Dropbox New Grad PM (NGPM) Interview Guide

Every year, Dropbox hires a 6-8 person cohort of new-grad product managers in the New Grad Product Manager (NGPM) program. This program is similar to many of the tech company associate product manager programs. Dropbox’s NGPM program specifically recruits new grads. Graduate students are eligible.

How can I apply?

Search for the “New Grad Product Manager” role at Dropbox's Job Page. The role may not be visible until August.

The Dropbox NGPM interview consists of potentially five steps:

1. (Optional) Screening Call. At first, you may receive an initial phone screen call with a Dropbox recruiter. The purpose of this call is to ensure that you’re a good fit for the role. There’s not much prep work to be done here, as it’s a fairly straightforward call about your background and fit for the role.

2. First Phone Interview. The Dropbox NGPM phone interview will generally consist of product, analytical, strategy, or estimation questions. The phone interview questions are generally case based and will probe into how you structure your thinking and will be conducted by a Dropbox product manager. The topic is typically around a popular app or tech product and you may be asked about coming up with new features, choosing metrics, and prioritization.

3. Second Phone Interview. Much like the first phone interview, the second will again test your ability to identify product goals, gaps, and provide you with the opportunity to suggest ways to improve a chosen product in a case based format.

4. Take-home Assignment. After the phone interview, you’ll be sent a prompt over email and be given until your onsite interview to prepare a presentation on a past project you worked on with others

5. In-person Interview. Next, you will be invited for an on-site interview where you’ll meet face-to-face with Dropbox product managers, engineers, and designers.

Dropbox’s interview questions consist of the following types:

Estimation: Estimation questions assess your ability to break down large, intractable problems into smaller, solvable chunks.

Practice Estimation Questions:

• How many self driving Street View cars does it take to map the US?
• How much is Airbnb's annual revenue?
• How much storage does Dropbox use?

Analytical Skills: Analytical PM interview questions are squarely left-brain-type exercises. Can you reason with metrics? Do you understand how to think critically about user feedback and bugs? How do you approach experiments in product?

Practice Analytical Questions:

• How would you design an experiment to validate the success of a new landing page?
• Pick YouTube's key metrics
• What are some common biases that might invalidate an experiment?

Product Design: Product design questions are the ultimate type of product management question. These are the most unique to the product management role, and, often, the most fun. When it comes to product design, Dropbox prefers show don’t tell. Expect open ended questions demanding structured thinking from you.

Practice Product Questions:

• What is your favorite product and how would you improve it?
• What makes Snapchat stories a well designed product?
• What’s the most important part of your design process?

Product Strategy: Strategy questions are a new category recently added to Dropbox’s list of interview question types. They assess your ability to reason about competitive landscapes and high-level product direction decisions.

Practice Strategy Questions:

• How does X product help Y company reach its goals?
• Given a list of features or projects, how would you prioritize them?
• What are some trends in the productivity SaaS?

Technical: Technical questions assess your ability to understand and reason with engineers and engineering problems. While coding is never asked in the interview, these questions may involve understanding of technical limitations and architecture.

Practice Technical Questions:

• Tell me about a time where you worked with engineers.
• How do you influence or motivate your technical partners?
• Recall a decision you made that had a technical tradeoff. What was the decision and why did you make it?

Take-home: Product management is multi-faceted, and so is the interview process. While interviews are a great assessment tool, companies are also interested in seeing sample work outputs from PM candidates. These take-home assignments vary widely in terms of detail. For Dropbox a common ask is to present a previous project that you’ve worked on with others.

Sample Questions during the Take-home:

• What were the goals of the project and why?
• What would you have done differently?
• How did your team work together?

Sample Dropbox NGPM Interview Questions

Here are some of the more common Dropbox NGPM interview questions:

• What is your favorite product and why? See Exponent’s guide to answering this question here.
• Tell me about a project that you worked on with others.
• Design a car stereo.
• How would you influence others to help move a project forward?