10 Product Manager Interview Questions and Answers

Not all jobs are the same. When you’re evaluating a product manager in a job interview, it’s essential to know what they like about the position and job. This can help you understand a lot about how they motivate team members, evaluate KPIs, or what steps they’re willing to take to make a successful product.

It’s easy to get caught up in jargon. However, asking a product manager to boil down their thoughts into language a 5-year-old would understand tests their communication skills. This can also help assess how they’ll work within your team. After all, it’s not uncommon in this field for product managers to come from various backgrounds. 

During a product management interview, you’ll want to evaluate a manager’s experience working with a product team. The product manager role requires a robust understanding of different skill sets, whether working at a startup for a new product or an established tech company. This not only gives you insight into their previous product management experience but how they may interact with your team members. 

This is a question that hiring managers can use to see how a product manager would work with different teams. A product manager’s job will involve identifying customer needs against the company’s objectives. Then, they’ll be in charge of rallying a team to turn that vision into a reality, and you want to know how they’ll mesh with your processes. 

Product managers should have your customer’s user experience at the forefront of their minds. Whether developing a new product or improving on a product, they should know the methodology to develop user-driven product features. They may mention user interviews, product roadmaps, or other metrics like heatmaps and user tests as part of their product strategy. 

This question will show the talent's creative thinking. A critical PM can take their favorite product and think of new features or iterations to improve it into a great product. It also indicates how close they are to their ideas and work. Finally, having a critical eye means they may be more receptive to feedback. Depending on your company's objectives, you can modify this question with innovative, household-name companies like Amazon or LinkedIn.

This is a slightly more technical question, but it's something that you should keep in mind if you have an engineering team that works with your product manager. This product manager interview question indicates how they use their communication skills to keep everyone on the same page. 

This sounds like it has nothing to do with product design, but it is a question that can show you how your new product manager thinks. When you're looking for a product manager, you want to test their analytical skills. See how this manager interprets the problem and how they think it through. It's less a quiz with the right answer, and more the problem-solving portion of a job interview. 

This is a behavioral question that can assess how well a product manager has been able to defend their decisions in the past. Framing it with the use of data will also help you assess their prioritization and how well they interpret KPIs. Look for mentions of metrics and possible inclusion of the engineering team when they talk about their previous experience. 

This is a good question to ask in the interview process because it tells you a lot about their prioritization. Specifically, you're looking at if they focus on the product and what they can do, or how they fit into your organization. For example, suppose they want to focus on a new feature or a complete redesign instead of onboarding to your organization. In that case, they may be a little too ego-driven.