đ Guide: What is your favorite part of being a PM?
Behavioral questions are a common part of product interviews. They are meant to gauge culture fit and understand your background as a PM. This particular question can take many forms:Â
What is your favorite part of being a product manager?
What do you love about being a product manager?
How does your ideal workday look?
Obviously, there isnât a ârightâ answer to this question. Your favorite is always going to be subjective. That said, there are some good practices to follow when answering this question so that you communicate well and avoid vague answers.
Understanding the question
Before we jump into answering this question, letâs put ourselves in the interviewerâs shoes for a minute. There are 2 parts to this question. One part of it is, they are trying to understand your background and your experience at the job. At the same time, theyâre trying to understand how youâre going to contribute to the current needs of their team.
Letâs take a few examples and understand this in a little more detail. Letâs say youâre interviewing for a platform PM role. For this, the ideal candidate should have a technical bias, be comfortable talking to engineers and architects, getting into the technical details deeper.Â
If youâre interviewing at a startup, theyâre likely to prefer a PM who can be hands-on with the entire team and make quick decisions.Â
A larger company would like a PM who can spend time on user research.
A B2C product would be very design-focused, whereas an enterprise product would be heavy on customization.
Each of these companies require different kinds of PM skills, which is what the interviewer is trying to understand during the course of your interview.
So this first part of answering this question is pretty straightforward - can your experiences relate to the role youâre applying for? Even though your resume will speak for you here, interviewers will need to hear it from you in your own words. They need to see how you talk about your work, how comfortable you are with the domain and if your resume translates to real life experience and knowledge.
Prepping for this part is relatively simple - you need to read the JD and understand whatâs expected of an ideal candidate applying to this role. You can also do this by reading up about the company, talking to some others who have worked there before or others who are in this role currently. You could also use the interview to understand what this role involves.
The other and the more murky part of it is - âWhat kind of a PM are you?â Here, the interviewers are trying to relate to you, and understand how youâd fit in with their team. Theyâre also trying to see what kind of PM you are - where your strengths lie, what youâre passionate about, to what extent you will go to get something done, how you react in different situations.
Itâs murky because this can get extremely subjective and thereâs no defined right answer. It depends on that day, it depends on your articulation and it depends on your interviewer.
To prep for this part, figure out, âWhat is my PM story?â. To do this, youâll need to reflect on your experiences as a PM and actually figure out what part of it you love and the parts that make it worth it. What are some great, inspiring and fun stories? What makes you really passionate about what you do? What makes your face light up and makes you animated? This involves quite a bit of introspection. Some people prefer to write this down, some others talk to their teammates and get feedback.
Once you have your overall big picture story sorted out, try and list out 3-5 examples that showcase your PM skills that tie into your story. Weâve listed out some PM skills that you can use to talk about your experience with clarity and authenticity.
How do you figure out your favorite part?
Product managers wear multiple hats. You are expected to switch gears multiple times a day and perform different activities. Many of you might have already figured out your favorite part.
If you arenât sure, hereâs a guide to help you narrow it down.
Weâve highlighted the many responsibilities of a PM, and the potential things you might like about them. Think about a time when you did each of these activities and how much you liked it. Or better yet, geek it out by rating each activity on a scale of 1 - 10 where 10 is the most satisfying type of work.
Talking to customers
Every PM talks to their customers from time to time. We could do this either as structured interviews, general catch-ups, or as silent listeners on sales and support calls. We talk to customers and understand how they use our product. We get a sense of the impact weâre making on their lives, and also discover whatâs not working for them.
Roadmapping
Creating and prioritizing a roadmap is usually a quarterly (sometimes monthly) activity. This could be a structured approach or a chaotic one, depending on the type of company. In the bustle of daily life, it is easy to forget why the product exists. Roadmap meetings are a time when the entire team gets a refresher about the vision and direction of the product..
Data analysis
PMs are expected to analyze data for a number of reasons - to increase adoption, to increase conversion rates, or decrease churn. This isnât everyoneâs cup of tea, but if youâre someone who gets excited at the opportunity to add some vlookups on a spreadsheet, this could be a potential favorite for you.
Design & creative problem solving
This is the part where weâve gathered requirements and we understand the problem, and weâre trying to come up with the best solution. It could range from making rough wireframes to communicate our ideas to collaborating with designers to come up with various iterations and possibilities.
Collaboration & stakeholder management
Most of a PMâs work is to collaborate with multiple cross-functional teams. While each team has its own goals and priorities, the PM is the one who provides direction and reminds people about what is best for the user. It is a responsibility that can be frustrating, but rewarding once your feature has finally been released.
GTM & Marketing
Youâve finally released the feature. But itâs hard to feel a sense of pride until you actually see your customers using it. While most companies have marketing teams in place for this, PMs always have one leg in the process as well. After all, we need to see the impact of all the meetings and negotiations we did over the last few weeks!
Example
I once applied to a startup and was asked this question in the initial screening round.
I had done a bit of research about the company before the interview. It seemed that the company positioned itself as a B2B product for small business and startups. They didnât cater much to enterprise customers. During the session, the interviewer also mentioned that they hadnât recruited a full fledged sales team yet, and they had been relying on the fact that their product was user friendly and easy to learn. People were just signing up for a free trial and then subscribing without a sales process in place.
Now, my favorite part of being a PM is creative problem solving. I love finding the perfect flow for the user and providing them the ability to achieve their goals as easily as possible. But with this new information, I tailored my answer even more finely.
I talked a lot about in-product onboarding, since that would be important for a small company without bandwidth for sales demos. I talked about my experience in building products and features optimised for self-service.
This led to a longer discussion about other well-designed apps with good onboarding flows that both the interviewer and I had enjoyed in the past. Soon it felt less like an interview and more like a conversation!
What if youâve officially never been a PM?
If you donât have any formal product management experience and this is the first role youâre applying for, then congratulations on making it to the interview! The interviewer is also most likely aware and will probably not ask you this question as youâll have lesser examples to quote from. Youâll probably get a variant of âWhy do you want to become a PM?â or âWhat have you done in the past that shows you have an aptitude for product management?â
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