like Business Insider say that you know, Google banned these questions, that is totally untrue. Google has not banned these questions. Someone was either misquoted or misspoke, I don't know which one. and said that Google banned brain teasers like these. These are not considered brain teasers. Also, brain teasers were banned many, many years ago. But these are not considered brain teasers. These are called estimation, Fermi estimation questions. They're really problem solving. not brain teasers. What people are looking for is...

[53:01] basic measure of intelligence. smarts. You know, if The way people essentially interview for intelligence developers is through algorithm questions. If you can't do that for a PM, they fall back on these. So they're looking at smarts, they are looking at A lot of people feel that The ability to ballpark a number is fundamentally an important skill for a product manager. Because you want to know does it matter to do this feature how many users should we expect how many people even need to filter based on this attribute.

[53:37] So a lot of people feel that ballparking is a fundamentally important attribute. They also want to know, that you're okay working with numbers, that you're not scared of numbers. So that's what people are looking at. They are not, unless you have a really, really bad interviewer, exceptionally bad interviewer, they're not looking at the final answer. They probably don't even know with the actual final answers. So a way to tackle these questions is to really, really believe me here. These are problem solving. They're not about the number you get to know, they're problem solving. So, you first of all want to ask a bunch of questions to resolve any ambiguity. structure your approach, have a structure.

[54:10] break down those components, and then standard check. So. let's take a question like, How many airplanes? fly over the U.S. every day. Thank you. What do you want to know? just summer show flights or-- All planes. Great question. All planes. I think they're fine. Both domestic and . Both good questions. How do you define airplane? Like are helicopters included here? Do I literally mean airplanes or am I talking about aircraft?

[54:45] Um, I'm talking about paper airplanes, right? Probably not. But drones. All right. Are there middle ground things? Do these matter? I use this really weird phrase, "over the U.S." So is that like literally, like cross-country flights, is that airplanes that take off and land somewhere in the US, even if it's, you know, up a coast or Yep. San Francisco to San Diego, something like that. Does an international flight taking off from China landing in San Francisco, is that over the US or not?

[55:19] So you want to define these. You want to be really, really careful. Make a point of defining this. That is one of the things interviewers are actually looking for is can you define a problem properly? and not make bad assumptions. Then you come up with a structure. it's often useful if possible to kind of have an idea of multiple structures in your head. So, you could tackle how many airplanes fly over the US every day? by starting from a perspective of, People? How many people need to fly and how often do they need to fly?

[55:50] and Also, are there things other than people that need to fly? Or you could start from perspective of airports. So two different approaches, both could work. I don't know which one's going to be easier. I don't know which one's going to be better. It doesn't really matter which one's better anyway. But having an idea of two different approaches in your mind can be helpful. Then you start to break down these components. So suppose I'm doing how many books are sold every year in the U.S. and you've done some definition on what that means. I'm Well, how many people are in the US? You should hopefully have a basic idea of the US population.

[56:24] If you don't, that's something which That's, I think, fair game to ask the interviewer. Particularly if you're not from the US, that's even more forgivable to not have a basic idea. But use a big picture round number. Don't use whatever the answer is, 312 million, something like that. use 300 million. We're talking real, real ballparks here. So 300 million people. Okay. So You typically break that down. You typically segment that somehow. Um, for books sold in the U.S., What I would do is I would probably segment based on education level.

[56:58] or maybe income. but probably education level. So I'd probably say, okay, let's take College Grants, let's take people who, and let's take people who didn't go to college. And maybe we want to figure out how we want to deal with people who've dropped out. Maybe of college grads, maybe we want a further segment by income. Maybe should have segmented by income in the first place. I don't know. But you segment that population. And then you're gonna take some basic idea. At some point you're going to have to basically come up with numbers. So how many books per month does a typical grad from, you know, a good university working a good job read.

[57:35] I don't know. At some point you're saying, Here's what me and my friends are like. But be careful that you really do understand, this is you and your friends, this is not all people. I had a guy in an interview who... assumed that the typical American reads based on his friends. reads probably about four to six books a month. I think a lot more of Americans than is really true. I knew another person who was asked how many piano tuners there are in the US?

[58:08] And, um... What made it worse was this person was, this is a new grad from Duke, and Duke kind of has a stereotype anyway of being like, lot of rich kids and she assumed that one out of every six Americans has a grand piano. Like, wow, pretty sure that's not the case. So you want to be really, really careful. Like people are not overly picky. about what numbers you assume, as long as you don't demonstrate a complete inability to understand that you are not the typical person. Right? Okay, so you assume people like you read four books a month and it's actually two.

[58:46] Okay. That's very, very frivolous. When you're assuming like, it's six and it's like not even one. That's a little bit more problematic. Because then I'm going to wonder, do you Do you have an inability as a product manager to put yourself in someone else's shoes and realize that you are not the typical person? For the most part, you can just pick reasonable things, make assumptions. Do a basic job of backing them up. I think it's probably about... I'm a pretty active reader. I read about four books a month. but I know that I'm unusual for my friends. I expect the typical American is more around four, more like one.

[59:20] Or a typical college grad working a highly paid job reads more like what? Do a basic job backing up, but it's not that big of a deal. And then you go along and make this thing. The total, you can practice this, but the total amount of time should be like... A couple minutes to solve this, not 20 minutes. These are not extensive things. A couple minutes. Let's do this. And then Sam you check. This is an important piece that a lot of people forget. So if you come up with, you know, Gmail, you're at, you're calculating how much money Gmail makes and you come up with, you know, $15 billion.

[59:53] Maybe you don't have a good feel for how much money that is, but what's $15 billion divided by 300 million? Someone did that for me, I don't know. I think it's like, I don't know, $15 a person, something. That's a lot. There's no way that Gmail is making $15 per person across all Americans, which are not all Gmail users. There's just no way. So do a basic Java sanity check, checking it. And that's where that, if you have an idea from step two what those other approaches are, that's where that's often really useful.

[1:00:25] So do a basic Java sanity check. So I went through all these. Okay, so major mistakes people make is getting lost in minor details, so going off to go calculate something that just doesn't matter. It's really useful if you voice that things like for how many books are sold a year, and you just introduce the, you know, hey, should we be concerned about books that are sold multiple times?

[1:00:55] But then you probably don't need to care. Like, that is probably not a huge factor. Should we be concerned about how many books a library uses, buys every year? I don't think so. And the reason why I back them up, again, this is coming from an author, but I can't imagine as an author that that constitutes a large number of sales. So for the overall book sale market, it's probably not a big part of the sales. But the fact that you bring that up, that you are even aware of these little edge cases, shows something positive.

[1:01:27] So, remember, think about this other source of data, like those other sources of book sales, but you can still dismiss them. You don't have to calculate everything. And then those crazy assumptions, the one out of every six Americans has a grand piano at their house, right? One out of every, you know, people, somebody else assumed that like the average American takes like six business flights a month, and I'm like, oh my. I don't think the average American takes six business flights a year. I mean, the average American is not like making $200,000 a year.

[1:01:59] It just doesn't work. So, you know, most people are okay on assumptions, and then there's these people who take crazy assumptions. So just try to check yourself there. Okay, last thing, I think, is these kind of case and miscellaneous questions. These are all over the map. You can ask a lot of different questions. So these are some basic types of questions you can be asked. You can be asked to kind of problem-solving things. So you launch this feature, and this was the result. What would you do? You launch this new sign-up flow and revenue dropped.

[1:02:34] What would you do? So being able to tackle things like that. Should we do X or Y? What would be the better strategy? How would you market this product to this user base? How would you price this product? Amazon particularly asks a lot of pricing questions. How would you launch these things? And then there's these weird brainstorming things. How would you, you know, name as many things as possible that you can do with a paperclip? Sometimes futuristic questions. Where do you see this thing being in five years, or ten years, or fifteen years? There's a huge, huge, huge bucket, you know, idea of questions.

[1:03:06] So, when all else fails, you can often fall back to some of these major things. Defining what the problem is. Doesn't work for all those things. It doesn't work for, you know, a to find as many find as many things as possible you can do this paperclip but this kind of structure often works find a structure and then solve that what you might be able to do even with something like how many you name as many things as possible you can do with paperclip which is a stupid question but what you might be able to do is something at least like okay let's think about standard uses for a paperclip first and then let think about things you can do by modifying the shape of the paperclip but still keeping it basically intact Let think about things you can do by if we can use many paperclips what can you do with that?

[1:03:53] And then let's think about what you can do with the raw materials of paperclips, so like melting it down. That's a structure, right? It's not the only structure you can use, but it's a structure, and you can start tackling it that way. And even if you don't come up with the most things, you probably come up with some different ideas. and at least I'm going to say, that's a very structured, methodical way of thinking about it. I like structured, methodical people. I'd like to hire them. And so at least you can do that. So try to find a structure. And then try to drive discussions. Try to be the one, it doesn't mean you don't listen to the interviewer. Absolutely listen to the interviewer, but you want to be the one who's doing the bulk of the talking.

[1:04:26] You want to kind of drive that discussion. Empathize with the user. If at all possible, if there's any opportunity to show user, that kind of user empathy, show that, that's really important. and then try to show insight. Try to find stuff that says, gosh, that's a smart comment to make. So there are some frameworks you can read. If you like frameworks, you can read about these frameworks. It's the kind of stuff you learn in an MBA program. But it's really, really not the point. So these are things like customer purchase making decision process and the marketing mix, SWOT analysis, 5Cs, portals, high forces.

[1:05:01] You can read those. For some people, that might be useful. It doesn't hurt you to do it. But interviewers are almost never looking for you to take one of these frameworks and apply them to a problem because you're not expected to have an MBA unless you are interviewing for MBA specific roles. But where those can be useful is just to get an idea for what frameworks might look like for a problem, hypothetically, and also to have you think about aspects you might not have thought about. So when you're launching a product, do you think about placement?

[1:05:32] That's part of one of the four P's, as I recall. Do you think about the aspects of the five C's? I don't remember them anymore, but customer, things like that. You're thinking about some of these things that you may not have thought about. So you can look at these. Just don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole, as they say. Don't try to just blindly pick one of these frameworks, because it's almost never one of these frameworks. And then no metrics. So big picture metrics, user acquisition stuff, activity, so what kind of things are people doing, and all the money stuff.

[1:06:09] How much does it cost to acquire your customer? How much is the company's revenue? What is the profit? What are their margins? Things like that. Those are really useful things to do, not just in thinking about a hypothetical product or how would you launch something, how would you price something, but also when you're going into interviews with a specific company, being aware of those metrics for the company. In many, many, many cases, you will not actually be able to get these metrics. That's fine. Do it if you can. For bigger companies, you might be able to get some of these things. You might be able to get, in some cases, even if you can't get metrics for that company, get metrics for something similar.

[1:06:44] So you have a company which is supporting itself through ads. Okay, you can't get the information about it, but can you get a feel for how much ads make and when they make more money and when they make less money? And the other things you can think about is what is the company's strengths and weaknesses and goals and things that they maybe don't prioritize as much. So certain companies care a lot about certain things. So some companies are very, very focused on revenue. Some companies are very focused on, you know, a lot of startups are very focused on growing the user base.

[1:07:21] And when you walking to that interview and you thinking about improvements to the product you ideally want to be aligned on improvements to the product what they caring about is growing the user base And maybe they don care about the revenue piece It's hard to tell because that startup that hasn't done anything with profits and has just been really growing users, there might be increasingly something in the background of a company saying, we really got to figure out this profit thing. If you see a company that's been, you know, growing users pretty nicely and keeps experimenting with different monetization strategies, that's a good signal that they haven't figured out this money piece yet.

[1:08:03] And maybe you want to walk in with some basic ideas of things they've tried, what works, what hasn't, and maybe some things they might try. Be generally aware of these kinds of metrics. Understand in these interviews that if you've ever done consulting interviews with the top consulting firms, those interviews are like, you know, you get some case and you're like, well, you know, I'd really like some information about the customer acquisition products. And they're like, well, what do you know? We have a slide showing exactly this information. PM interviews are not like that.

[1:08:35] PM interviews are much more based on your gut instincts. So, you know, you don't have this data because that's what the life of a product manager is. You're not able to spend $3 million researching something to come up with a new idea to shape shape the strategy of something, it's, well, here's what I think, here's what I believe, and here's why I believe it. So when you're thinking about design of the product, improvements, things like that, you want to walk in with, you know, you want to walk in being willing to use your gut instincts and back things up and change direction when you get pushback. No, I don't say pushback when you get dated to the contrary. And forget everything else. Know who you are and what people are going to assume about you.

[1:09:19] So know what of those big picture things do you have good coverage on and what maybe do you have good coverage on but maybe isn't as obvious. And then try to make up the gaps to the extent that you can. Everyone should learn to program if they haven't done that yet, at least a little bit. But remember to focus on the user. If it's at all relevant who the user is, make it clear that you are the person who cares about the user. And then find a, if at all possible, find a structure for your approach. Then even if everything else fails, your ideas suck, whatever, at least you will have demonstrated that you are a structured methodical thinker.

[1:09:52] And hopefully the structure will actually get better content as well, but at least you will have demonstrated that you do communicate in a structured fashion. So with that, happy to open up to some questions. Yeah. Oh. Yes. Did I hear you say the first question is you have to solve it within two minutes? I wouldn't. So the question is, do you have to solve the Fermi estimation questions in two minutes? I wouldn't say two minutes. I'd say five-ish is a good kind of general ballpark.

[1:10:25] It's going to depend on the question, some other things. But yeah, in the scope of around five minutes, maybe less. Yeah? How would the role of PM differ at a big company versus a startup? So PM at a big company versus a startup. So PM roles, they're just all over the map anywhere. You can have a PM role at Microsoft or Amazon, which across the company is doing wildly different things.

[1:10:56] You'll have a PM at Microsoft, just thinking of specific friends I've had there, where one is doing really customer evangelist stuff. They're very close to doing marketing. They're talking a ton with customers and doing high messaging And then you have another PM who is like doing low level very very very very very technical writing out specs So they can be a huge huge huge range Big picture, I'd say PMs at big companies have a lot more resources.

[1:11:28] So they get focused much... They are, in some ways, they're more focused on true PM stuff, which actually is really problematic to say, but they're going to be much more like, here's this thing, I'm tackling this one problem, and here's my spec for it. A PM at a startup is doing more of the wear multiple hats, which is kind of core to the PM anyway, so I don't want to say that's not core PM stuff, but they might be jumping into code when it's needed. They might be jumping in to do a lot more marketing work. They might be going out and talking with customers. So they just might do a lot more things, but it can vary a ton across companies and the stage of a company and things like that.

[1:12:10] Yeah. So for someone who is interviewing for a marketing review, you have a way of studying for making an internal PM role for a way of, for the bigger tech companies, how would you suggest they study and become like a really great team as opposed to just a good one? So, question on interviewing for APM roles, how do you become a really great candidate, not just an okay one?

[1:12:40] I mean, it's hard to say because there's so much to say there. I guess one thing I would think about is finding a role that really leverages what you... Like finding the right role, finding a role that really leverages your strengths. So some people are, if you are super technical, find a role that is really technical. Those are really, really valuable skills. If you are really good at finance or you're really passionate about music, find that role that really leverages that. Developers in a lot of ways can be slotted into many different roles in many different products and be kind of equally good.

[1:13:20] I wouldn't say multiple plays in the stack, but be equally good in product that does this, product that does that. the product manager role is more tied to what the product is find a role that really fits your background if possible and then you know a lot of other stuff I talk about with really being clear about your messaging what your strengths are having stories ready to go be you know sometimes people I this ironic come from me but some people put way too much focus on interview prep and like spend months and months and months doing interview prep without a lot of thought of like how do I actually make myself fundamentally a better candidate. So I would put, I would encourage people a little bit less interview prep, a little bit more, make yourself a great candidate. So that's the learning to code, that's the, you know, for product managers, reading books about product design, reading blogs about product design, starting to do that now, make yourself truly a better candidate and not just somebody who appears better in interviews. Yeah?

[1:14:19] What would you recommend for someone who did product management in the public sector and wants to transition into the private sector? So what I recommend for someone who did product management in the public sector and wants to transition into the private sector. So public sector is vague. My initial thing is product management in the public sector. You've probably been working with a lot of bureaucracy. You have maybe not been working on super technical things. The product management role itself, I wonder if product management in the public sector means something very, very different. And so as an interviewer, I'm going to be a little bit like, okay, what are you really doing? As opposed to if you're a product manager at Google where I kind of So I would just be very prepared to really be able to articulate what you did, what that product manager role was.

[1:15:08] and establish credibility because people are going to make negative assumptions about people who worked in the public sector.

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最后更新于2026-10-20

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