Product manager Interview experience at Google

Note that this Interview had been shared by a PM School candidate. We cannot reveal the identity of the Interviewee. However, hope that the experience narrative here helps aspiring product managers.

My PM interview consisted of 4 rounds including HR. First-round was with the Head of Engineering, the second round was with the Senior Product Manager, In the third
round, I was given a take-home assignment. The last round was with HR which was related to my past work experience and negotiation.

Phone Screen with a PM 

This was an initial screening round on hangouts with a PM on the other side. The intention was to just do a hygiene check - whether its worth to waste 5 interviewers
time on this candidate or not. I was asked basic questions on product principles like - what do you look for in a good product, what principles do you value? Then I was also asked about my favourite digital and physical product. I mentioned Nykaa as the digital product and an Ikea alarm clock which was kept on my desk (even showed it to the interviewer)! Then on mentioning Nykaa - I was asked what I could do to make it a better product? 

Tip- 'Just having a basic sense of product helped to get past this round. This was followed by 5 Onsite Interviews (all on the same day) a couple of days later.'

Round 1  (Interview with Software developer, Technical) 

This was the first round with a software engineer. PMs are not expected to write code, but definitely understand code since a lot of the day to day work involves
speaking to engineers. I was asked 2 questions. One being a standard question to detect if two words are anagrams. I mentioned the brute force order n factorial
method and a slightly more optimised version using a hash table. I was also writing pseudo code on the whiteboard after explaining and thinking out aloud my algorithm.
The second question involved designing a website and debugging some of the metrics. We spoke about how to measure bounce rate, ways to optimise and reduce bounce rate. How to convince engineers that a certain rate was acceptable or not? 

Tip- 'They were just testing basic programming knowledge, ability to understand technical aspects and negotiate with engineers and how to unblock them.'

Round 2  (Interview with Senior PM, Product Insight and Design, Leadership)  

Was asked to design a handheld device with a screen. I made a phone for tracking the location of kids. Was asked follow up questions on market sizing, customer
behaviour, pricing, features. The next question was - If I were a PM of google maps, how would I improve the location accuracy. Why is it important and what could be the solutions? How would I rank solutions? 

Tip- 'This involved thinking on the feet and some creativity, along with basic strategic knowledge and ability to prioritise.'

Round 3 (Interview with PM, Product and Strategy) 

Was asked to design a handheld device with a screen. I made a phone for tracking the location of kids. Was asked follow up questions on market sizing, customer
behaviour, pricing, features. The next question was - If I were a PM of google maps, how would I improve the location accuracy. Why is it important and what could be
the solutions? How would I rank solutions? 

Tip- 'This round was focussed on thinking about not so conventional tech products and then building a strategy around productionising those, involved a bit of creativity here. '

Round 4 (Interview with Senior PM, Strategy and Analytics)

Here I was asked to design a car parking system.  Mostly was asked how to go about the design, why should we even build it, what's the benefit, how to launch it,
how to price it, which city to target initially. How to estimate the number of cars coming in daily, how to advertise, how to estimate the number of people interested,
partnership with public transport, pricing, how to go about convincing people? Tested almost all of the product and strategy concepts here. 

Tip- 'This round was pretty intense, involving concepts around the entire lifecycle of the product.'

Round 5 (Interview with PM, Analytical) 

This was the last round focussed on analytics, mostly where thinking on the feet was being assessed. It started by the question - “How do you make business decisions?” Followed by a guesstimate - “Estimate number of call centre operators for Uber?” Then we had a brief discussion around how to measure Maps accuracy? Why is it important? A bit of strategy with - Where is maps going in the future? Gave general answers for all the above, brainstormed a couple of metrics, stated assumptions, limitations. 

Tip- 'They were looking for just a strong sense of looking at data and making sense out of it, also data-driven decision making.'

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For further Interview prep, and opportunities in Indian product companies, apply for the PM School program here.