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  1. Some useful questions for interviewing Product Managers
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  3. Experience Questions
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  5. Basically, there are two kinds of experience questions, which can be broken into "what were you thinking?" and "what have you really done?"
  6. Examples of what were you thinking:
  7. "why did you do [blah]?"
  8. "what excited you about working at [blahblah] company?"
  9. "why did you leave [blahblah] company."
  10. These just help you understand their goals/thought processes.
  11. The other type of question is "Tell me about a time when you..." (overcame team dissension, organized a project plan, innovated, changed a product...). These get behind job titles and test specific contributions and skill sets. More open ended questions:
  12. "What is your greatest accomplishment?"
  13. "What would your co-workers say are your strengths and weaknesses?"
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  15. Fact Questions
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  17. These are questions designed to level set their knowledge about business, technology, retail, etc. and are most useful for candidates who have a little nontraditional (no MBA or not coming from a closely related industry...) I'll give a few examples but it could be anything:
  18. Explain the difference between cash flow and operating income. [this is just a basic do you know anything about business question]
  19. I am getting a 50% margin on a product. I put it on sale 25% off. How much do my sales have to increase for me to break even (strictly on that product)? [Basic retail math question; discourage loss leader analysis]
  20. Movie studios sell new release DVDs to retailers for $18 each. Retailers sell them to customers for $15 each. Why? [They should identify loss leader concept. If they say "They do?! They shouldn't do that!" it might raise a red flag.]
  21. What's HTML? What's SQL? [If you don't know, can you really be interested in technology?]
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  23. Skill Questions
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  25. These are questions specifically designed to test their thinking "on their feet."
  26. Give me one idea on how to improve Amazon.com or any store within Amazon.com
  27. Pretend Amazon is just considering launching Prime. Walk through your analysis.
  28. You are managing IMDB.com. You understand that TV.com is for sale. How would you analyze that opportunity? How would you determine TV.com's value to you?
  29. On your first day you are given a memo where a senior leader supports building our own video on demand set top box. [optional part - it would have a camera and a feature where users can video chat] [optional - we would design it for and launch it in Korea and then bring a v2 into the US]. You are to prepare for a discussion about the idea in two weeks. Tell me about your workplan in the meantime. if the project is approved, tell me about your goals for the first 90 days. [The question potentially tests several things, mainly how much they know about how to really get things done at a company. Someone who is going to hit the ground running will generate a good, practical plan. Also, do they focus on identifying key features, solving a customer problem, gathering expertise and developing an understanding of required resources and timelines? Do they flag strategic issues? How do they think about features like video chatting between boxes? It tests bias for action, customer orientation and team building. Finally, it tests independent thinking. Do they consider whether this is a good idea or do they just move right to resource requirements and market sizing? You can profitably spend 45 minutes on this question if they really dig into it.]
  30. For 3rd party sales in Media, we take a 15% commission. You've been asked to evaluate if that's still the right commission to take. How would you structure your analysis? [it's a pricing question, so would expect analysis to focus on price elasticity of sellers (which brings in the commission structure on other sites like ebay), but also the impact on end price to the consumer, and the strategic value of creating a strong marketplace on Amazon (virtuous cycle); should compare our margins on the 3rd party side to on the retail side.]
  31. If you were a product manager at Facebook what metrics would you focus on?
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