Product execution mock interview: user engagement (w/ Microsoft PM)

Рет қаралды 59,558

Күн бұрын

Here's a product management mock case interview featuring a Microsoft PM focusing on a product execution question.
🎥 This full PM mock interview features Ankur Biswas, Microsoft PM, as the candidate answering a product execution question, specifically investigating why Instagram Story user engagement is down. Our ex-Googler Founder, Kenton Kivestu, plays the interviewer. Ankur is part of the Product Folks, an awesome community of product enthusiasts that put on a lot of great events: www.theproductfolks.com/.
If you're preparing for Facebook product management interviews, this video is a must watch. Also, for anyone preparing for other PM roles, execution and analytics questions about how to investigate a drop (or spike) are a common topic - this interview will give you insight into what these questions are like and what a good response looks like.
🚀 Interviewing soon? RocketBlocks has the best concepts, drills, and coaching to get you more offers: www.rocketblocks.me/product-m...
💡 Looking to become familiar with the PM role, the interview process, and how to start preparing? Our free product management guide covers it all: www.rocketblocks.me/guide/pm/...
➡️ Check out our intro video to understand what PM is: • What is product manage...
➡️ Here's what to expect in PM interviews: • Introduction to produc...
#PMinterviews #productexecution #productanalytics #facebookPM #RocketBlocks

Пікірлер: 55

@anmol557 2 жыл бұрын

One of the best structure and framework. Ankur did a really great job. I would hire him. One think that I would have considered was dissecting the engagement by source, meaning engagement could come either from 1) users directly opening the app whenever they get the time and 2) engagement coming from PN. This would have helped identifying the root cause faster.

@HDA295 2 жыл бұрын

Kenton and Ankur, I tried to think of the plan before I heard Ankur's answer after learning the three changes. My thought process was funnel based check 1) Content Creation: Messenger teams story creation --- Check number of stories uploaded 2) Content Discovery : Notification changes 3)Content recommendation : Story bar.

@corey_drums 2 жыл бұрын

His upspeak burned a hole in my brain

@meronpansukidayo 2 жыл бұрын

Great video and great exercise. Two comments: 1. Facebook doesn't care about NPS/CSAT. 2. I'd also suggest diving deeper into revenue impact given stories are an individual placement for advertisers.

@voluspa6867 2 жыл бұрын

Watch this right before my product sense interview and took alot of inspiration from this! Thanks and keep up the great work

@stevenspellberg 2 жыл бұрын

Hats off to Ankur's thorough analysis and breakdown well.

@b__05 3 жыл бұрын

This was amazing. Thanks!

@DeepakSharma-ek3yw 3 жыл бұрын

Overall good structuring and explaining the though process or reasons before making any conclusions👍

@botardtim 2 жыл бұрын

Something I was expecting to hear about with the experiments 2 & 3 is that if user's time is finite, you're asking them to view stories over a single duration/session versus many smaller ones throughout the day - which they may not want to do, or can't do. Or the stories from the notifications that are batched are competing against each other for the same piece of limited time, resulting in a lower engagement.

@cyrilfonseca9091 4 жыл бұрын

An amazing mock interview. The overall framework was great. I really enjoy all your videos. Very insightful.

@rocketblocks 4 жыл бұрын

Yes, Ankur did a great job here!

@niiniiy9940 2 жыл бұрын

1:18 STORIES ENGAGEMENT IS DOWN HOW WOULD YOU INVESTIGATE THIS ISSUE? 2:08 2:49 metrics 3:09 the specific metric? 3:50 the specific time period? 5:04 the specific location? 5:50 the specific device/os? 7:11 8:14 9:11 9:43 10:20 10:38 11:30 11:53 13:10 13:30 13:46 experience of using the stories tool that's been changed 14:04 14:40 explanation on the story bar mechanics 15:46 15:58

@ritikadahiya6039 4 жыл бұрын

This was very useful! Loved the analysis framework!

@rocketblocks 4 жыл бұрын

thanks, glad you enjoyed it! more good stuff coming soon :)

@shaileshrana7165 2 жыл бұрын

Great video, once again

@ss2500411 3 жыл бұрын

Idea way for an interview to run. however, it will require the interviewer to be close to the product, and also the question to not be hypothetical for such an exchange to happen. Keeping that aside, a great example of peeling the layers, and letting reasons pave the way through the investigation.

@timerwentoff 2 жыл бұрын

Excellent analysis.

@IamMC939 9 ай бұрын

Excellent job by Ankur! Thanks for a great video on this topic

@shawnpouliotte 3 жыл бұрын

OK i have watched many of these mock interviews and this is by far the best I have seen. If interviewee really didn't get the question ahead of time, I tip my hat to him on this. Very solid thought process. If it was indeed scripted, still good as it was very illustrative.

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

Agreed, Ankur really did a solid job here + great enthusiasm throughout!

@doublerebel6783 3 жыл бұрын

I for sure believe its scripted, but nevertheless good one

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

@@doublerebel6783 Definitely not scripted...

@ordonezsilvana 7 ай бұрын

Ankur is so thoughtful!!

@vivkr 2 жыл бұрын

If the overall engagement was down and the experiment was to bundle notifications, I would investigate that because it’s quite obvious that these notifications would drop driving traffic about stories. Not sure why it got so muddled up in the end.

@miker3524 3 жыл бұрын

This is a very good mock, but not Excellent! However, probably this is a realistic interview with minimal behind the scenes preparation. Actually, you want to watch something like this. 1st because it portrays the real reaction of a candidate 2.You learn how to pivot when things does not go perfectly. One good thing in this interview, the candidate pivoted well on potential issues impacting user experience. Some assumptions and comment through the interview, were not necessarily best choices, but again, if this is on the spot interview, i think this really good.

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

it is "on the fly" - he is not reading from a script :)

@spjena5491 3 жыл бұрын

Overall I thought it was excellent framing by Ankur on the interview. The initial framing and approach was perfect. However, I felt a little lost when it came to analyzing the variants in the test. For instance, I would typically approach something like this by identifying all the exhaustive factors - ruling them out one by one to narrow down the specific scenario.With respect to the assumption of no external impact - stock markets are a great example - a lowering of consumer sentiment in US can lead to a ripple effect on all major geos. In this case, it seems like there were underperforming variants in the A/B test. So the approach should have been to first identify the impact to the metrics for the variants and then hypothesize about the change in functionality which could have led to the decline in overall DAUs. Also, it wasnt clear if the A/B test was launched globally or in certain geos or to certain segments ( another hint on whether these were the contributing source ). Overall great stuff.

@hello-pd7tc 3 жыл бұрын

I also think his framework/answer got a little messy. It seems like he is not answering the interviewer's question, and kept asking questions that maybe a little out of framework. But great interview in general.

@chilukanand 2 жыл бұрын

Beautiful video made. Thanks!

@rocketblocks 2 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

@rickhouten1622 2 ай бұрын

Rally detailed and excellent interview though it was hard to keep up with all of the details.

@neelamchahal9299 Жыл бұрын

Any good software engineer can do this kind of troubleshooting , I think focus of interview should be how to increase the user engagement for a product. Scalability and onboarding new user s is more challenging job for a product manager.

@sudhansushekhar6246 3 жыл бұрын

I observed a few concerns: 1. Customer segmentation could be done further. 2. Assumption of a change specifically impacting, involving the stories feature. Not necessarily always true. 3. We did not establish if the previous week's number itself was within the range of baseline. 4. The remaining conversation hinged on the notifications. But what % of stories' DAU and engagement is contributed by click on the notification. Unless established, it leaves a major variable unanswered. For example: notification contributes to only 1% of DAU, the whole hypothesis fails. 5. Messenger changes were not covered. IMO if the interviewer has cited this, one should cover or ask to drop with a valid assumption with confirmation from the interviewer. The interview overall was well structured and it was delivered well.

@PB-pl4vn 3 жыл бұрын

I agree with #4

@tempqwerty923 2 жыл бұрын

can you add me on linkedin? :)

@daveytheg 3 жыл бұрын

Ankur is so good

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

Yep, he does a really solid job here

@wonderbirdscocktail4113 Жыл бұрын

Hi, we are unable to open the above mentioned blogs

@rocketblocks Жыл бұрын

weird - should be fixed now!

@cming6108 3 жыл бұрын

Don't know why there's any down-votes! Admittedly a few concerns can be covered more completely, Ankur's structure is SO good overall

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

agree - v good for the on the fly! no script!

@smilli6415 2 жыл бұрын

please ux interview

@danieltannor6647 3 жыл бұрын

@14:37 why does Ankur have red nail polish on his pinky? :D

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

i have no idea and never noticed - good attention to detail tho?

@mahavakyas002 2 жыл бұрын

great overall interview but I felt there were too many questions he was asking at every step which felt rather distracting - I feel most PM interviewers would just say "it's up to you" and not really explain like you did. This demonstrated a great scenario of actual PM "work" but not so much for an interview.

@ankitsud8261 2 жыл бұрын

Symbian :D

@majhical 2 жыл бұрын

Lol. true legends know

@EvergreenLeaf 4 жыл бұрын

The interviewee was very unstructured!! Kevin, couldn't we use MECE here? I used MECE in my own solutioning and could diagnose more easily

@rocketblocks 4 жыл бұрын

MECE is a great tool - no doubt about that. Ankur does in fact lay out his process as internal vs. external which is as MECE as it gets. He doesn't start by doing that, which I think in this case was OK since he did a lot of "discovery" around the issue. Since he was on point, his questions and assumptions are good, I think it works well for him.

@gauriapte673 3 жыл бұрын

You meant Mee See MECE framework right?

@rocketblocks 3 жыл бұрын

@@gauriapte673 Yes, referring to the MECE framework. More details here: www.rocketblocks.me/blog/the-mece-principle.php

@EvergreenLeaf 4 жыл бұрын

It's unclear why the person believes that a quick drop in engagement can only occur so quickly due to an internal issue.

@rocketblocks 4 жыл бұрын

If you spend time running these massive apps, you'll find that most of the "kink" in the curve issues come from acute things like bugs, new features, bad experiments, etc. There are some external factors that certainly could cause a dramatic drop & I do think the answer could have been strengthened by acknowledging that - but overall he still does a really solid job

@msnp05 4 жыл бұрын

He did acknowledge external factors to an extent....

@universalsorrow 3 жыл бұрын

External issues, such as competitive forces etc, tend to show results over longer periods of time. It's unlikely that there would be a sharp gain or drop in something unless it was an internally generated issue.