Product Manager Interview: The Failure Question

I’ve found that no matter what, part of the product manager interview process involves asking the failure question to prospective candidates.

The popular failure question usually looks like the following:

“Tell me about a time when you failed.”

It’s a daunting question, especially if you’re not used to interviewing as a product manager!

In the past, whenever I heard this question, I went immediately on the defensive. To me, it felt like the interviewer was out to get me.

But now that I’ve been on the other side of the interview process as an interviewer, I finally understand why employers ask this thorny question about failure.

So, let me first share with you the reasons for why employers ask this question, so that we understand what they’re trying to get at. Then, I’ll share a framework for how to best address the question. Continue Reading

Product Distribution Models

One reason why product management is so complex is because context matters. Different product distribution models fundamentally change the way that products are built, validated, and launched.

When I visualize the different product distribution models, I think of a spectrum from left to right: 

On the left are internal products. These are typically platform products or internal productivity tools, and they typically have only a single customer: the hiring organization.

On the right are consumer products. The most notable brand names are typically consumer products: Facebook, Google, Apple.

B2B products, such as Salesforce and ADP, lean towards the left of the spectrum. They exhibit many of the characteristics that internal products do. Continue Reading

What Is the Average Product Manager Salary?

It’s hard to find stellar product managers. Due to that scarcity, employers are eager to attract product managers through generous compensation. The software product manager role commands high salaries, strong equity, excellent bonuses, and a powerful career track in tech. On top of that, they get to set the product vision, drive the roadmap, craft the product strategy, work alongside software engineers, and grow their product development teams to new heights. 

But the question is, just how much does a product manager make?

Product management is highly contextual. Product manager salaries are highly contextual as well, because the value of the product manager to the employer depends heavily on the context for that role. Continue Reading

Product Manager Interview: Analyze a Metric Change

One core responsibility of a product manager is to analyze the performance of her product.

After all, by analyzing product performance, product managers can drive impact by:

  1. Determining how to further optimize traffic and conversion
  2. Diagnosing bugs or problematic user experiences
  3. Testing new strategies and new markets

During product manager interviews, hiring managers will focus on your analytics skill sets by asking you to analyze a metric on the fly.

I’ve had at least one of these metrics analysis questions for almost every single interview I’ve had! Your employer needs to know that you can handle the numbers, after all.

The standard product metrics analysis question usually looks like the following:

“Conversion on our homepage dropped by 10% last week. How do you diagnose what happened?”

We recommend using the framework below to tackle this question. Continue Reading

B2B Cohort Analysis

In our previous article, we discussed cohort analyses in the business-to-consumer (B2C) product space. We first broke down how cohort analyses enable you to see the difference between groups of users. Then, we discussed how cohort analyses enable you to drive insights from real-time experimentation.

While cohort analyses are incredibly powerful in the B2C space, they’re quite difficult to pull off in the B2B (business-to-business) space.

Why is that?

It’s because B2B products display a couple of fundamental structural differences compared to B2C products.

In fact, I wasn’t aware of the differences between B2B cohort analyses and B2C cohort analyses until I worked alongside Ying Luo, Product Analyst at Blend! Continue Reading

Introduction to Cohort Analysis

As product managers, it’s critical for us to understand the lasting impact that we have on our users – and one of the easiest ways to do so is through cohort analysis.

What’s a cohort analysis? Let’s break down each term.

A cohort simply means a group of people.

As an example, let’s look at graduation year. For your school, the class of 2010 is one cohort, and the class of 2011 is a different cohort.

You can create any cohort that you’d like. For example, you can cohort by median household income. You can cohort by marketing campaign. You can cohort by age.

A cohort analysis, then, is a data visualization of behavior over time, split up by cohorts.

In other words, you want to look for how behavior changes over time, and how that differs from cohort to cohort. Continue Reading