PM Internship/FTE Interview Questions
Hey folks! I am grateful to you for filling my inbox with the most encouraging thank you notes on my last article, “Cracking the Internship/FTE application process”. Check it out if you haven’t!
Based on my conversations with a few of you, I realized it could be helpful to share the kind of questions that were asked to me as a part of my PM Internship interviews. So, here we go!
Disclaimer: I am not very aware of the NDA terms. Hence, I would not be linking the interview question to the specific company that asked it, and would also be abstracting any granular details wherever necessary. That being said, each of the questions listed in this article were actual questions asked to me in the interview rounds. This article could serve as a whetstone for you to sharpen your interview preparedness and benchmark your current readiness against a few real questions that get asked. Again, this article would not provide you with the resources to begin your preparation but more for fine-tuning. Cheers!
These questions are specific to PM internship interviews across the following companies: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, TikTok, Duolingo, Achieve, Branch, Lucid Charts, Telesign, and ScanPay.
Behavioral Questions
The STAR method comes in very handy in structuring your response to such questions. This is a section that you can prepare very well in advance but be sure to choose only such examples where you are very comfortable diving deep.
Give me an example of a time when you:
- Had to handle a conflict at work.
Over the course of my interviews, I realized it really stands out if you are able to not only communicate your learnings from a conflict, but also how you ensured the learnings are incorporated in the company’s future processes so that a similar snag does not occur again.
Did you document your learnings in a way that is accessible to others? Did you discuss with the senior leadership on the root cause of the conflict and work towards its mitigation in the future?
- Had to deliver against timelines.
- Had to learn a completely new skill for work, on the go. Another similar one was- In 2 minutes, teach me a new skill you picked up.
- Provided feedback to a colleague to help them improve their quality of work.
- Worked towards promoting a culture of diversity and inclusion at work.
This is just my reflection on how I could have done this question better. I had joined the zoom interview with just my name and not my pronouns. The interviewer did have their pronouns listed. At that moment, before I began answering this question, I really wished I could go back and add my pronouns as well. If you genuinely care for a cause, it should reflect in the tiniest of things.
- Contributed towards improving an existing process at work.
Product Design
This is undoubtedly the most famous section of questions. Here are a few questions:
- What is your favorite product and why?
Here, I was very well prepared with a web-based product. But the question I got was- Which app do you like the most on your phone and why? I was not very prepared for a mobile app question. As a follow up, I did prepare for a web-based product, a mobile app, a desktop app, and a hardware product.
- How would you improve the customer experience at a gas station?
Not having driving experience myself, specifically in the US, I was caught off guard here. I obviously knew the experience at a gas station but not having been in the real shoes ever, my answers lacked depth. To that, add a layer of geographical differences- India vs US. I did address my lack of know how of the process in the US by clearly stating that to the interviewer, and giving them enough context on how a gas station operates in India.
- How would you design an online gifting experience?
The question is too vague. Make sure to specify what is meant by “online gifting experience”.
Product Analytics
This was one of the most interesting sections for me. Here are a few questions:
- The interviewer shared their screen with me, showing their analytics dashboard for a particular user journey funnel. “A particular engagement metric has been down for the last week. I am your team’s Data Scientist. You have just 3 questions to ask me. Based on the screens shown to you, what would be those three questions, in what order and why?” Post that, the interviewer shared the results to those 3 questions with me and asked me how I would design an experiment to figure out possible solutions to the root cause. “How long would you run the experiment and how would you know that we have satisfactory results from the experiment to proceed?”
A good resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNm2bmUSjE&list=PLejl_r9a59gsP-Iv-6cykjgnut03bGYlD&index=16
Brush up on the basics of A/B testing, statistical significance, p-values
- The interviewer shared their screen with me explaining a current product of theirs. My task was to come up with a list of metrics to measure the engagement of users with the product.
I think what really helped me here was to actively think of guardrail metrics.
Further, communicating how the usual engagement metrics would need to be adapted to the given product. A good resource on Consumer Metrics and North Star Metrics.
UI/UX Whiteboarding
This was the most challenging as I had not practiced this well enough. In essence, this is similar to your usual product design questions but the focus is more on your grasp on the visual UX of it. Wireframing, if you will.
- Design a play date app.
I was not really aware of the concept of a play date. Though I did clarify it with the interviewer, the anxiety of a concept less known to me messed it up for me. Plus, thinking through the interface while actually whiteboarding it on pen and paper, and walking the interviewer through your thought process was a challenge. Some amount of prior practice would have definitely helped.
- Design the end-to-end experience of a ticket vending machine with the constraint that you have only three lines of text and three buttons to press.
I had worked on my UX whiteboarding skills after messing up the prior question so I was better prepared here. This one is a great resource which covers a very similar question.
Business Sense
This one involved a mix of guesstimates, go-to-market strategy, monetization approaches.
- How would you monetize Twitter’s blue-tick feature?
- Estimate the market size for our newly launched product. As a result, come up with a pricing strategy.
Exponent’s Guesstimate Questions are a good starting point.
- Imagine we are launching a teleportation machine. Who could be the target audience and what could be our go-to-market strategy?
A similar question has been solved here.
Technical Acumen
This one was rare but preparing for this is a good opportunity to get you an edge over other candidates. They had a dedicated round with the Engineering Manager to check your understanding of System Design.
- Walk me through one of your past products that you worked on. Next, break the product down into the underlying tech architecture.
- You are the PM for an e-commerce platform and are gearing up for an upcoming annual sale event. What would be the Non Functional Requirements for the tech team to ensure the team is ready for the event?
My go-to resource here is: “Tech Simplified for PMs and Entrepreneurs” by Deepak Singh, particularly the chapter on System Design. Adding Non Functional Requirements as a part of your usual product design questions also lends you an edge.
That’s all folks. Good luck!
