Google Product Manager Interview Questions

Anonymous Muskox - "Clarification Questions What does it mean by Next Gen Elevator? → Next Gen Elevator means Elevator using new technologies. Where is this Elevator situated? → Skyscrapers, Commercial Buildings, Residential Buildings or Elevators to Space? Assuming it’s Commercial Buildings. What is the Goal of Making Next Gen Elevators? Is it improving Safety? User Experience? Assuming it’s User Experience _Goal: To design an elevator using emerging technologies to improve user experience in a C"See full answer

BriskD - "I watched a couple of videos like this, one of them by Exponent staff (I think). It was disappointing that the architecture diagram and the walkthrough was a general layered architecture that you can apply to any backend system. I was wondering if there are videos that can be considered a reference material to watch, learn and improve on the tech (sys design) skills, and not so much about the soft skills."See full answer

Vivek S. - "This question can be answered in two different ways: a. Strategic b. Product Sense Since , the question is which product you would work upon , it is likely a product strategy question , where interviewer is trying to find about how would you go about selecting the product to solve for. Another approach would be to clarify on the two approaches from the Interviewer. Can ask your hierarchy in PM role [ APM/PM/ Sr. PM / GPM ] and then approach this. Candidate : Do you have any specific goal"See full answer

Karthik M. - "1. Step 1: clarify Let's establish the mission of Google and Youtube. Google's is to provide and make information more accessible. Youtube's might be to help people get their content, their word and themselves out into the world. I mean so many of Youtube's ads have been about how the diversity of individuals and their content, so that makes sense. Let's establish what is Youtube. Youtube has 3 primary stakeholders - creators, viewers and brands/corporations and within them"See full answer

Anonymous Sparrow - "Clarifying question: why would Google consider sunsetting Gmail? Is there an opportunity to make a case against sunsetting or has the executive decision already been made and we're truly looking for a flawless sunset? If decision has already been made - why? Is this a global decision or country-specific? If the answer from interviewer is that the decision is open to debate, pivot case toward identifying the problem that causes leadership to even consider sunset. Then analyze and propose ways to"See full answer

Prateek G. - "I will first start with listing down the GOALS of Google Sheets as a product GOALS: Enable better collaboration amongst employees in an organisation Make edits parallel Share with co-workers so that the team can work seamlessly Increase user engagement, activity and make more users aware about the functionality and usefulness of Google Sheets Next, i will try and list the broader ACTIONS a user might take ACTIONS: Create a new Google Sheet Share with co-workers M"See full answer

Issac K. - "I learned that people and teams build great products, not processes and job descriptions. The quality of the teamwork will directly reflect in the quality of the product. My biggest failure as a product manager was failing to build a foundation of teamwork before starting a project with a new cross-functional team. As the PM of a new product, I like to get my engineers involved early and often in the design process, but tight schedules with an even tighter resources made the tension and st"See full answer

anush - "@Jacob, your videos are really good and helpful. I want to know about the tool, you use for explaining the design in the videos."See full answer

Urvashi G. - "YT threats →. Let's define threat - activities that reduce actual or growth rate for user base / watch time / $ User - what impacts user base, users’ watch time (why would users not use YT anymore?) Competition - all apps that compete for users' time spent on digital entertainment (VOD, social media apps like tiktok, vMVPDs) Safety, trust, privacy, digital well being No relevant content Distribution - platform bans, distribution deals falling through (eg smart TVs)"See full answer

Balaji G. - "This is the answer I have prepared. Please let me know your comments and how I can improve the answer. I have worked on many process improvement initiatives and projects. I want to share an initiative that I led and delivered while at my previous employer. It had a great impact on over 60 programs and projects across teams in six different countries. Analysts and program managers used to generate a monthly program performance report that deals with all aspects, including schedule, risks, costs"See full answer

Saket S. - "I will divide my answer in 2 parts: Process I use for managing risks in any Project I will explain a real life situation where a Risk occurred and how I managed it Process for Risk Management can be broken down into 3 parts: Risk Identification: Risk identification is a team effort and is an ongoing process that happens throughout the Project. Technical Risks are usually identified during design/build/testing stage. I maintain a Risk register document to capture all the risks identified"See full answer

Ram - "Clarification Are we focusing on building the product on a specific Meta platform (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), or is this a standalone effort? Is the product digital or physical? Are we targeting internal (employees) or external (customers) users? Are there any specific constraints like funding, resourcing, or geography? 1. Narrowing Down the Problem Awareness and Education: Create tools to increase understanding of climate change and its effects. -"See full answer

Umang S. - "In my role as a Product Owner, I was developing a platform for a logistics company. As a PO and that too of a digital agency, my work was mostly before-end-to-after-end, it would start from pitching, strategy, product management, launch, funding deck prep. In mid of the product management cycle, the client starts adding pressure to deliver way before the deadline, as they had found the PE firm that conceptually was ready to start funding discussion, since this was not scoped before the start,"See full answer

Anonymous Raven - "How often do we get 15 min to answer a question? Wondering isn't the expectation to answer this in 3-5 min?"See full answer

Mehul K. - "Clarifying Questions Are we building feature for YouTube Music/YouTube Video? -> YT Video has higher scope of user engagement so YT Video. YT Video has 2 forms of video content, are we focusing on long form, short form or am I free to chose ? -> YT Shorts and short videos have taken off lately so focus on it. Do we have a specific business goal with regards to building this feature ? -> We want to improve engagement. Do we want to build this feature for a specific kind of audience or"See full answer

Jazmia H. - "Weak point: suggested something that YouTube Music already does- offering the service free to Premium members. Rebounded by saying the lack of user awareness is a pain point and how it can be mitigated- by frequent check-ins by way of notifications and emails Strong point: discussed overall strategies of global expansion, marketing and innovation with pros and cons for each approach. Settled on discussing an innovation piece combining ranked recommendation of YouTube music as well as personaliz"See full answer

Michelle D. - "I'd tell the interviewer that I'd start off with clarifying the question to make sure I understand it correctly (see 1 below). Then, I'd tell the interviewer my approach to make sure they know what to expect as I talk through. Approach would start with discussing the mission and connecting a north star metric (NSM) to the mission, then discuss key product metrics that are inputs towards NSM. If there's time at the end and if the interviewer wants to go down this path, we should also talk about t"See full answer

Ra R. - "In my time at Snapp! I was in charge of communicating the product backlog to our CEO. We had a shared Jira board that he had access to and I made specifically for him. One day he saw me in the office and said he doesn’t know anything about our backlog and that’s because I failed to communicate with him. I got upset at first because of the fact that I made the dashboard exclusively for him. But I tried to ask questions to understand his point of view in depth. He then mentioned he doesn't have t"See full answer

Syed I. - "I use a data driven approach by ensuring there is a deep-dive on all alternatives. My approach to tradeoffs is around how to achieve the customer experience needed. I ensure there is an immediate path to green for a solution and a follow-up solution addressing the problem rightly."See full answer

Manas M. - "Couple of Clarification Questions to be asked are: Aim of the physical product Retention/Encourage Loyalty Attract new customers Collect customer Data outside of the Airbnb ecosystem for better advertising and customer focus User Base of Airbnb Solotravellers - traveling to new places for exploring/solo travel Business Travelers - Lot of business Travelers who own small/medium businesses and book their own travel can choose airbnb Family gr"See full answer