Product manager Interview experience at DirectI
PM Interview experience at DirectI
Have listed all the questions asked as well as the suggested approach for each of them. Please note this interview was given a year back.
Round 1 - Initiation
Round 2 - Case narration
Round 3 - Initiation
Round 4 - Initiation
Round 1 - Initiation
Run me through your resume. Why PM? Why DirectI, which product did you apply for and why? Standard answers given. These were just ice breakers.
Case narration
- Give a brief of the features suggested in the case solution submitted.
- Pick the feature that is a revenue stream and estimate the revenue generated in a year.
- How much should BookMyShow bid for an AdWord that will figure as the top result in a Google search?
- You are PM of YouTube and average time spent on Youtube by a user has fallen in the last 2 weeks. How will you troubleshoot the problem.
- Couple of algorithm questions. Ex: Sort two unsorted arrays into one.
How to approach?
- Be thorough with your case submission. Do not mention any feature unless you think it is feasible (technically and economically).
- Be ready for estimation questions. If the metrics provided are user engagement, CTR, CPC, etc., think through how much each will contribute to revenue in a year. Be prepared with this and not wait to hear it for the first time in the interview.
- Basic premise: BookMyShow should bid at least as much as the profit it will make through the revenue generated by the AdWord. This boils down to an estimation question about CTR, Avg. ticket size on BookMyShow, CLV of a customer and of course, market size estimation.
Experience / DOs and DONT's
The interviewer was friendly. He kept pushing me to the limit of my thinking by asking “what else?” every time I gave an answer which was satisfactory. I think they
believe that only by pushing to the limit will creative solutions appear. While solving case type questions, think out loud. Make assumptions and say it loud and provide a rationale for making such an assumption (they shouldn’t be outrageous assumptions).
Round 2 Case narration
Interviewer in this round focused a lot on designing a recommendation engine for a news website and ad fraud online (detecting, fixing it).
Recommendation engine: What factors will you consider while designing a recommendation engine for a news website like MSN?
Ad fraud: How is ad fraud carried out? How will you detect a bot’s fraud (list all mechanisms). If you can get technical here, they will appreciate it but getting technical is not a pre-requisite.
Algorithms: Write an algorithm to list elements of a Fibonacci series; There are two unsorted arrays (with no repeating elements) – find the median of the combined array (use a 3rd array if you wish). Find the median of the combined array without using a 3rd array (basically trying to find a memory efficient algo).
How to approach?
It always helps if you know how a certain system asked in the case works, but in this case I went about stating my understanding of how news website recommendation engine works, what factors influence.
Recommendation engine: Thinking from the perspective of end-users always helps get insights. (Read consumer behaviour). Draw a process chart of how a user would
interact with the system and undergo the process step by step. Prior knowledge of workings of search, reco engines will help in listing down the obvious factors. For every factor listed down, discuss if the interviewer agrees with you. Provide your rationale behind the suggestion.
Ad fraud: Understand the definition of fraud and just to be sure that both are on the same page as far as the understanding of Q goes. If you know technically how ad fraud works, great – feel free to include tech jargon in to your answer. Be careful to not go too deep unless you are sure of what you are saying (you can’t faff on tech
aspects). List down metrics to identify bots for fraud (click in my case – links and images).
Sample metrics/mechanisms to detect: Originating IP of request is same for all suspicious clicks in a day; there will be a pattern in the time to trigger a click after the
page fully loads (API request is completed); mouse click always happens at the same end-point on the image on the screen; cursor moves in a straight line from point of origin to end point.
Experience / DOs and DONT's
Feel free to ask clarifying questions. Their interviews are very informal, idea is to understand how one thinks. Focus is on solving questions. Ask and take as much time as you want as many questions can’t be answered instantaneously. Interviewer will understand this need.
Round 3 Initiation
What was a typical day in your previous job?
Since I was transitioning from service industry to product my focus was on and around understanding and fulfilling client needs. How I did it, what were they etc. Showcase tech/development skills if you have been a developer before.
Case narration
Q1) Design a car sharing app. Create mockups, describe features. What is your customer acquisition strategy?
Q2) Youtube is planning remove the option to “skip to videos” to appease advertisers. How should Youtube price this option to advertisers?
How to approach?
Read “Cracking the PM interview” or any other such PM specific books (these names will be doing the rounds by the time prep starts). There are frameworks to help tackle product design question. Be thorough with product roadmaps, how to prioritize features, defining an MVP, defining goals for the product and aligning features with them, metrics to measure performance of features. Practice drawing UIs.
There are some standard PM questions such as below which can be applied to any situation (these the hygiene factors in your prep):
- Pick 5 products (need not be tech/internet) and prepare for how you will improve the product – 3 features, what you don’t like about the product?
- Make changes to the UI to include the feature. Mention the goals of the feature. Define metrics to measure performance. Make 1-2-3 year estimates of the metrics.
Q3) Pick one of the 3 pricing strategies. Cost based, competitor based, value based.
Value based almost always works the best as it appropriates max value from consumer. Skip feature: Understand why that feature exists (consumer and advertiser end)- If advertisers buy that option, how does it affect user experience; how does it cost Youtube? (User time spent, engagement, ad revenue lost/won, fixed costs etc.); convert non-monetary metrics in to $ and provide an estimate; alternate sources of revenue through the feature which would offset the costs for advertisers.
Experience / DOs and DONT's
Again the focus was on whether you can think on your feet no matter how under prepared you are for a question. Interviewer had a straight face with slight nodding in agreement of what I said. However, the environment was conducive for clear thinking and never uncomfortable.
Round 4 Initiation
Few work-ex related questions. Generic stuff which can be answered if thorough with resume.
Case narration
Questions on feasibility of features and their monetisation strategy I suggested in the case study solution submitted. The interviewer's argument was that it simply wasn’t possible in reality (he was adamant to not accept any convincing argument I made – this could be to unsettle me or he could have genuinely felt that way).
Case: You are PM of Flipkart and interviewer is the DB administrator. Cart abandonment in Flipkart has gone up in the last week. What data (in SQL parlance) will you ask the DB guy to find the root cause? Provide only SQL queries, not English words/sentences (He insisted on SQL queries since that is as specific as it can get, otherwise people tend to bluff their way by explaining irrelevant aspects in long sentences thus asking the interviewer to find the answer within the abundance of information provided in the reply and complicating each other’s job).
How to approach?
Do a feasibility analysis of the case submitted while applying for the job. List down why you think the feature will work and why it might not work. Through a tree diagram explain different possible scenarios and how you will overcome the problematic scenarios. Drive home your point by providing assumptions and estimates of the output you claim to achieve through the feature.
Case: Cart abandonment is a popular case scenario for PM roles. Firstly, draw the user journey from purchase intent to purchase on the app/website. Understand user motivation at each step.
*Identify the step at which the cart being abandoned.
*Upon reaching an agreement with the interviewer on the step list down possible reasons why cart could be abandoned at this step.
(*are the steps at which interviewer wanted SQL queries)
While listing each factor/reason, explain why you think so. There will be cross questioning on this. Interviewer tries to push your thinking as much as possible so he will not agree to any reason you give and asks to list down more reasons. Finally, in order to time box the interview he asked me to move on from this case and ended the interview.
Experience / DOs and DONT's
Very knowledgeable and courteous person. Appreciated whenever any streak of critical, analytical or scientific orientation in thinking was displayed. To illustrate it – this was a Skype call so there was some flicker in his video so we started discussing the possible reasons for why his video could flicker and how Mac and its built/specification and the frequency of power in India is the reason. At the end ask some question that will stand out. Easiest way is to make sure the interviewer is made to think to answer the question. This there will most likely be a follow-up comment and couple of minutes of discussion.
If the above experience helped you, and you want to get access to a series of guides on Product management Interviews, apply for the PM School program.
