How to Crack FAANG Product Manager Interviews
FAANG Product Manager interviews are not easy to crack but not impossible to get through either. All it takes is preparation and practice to ace them. FAANGPath has helped hundreds of candidates land their dream jobs through mock interviews, whereas a lot of them were product managers.
In this blog, we’ll help you get an idea about what interviews look like at FAANG companies for Product Managers and how to prepare for them.
Process and Timeline for PM Interviews
Product Manager roles are in great demand in FAANG and big tech companies. According to Levels.fyi, entry-level product manager roles pay anywhere between $160k-$217k at FAANG companies and do not necessarily require a technical background. You can learn about the roles and responsibilities of a product manager and more about product management on how to land a product manager role.
PM interviews at most FAANG and big tech companies consist of 4–6 rounds. It all begins with an optimized resume to get shortlisted for interviews, followed by one/two phone screenings with the recruiter and on-site/online PM interviews with senior-level managers at the firm.
Similar to interviews for other roles, your interview prep must include product manager interview questions and also those related to the company and your position.
Product Manager Interview Questions
Most FAANG PM interviews focus on the following areas across multiple rounds:
1. Product Design Questions
Product Managers are responsible for designing new product features and improving existing ones. Product design questions form a large part of most FAANG PM interviews. Here are a few company-specific product design questions to prepare for:
Examples for Google Product Design Questions:
- How would you improve Gmail?
- You are a new Product Manager at Google Pay. Design a feature for paying credit card bills.
- Tell me about an app you often use. How would you improve it?
Examples for Meta Product Design Questions:
- Describe a travel app within one of Meta’s products. How would you build it?
- How would you design a new product for Instagram?
- Build a product around fashion for Facebook.
Examples for Microsoft Product Design Questions:
- Design the UI/UX for Disney’s new streaming platform.
- How would you improve Outlook for the use case when people get overwhelmed by the number of emails received after returning from a vacation.
- Design a Supermarket for older people.
Examples for Apple Product Design Questions:
- Design a voice assistant product for kids.
- How would you design a new Siri?
- How would you improve Apple Podcast?
Examples for Amazon Product Design Questions:
- Design a library for the future.
- Explain some new Alexa skill sets you would roll out and why.
- How would you design a test to measure the success of using a gift card promotion to get Prime members to download the Prime mobile app?
2. Product Strategy Questions
A key responsibility of product managers is to develop the product vision and product roadmap and roll out a strategy keeping in mind different teams they would be required to collaborate with, for example, marketing, engineering, finance, sales, etc.
FAANG interviews focus heavily on strategy questions, depending on the company. Interviewers want to understand the candidate’s thought process to determine whether they factor in collaboration with different teams and focus on specific pain points of the products and stakeholders while formulating the strategy. Take a look below for examples of strategy questions asked in FAANG PM interviews:
Examples for Google Product Strategy Questions:
- Do you think Google should buy the iRobot company? Why or why not?
- How do you see the “creator economy” evolving over the next ten years? What would you recommend we build if Google wanted to make a new significant product investment within this space?
- Google Keep is a free product to save, share notes, etc. How would you make it a subscription product & monetize it?
Examples for Meta Product Strategy Questions:
- You’re the Product Manager for Facebook Groups — what features would you prioritize?
- What are the trade-offs between Facebook Stories usage going up and Facebook posts going down?
- Why should Facebook enter the dating market, and how would you execute it?
Examples for Microsoft Product Strategy Questions:
- Evolve a GTM strategy to acquire 1 million new users for Bing on Android.
- You’re the PM for WhatsApp, and you have $1B to invest. What would you do?
- What should Microsoft Teams’ product strategy be for the next three years?
Examples for Apple Product Strategy Questions:
- Should Apple launch its search engine?
- How would you turn Facebook events around?
- Imagine you’re the CEO of Apple — what product would you eliminate from the lineup?
Examples for Amazon Product Strategy Questions:
- How would you decide on the price of Amazon Prime?
- You are PM at Amazon, and you are asked to change the pricing for the Prime membership. How would you go about it?
- How can you increase Amazon’s revenue (focusing on e-commerce)?
Did you know? Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has ‘Product Sense’ interviews for PM roles. They mainly cover the above stated product design, improvement and strategy questions.
3. Estimation Questions
A product manager’s job has a lot to do with numbers daily. Every strategy and plan that is formulated has metrics involved that require estimation. Estimation questions in FAANG PM interviews do not simply determine how accurate your estimates are; they aim to understand the reasoning behind the estimates you give and how you plan to achieve them.
Here are a few estimations questions you should practice before your PM interviews:
Examples for Google Estimation Questions:
- What’s your favorite restaurant? How much would they make in a year?
- Suppose you were to create an automated pizza delivery service. How would you estimate the number of bots you need to deliver pizzas within your locale?
- How much is storage space required to host all the images of Google Street View?
Examples for Meta Estimation Questions:
- Estimate the number of groups on Facebook.
- Estimate how much budget is required for Facebook to maintain Facebook Photos.
- How would you analyze the performance of Facebook in country X vs. country Y?
Examples for Microsoft Estimation Questions:
- How many balls does it take to fill a 16x16 ft room?
- How would you increase the revenue of MS Powerpoint?
- How many people use Excel now?
Examples for Apple Estimation Questions:
- What is the market size of toilet paper in the US?
- How many airports are in the US and the world?
- How many mobile phones are there in the world?
Examples for Amazon Estimation Questions:
- How would you estimate the number of new users Amazon gets in a day?
- How many reviews are left on Amazon on a given Monday?
- How would you estimate purchase order abuse on Amazon? How would you solve it?
4. Behavioral Questions
Behavioral interviews can be a game-changer for job seekers when applying to FAANG and other big tech companies. While candidates can learn new skills, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta want to hire employees with a good culture fit. Behavioral questions generally focus on your past experiences to understand how you deal with different situations and conditions.
The mantra to cracking behavioral questions is using the STAR method.
Read here: How To Use Star Method for FAANG Interview.
Examples for Google Behavioral Interview Questions:
- Tell me about a time when you had to challenge a teammate’s unpopular opinion.
- Please share with me your three most significant achievements.
- Give me an example where you negotiated for resources that were not in your control.
Examples for Meta Behavioral Interview Questions:
- Describe your experience with the position.
- What would you do to make sure Facebook employees do not feel lonely?
- Tell me a piece of difficult feedback you received and how you handled it.
Examples for Microsoft Behavioral Interview Questions:
- How will you handle a stubborn stakeholder?
- Describe a time when a project was failing and how you responded.
- One of our customers reported an issue with the .Net software in our open forum and threatened to switch to another platform. How would you handle this issue?
Examples for Apple Behavioral Interview Questions:
- How do you build your knowledge on something you’ve never done or worked on before?
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with ambiguity.
- Was there a time when you disagreed with the manager’s decision? How did it play out, and what happened?
Examples for Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions
- How do you prioritize requirements?
- Give me an example from when you had to deal with difficult coworkers.
- Tell me about a time you resolved a complicated problem with a simple solution.
Bonus Tip: Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions mainly revolve around their leadership principles.
Read here: Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions
5. Analysis Questions
A core responsibility of Product Managers is to work with data and metrics. Using data to conduct market research and understand customer needs drives several product-related decisions.
Analysis questions focus on how the candidate decides the metrics that need attention, how they use them, and what decisions they derive from their analyzed data. Some examples of analysis questions are below:
Examples for Google Analysis Questions:
- You are the PM for YouTube analytics. What are your three most important metrics?
- What data points would you like to track to know if the zoom meeting was successful?
- How would you measure the success of Google Hangouts?
Examples for Meta Analysis Questions:
- You launched a new feature that determines whether a recipient read a Facebook message. What metrics would you collect? How would you know the feature was a success?
- You are PM of FB Events, and you saw an overnight drop in RSVPs by 10%. How would you go about determining what happened?
- What are the success metrics for Facebook Live at the growth phase?
Examples for Microsoft Analysis Questions:
- In June, you noticed a spike in user-uploaded videos on your platform. What do you think is the cause, and how would you test it?
- How would you track user engagement in an app, and what KPIs would you use to improve it?
- How would you measure the performance and health of a Netflix Original?
Examples for Apple Analysis Questions:
- How would you measure the success of the iPad Pro?
- YouTube traffic went down 5% — how would you report this issue to the executive team?
- What metrics would you use to measure the success of Instagram Stories?
Examples for Amazon Analysis Questions:
- Around 40% of reviews on Amazon are fake. As a PM in Amazon, how will you tackle the problem? Break your answer into three parts: 1. How will you identify a review is fake? 2. What action will you take? 3. If the number of fake reviews is decreased, what will be the impact?
- You are a PM for an e-commerce company. Due to some mistakes, the data team lost all key metrics. What metrics will you track as PM?
- You are the PM for Amazon’s cart page. How would you build a dashboard to measure success?
6. Technical Questions
It is often assumed that Product Managers need to have an academic degree in a technical domain to succeed in the role. This is not true. Not all FAANG PM roles require you to be an engineering expert. However, since you’ll be working in the tech industry, a basic understanding of tech always comes in handy.
Other roles like Project Manager or Program Manager may require technical knowledge depending on the company and industry. Not sure what the differences between these roles are?
Read here: Product Manager vs. Project Manager vs. Program Manager
To get an idea of a candidate’s technical knowledge, FAANG PM interviews consist of technical questions. Here are a few examples:
Examples for Google PM Technical Questions:
- How would you explain cloud computing to your grandmother?
- How does the system design for Strava work?
- How would you design an algorithm to source data from the USDA and display it on Google nutrition?
Examples for Meta PM Technical Questions:
- Imagine you were asked to design a “trending photos” feature. How would you go about it?
- How would you determine how to rank posts in the newsfeed?
- What happens when you enter a URL in your browser?
Examples for Microsoft PM Technical Questions:
- Write a program for monitoring a patient’s heartbeat and calculating the average over the last ten detections.
- Create an API design for third-party integration for payments.
- Explain the architecture of your current or past product in detail.
Examples for Apple PM Technical Questions:
- How do Apple Cash and Apple Card work together?
- Develop an algorithm that can detect if a string is a palindrome.
- How would you face a technical challenge you have never encountered before? Describe your methodology step by step.
Examples for Amazon PM Technical Questions:
- Design a simple load balancer for Google.com. What data structures would you use?
- Amazon is developing a machine-learning algorithm to better target shoppers who have saved items in their shopping carts. The algorithm will send an email to users to remind them about their shopping carts. What factors would you consider when designing this algorithm? What variables would you tweak to yield higher shopping cart purchase rates?
- Explain ACID transactions.
Although the weightage of each of these areas may differ depending on the company you’re interviewing for, preparing all of them is equally essential to excel in your interviews and land an offer.
Conclusion:
The above-stated questions are only for practice. You may come across some of these in your interviews, but there are many more that you may have to answer otherwise.
Here are a few resources you can refer to crack your FAANG Product Manager interviews:
- Cracking the PM Interview by McDowell and Bavaro
- Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin
- The Product Manager Interview by Lewis C. Lin
- Product Manager Interview Preparation course by Udacity
- Interview Questions from Product Management Exercises
Your interviews depend largely on your PM skills and the prep you’ve put in behind the interview. The right resources, guidance and practice can bring you closer to your offer.
Stay tuned to learn about how to crack FAANG PM interviews and more!
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