• "Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• "The Product Manager Interview: 164 Actual Questions and Answers" by Lewis C. Lin
• "Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews" by Lewis C. Lin
• "The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback" by Dan Olsen
• "Swipe to Unlock: The Primer on Technology and Business Strategy" by Parth Detroja
• "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy

• Rise above the noise
• Interview math
• Thinkertoys
• Web UI design patterns
• Mobile UI design patterns

• Go to Lewis C. Lin’s website: 90 Product Manager Interview Questions
• Jackie Bavaro’s Quora page: ‘The Art of Product Management’
• Go to Stellar Peers: a community platform that helps you prepare for interviews. They have sample questions and answers on their site.
• Go to thepminterview.com to practice some of the above questions and answers with a timer.
• Interview Preparation

• Lewis Lin Courses
• Cracking the PM interview (video)
• How to ace the software engineering interview (video)
• Quora
• Glassdoor

• “My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume” by Laszlo Bock

• The Muse has some “standout” examples that I would not use but you can start to see what grabs attention.

• Be ready to talk about your favorite physical/digital product for yourself or for other people and do a proper “product tear-down”. Use the ‘CIRCLES’ method from Lewis Lin, by far the most useful mental model.
• Know the “SAR” (or STAR or SPAR or similar) structure and the “pyramid principle” for organising your thoughts and answers. S, T, P, A, R refer to situation, task (or problem), action, result. Basically: some context, what was the problem, what did you do about it, and what happened? The pyramid principle developed by Barbara Minto, a consultant, refers to grouping your answers into themes that are easier to digest.
• It also helps to know a few frameworks — 3C, 4P, Porter’s 5 forces, Market Entry, etc at the back of your mind.

PM interview:

• Design
• Strategy
• Estimation
• Behavioral
• Technical

The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:

• How would you increase YouTube’s daily active users ?
• What are some ideas for improving mentorship on the LinkedIn platform?
• What is your favorite product and why?
• Start a new product category for Amazon -- what would you choose and why?
• If you want to launch a new social networking product, what are the primary considerations?

• Learn hard facts: I know I said you don’t need to know the answers to the questions, but let me rephrase that. While you don’t need to memorize the answers, it’s crucial to know certain ubiquitous numbers. Let’s say you’re interviewing for Google. What is the market share of Google Search? How much of the pie does Google Cloud Platform have? What was Google’s revenue and profit in 2017? Knowing these numbers, and more, helps more than you’d think. To make your life easier, here is a short (and shabby) fact sheet I created while preparing.

• Data Structures and Algorithms: GeeksforGeeks was my best friend here. I went through all the sorting algorithms and basic data structures used. Also brush up your CS fundamentals: OOPS concepts, Networking frameworks, how internet works, how WiFi works, what are the different protocols used and so on. Remember, you have to be so well-versed such that you can explain all this even to a 5 year old. To make lives easier, here’s the word doc I used while preparing, use this and keep adding more.

• System Design: Ooh, we've hit bulls eye. Most people either don’t prepare or don’t prepare enough for this. Avoid that mistake, and use this GitHub repo as your Bible or Quran or Bhagavad Gita. Donne has done a brilliant job of breaking down everything needed. But no need to delve too deep; just practice the ten example questions given first.

• Pseudocoding: Leetcode and a brilliant engineer friend of mine were my strongest pillars. I did not spend a lot of time here, as I knew they wouldn’t ask anything too crazy. If you’re well versed with coding, this should not be a hard section. Just make sure to enunciate, brute force first, optimize next and check for edge cases. This YouTube channel by Kevin Naughton is super, super useful.

• How to crack technical questions in PM interviews

The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:

• You are part of the Google Search web spam team. How would you detect duplicate websites?
• What are some of the technical challenges with building a system to help restaurants receive orders electronically?
• Facebook recently identified that mobile app users in 3rd world countries with significantly lower bandwidth have a poor user experience. How would you reduce bandwidth consumption across Facebook’s mobile app?
• If you were the Product Manager for Gmail, how would you reduce the storage size on Gmail servers?
• How do you monitor performance and measure success of a recently launched product/service ?
• How do you gain credibility from the development / engineering teams as a new product manager?
• What is the importance of engineering and technical teams as stakeholders ? How do you integrate them into the overall product vision?

• There are multiple sites that give you example behavioral questions, but at the least, cover the basics: Why you? Why this company? Why this role? What’s your expectation? What’s your biggest success? What’s your biggest failure? and How do you cope with a bad manager?

Consider the following best practices:

1. Clearly define the problem and the objectives
   • Make sure you understand the problem upfront. Candidates will sometimes latch on to a small part of the prompt that they heard and spend a lot of time going down an obscure path.
   • You should restate the problem and your assumptions about that problem in your own words and confirm it with the interviewer.
   • State any key assumptions you are making and ask follow up questions to clarify.
2. Start with user needs
   • No matter the type of problem, keep the needs of your users first.
3. Communicate your approach and provide some structure
   • Think and communicate how you are going to structure the problem before diving into it. The primary goal of case questions is to evaluate your problem solving process and abilities, not to evaluate whether you got to the correct answer. In many cases, there is no single correct answer.
   • Creating some structure around the problem is not only a good way to demonstrate that this is how you approach problems, but it is also a helpful interview tool. If you start by outlining your approach, you are less likely to forget to cover a certain aspect.
4. Have a clear methodology
   • There are many prioritization models out there (e.g. the RICE model). Find one or two that resonate with you and be prepared to use them, since prioritization questions are quite common in Product Manager interviews.
5. At each part of the problem, start broad and then narrow in
   • At each part of the process that you’ve structured, start by brainstorming several different options, and then use some stated criteria to prioritize and narrow in.
   • You want to make sure you consider a wide range of options and show that you can think creatively, but also that you know when to focus on the most promising option. Both are critical parts of the product management process.
6. State your approach at the outset
   • Structure is critical - provide some outline upfront for how you plan to attack the problem.
7. Gain familiarity of common technical solutions
   • It’s valuable to have a basic architectural understanding of some well known products -- for example Google Search and Facebook Newsfeed.
8. Understand the differences between mobile and desktop applications
   • In preparation for your interview, review the key differences and considerations when building an application for mobile vs desktop. This is particularly important if the company you are interviewing with has a mobile product.
9. Study the technology of the company you are interviewing with.
   • Prior to the interview, gain a basic familiarity with the company’s key technology. This preparation will not only help you answer questions you are asked, but can also inspire questions for you to ask the interviewer.

There are many factors that can go into prioritization. Some common ones includes:

1. Engineering Effort
2. Revenue Impact
3. Customer Satisfaction
4. Competitive Advantage
5. Mission Alignment

• Stock options: If you’re in the US, working for a startup, you need to know about how companies are funded and how stock options work. That’s tricky territory not easy to explain in a summary other than to say “get clued up about finance because it’s your money and future we’re talking about.” Regardless of gender, ignorance is not cool. If you’re curious about the employer perspective on stock options for employees, I recommend Fred Wilson’s MBA Mondays posts from back in 2010, particularly the ones on “How Much?”, Vesting, Restricted Stock and RSUs and Options.
• For all other negotiations (money, time, flexibility): I found that Josh Doody had some helpful advice for how to think about negotiations. His newsletters are informative but you can read his book too.
• For women in particular, Anna Marie Clifton wrote a long post about how she negotiated for an additional $15,000 at Yammer. Silence can be a great ally in negotiations, and it’s useful to learn how to wield it.

• Оптимизация ставок: зависимость между ценой клика и установленной ставкой
• Теоретико-информационный подход к анализу воронки продаж в контекстной рекламе
• This blog post that describes the job hunting process of landing an SF-based Product Manager role
• This article written by a Product Manager that had experience interviewing with some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Salesforce, Google, Dropbox, and Facebook
• A HackerNoon post on how to prepare for a Product Manager interview
• This blog post highlights a recommended four-step approach
• Watch another product strategy mock interview with a LinkedIn PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices
• This productboard article that discusses various product prioritization frameworks used in industry
• This article lays out a three-pronged approach to prioritize product features and improvements
• View this article that highlights a recommended three-step approach for questions that involve client-server relationships and back-end structure of algorithms
• Watch another technical mock interview with a Google PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices

Conversion Funnel Analysis:

• Everything You Need to Know About Funnels
• Introduction To Website Funnel Analysis Checklist
• Secrets of the E-Commerce Conversion Funnel: Effective Ways To Boost Conversions and Drive Sales
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• How to Create a Website Conversion Funnel

• Hiring

• Talk to other Product Managers: It's valuable to hear a first hand perspective -- what they enjoy, the biggest challenges, etc.
• Ask yourself why: It's important to do some introspection on your motivations for being a Product Manager and why you believe the role is the right one for you.
• Mentorship is key: When evaluating job opportunities, take into consideration the expected level of mentorship and guidance you can receive from an experienced Product Manager at the company.

• Passionate: Does the candidate truly care about the users and the problems they are trying to solve? Candidates who are excited and energized about solving hard problems are going to be more successful.
• Problem Solver: A skilled problem solver is comfortable taking a large problem and breaking it down into smaller ones.
• Strong Communicator: A Product Manager has many audiences -- it's critical to know how and what to communicate depending on who you are talking to.
• Self-Starter: A successful Product Manager takes initiative -- one who not only identifies problems but takes the next step of trying to solve it. A Product Manager's role is filled with ambiguity, and it's important for individuals to have the mindset to just figure things out.

• Behavior Questions: These are extremely common and intended to assess your skills as a Product Manager based on your prior experiences and background. Know your resume really well so you can speak to any part of it. It's also a good idea to be prepared with a few projects or products you worked on that you are most comfortable talking about.
• Case Study Questions: These can take different forms but are usually Strategy, Design, or Technical or some combination of the three. Practicing example case questions will prepare you to be more comfortable and confident answering these types of open-ended questions. Check out Lessons 2 and 3 from this course to review case study interviews in more detail.

• Use the STAR: When answering a behavioral question, such as describing a problem you solved, consider the STAR Method to structure your answer:
  • Situation : Provide context for the problem
  • Task : Explain what needed to be done
  • Action: Describe specifically what you did
  • Results: Explain the ultimate outcome
• Remember to demonstrate learnings: Often, more important than the ultimate outcome is what you learned along the way that helped you grow as a Product Manager. Make sure to highlight this when discussing your experiences.
• Always break down the problem: Candidates who provide some clarity and structure to open-ended questions will stand out.
• Above and beyond: It's not always practical or appropriate, but to really stand out, consider creating a product related proposal or project that is beneficial to the company and provide this as part of the interview process.

• Slack Community For Product Managers:
  • Product School
  • Slack Channel created by Lewis Lin, which already has over 5000 people looking for mock practice partners
• FirstRound Talent (by invitation only)
• Ken Norton’s blog and newsletter (specifically in the GV portfolio)
• Women’s communities:
  • Women in Product newsletter
    • Women in Product Facebook group
  • Women 2.0 (more engineering focused but there’s the occasional PM role in there too)
  • Advancing Women in Product
• Twitter, LinkedIn, Product School, Product Tank, Product Hunt, On Deck Daily, some sub-reddits, etc.
• Job Search

Growth Product Manager is a relatively new role within the Product Management domain. Some aspects of a Growth Product Manager role that are unique and exciting:

• Tinkering is key: Growth Product Managers are constantly trying new experiments, testing new ideas, and doing many of these at once.
• New experiments more than new features: Growth Product Managers focus on how to get more customers to use existing features. A major challenge is identifying and experimenting new ways for customer adoption.
• Quantity, not just quality: Sometimes in Product Management, the focus will be on building a small set of very high quality features to address customer needs. As a Growth Product Manager, quantity is critical -- you need to test a lot of ideas at once.

Examples of her day-to-day role as the VP of Product, including:

• Morning review of emails to identify which need urgent attention
• Looking at product metrics to see the direction her products are headed
• Structuring her day to spend time on day-to-day tactical work as well as long term strategic thinking
• Balancing the various requests that come to her (e.g. production bugs, sales team requests, customers feature requests, etc)