Introduction to Execution Questions

Execution questions test how you handle the day-to-day work of being a PM.

They may be thought of as a subset of analytical questions designed to test your ability to think through complex problems, analyze data, and reason logically. They’re also a great opportunity for interviewers to learn more about your problem-solving process and your communication skills.

What to expect

Different companies take different approaches to these questions in their interview loops, which can lead to some confusion about what to expect.

For example, Meta typically asks execution questions that focus on root cause analysis, decision-making, and metrics, for instance: “You're the PM for Facebook Reactions. Reactions are up 20% but comments are down 10%. What would you do?” These are very similar to analytical questions in other interviews.

Google tends to assess execution skills through broader hypothetical or experiential questions in Craft & Execution and Cross-Functional Collaboration rounds. You might get a question like “When do you consider a design review completed?” These questions skew more behavioral — they focus on how you think, what you did, and why.

Here are a few of the most common types of execution questions.

Root cause analysis (RCA) questions

Root cause analysis are unique in that they often take a “role-play” form. Your interviewer will play the role of an uninformed data analyst and pose a problem or question to you. It’s up to you to determine the root cause and make a recommendation for next steps. Example questions include:

• “You're the PM for Facebook Reactions. Reactions are up 20% but comments are down 10%. What would you do?”
• “There’s been a 20% increase in Lyft ride cancellations. How would you investigate?”
• “You are the PM for an e-commerce site. You see that sales have dropped 7% in the last few days? What could be wrong?”

This module includes a framework for working through RCA questions. You’ll learn how to form high-level hypotheses for what could be wrong, gather relevant data, refine your hypotheses, and repeat until you’ve identified a root cause.

Decision-making questions

Similar to RCA questions, decision-making questions pose a scenario and ask you to make a decision. You may be asked a yes or no question or it may be open-ended. Example questions include:

• “You're the PM for Facebook Watch. Your team is working on a redesign. This redesign improves watch time but causes a drop in likes and comments. Should you ship this?”
• “You're the PM for Facebook Newsfeed. How would you decide whether or not to auto-play videos in the feed?”
• “Should Uber Eats be a standalone app? Why or why not?”

Decision-making questions are similar to RCA, but there are important nuances. In this module, you’ll learn a specific framework for thinking through decision-making questions and delivering a solid, logically-defensible answer.

Metrics questions

Metrics are central to many execution and analytical questions. Example questions include:

• “Facebook wants to test a new feature in which the news feed is split into a “Friends and Family Feed” and a “Media” feed. How would you validate this with metrics?”
• “How would you measure success for Instagram Shops?”
• “How would you define success for Yelp reviews?”

Craft and execution

Craft and execution is a Google-specific interview round assessing candidates’ overall PM skills. Example questions include:

• “When do you consider a design review completed?”
• "Pick a product of your choice. What are the goals of the product? What’s in your monthly business review deck for the leadership team?”
• "Imagine I'm a VC, offering you $20M to build any technology-enabled product/service you'd like. Please walk me through how you would get started. (Problem, Solution, User, Monetize, TAM)”

Cross-functional collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration is another Google-specific interview round. These questions skew behavioral, asking hypothetical and experiential questions about how you would (or did) handle common on-the-job scenarios. Example questions include:

• "Your largest customer is loudly advocating for a new feature that is not in your prioritized roadmap. Sales, eager to please, have gone straight to Engineering to see if they can drop everything and get this done. What do you do?"
• "How do you resolve conflicting product requirements? What or who determines which requirement takes the hit?”