Microsoft Product Manager Interview Questions

Tim W. - "Clarify "What do you mean by favorite product? Are you thinking specifically hardware, software, or a feature within those, or something non-electronic? Dealer's Choice. "Are you asking why I love this product, or to explain why this product is a market leader independent of how i feel about it? Talk about why YOU love this product. Rephrase Question With all that in mind, i want to rephrase the question. "What is your favorite software product and what features in this product"See full answer

Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer

Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer

Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer

Rajat A. - "CQs: Any specific geography? Assuming Indian market Are we partnering up with some other company for delivery ? Assuming yes Time frame for MVP? 1 year Scoped out Problem statement: Design a food delivery app for restaurant owners for India market within a timeframe of 1 year Mission of this app: Helping owners and vendors in smooth coordination of orders and delivering orders on time Product goal: Since this is a new product , we will focus on adoption/acquisition in short t"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Karthik M. - "What metrics do you use to measure the success of a product? Clarifications & Assumptions What type of a Product is it? Is it an App? Assume it is an App. Are you launching the App now or is it an App that has already been in production for a while? Assume you are launching the App now. It is for a consumer (D2C or a B2B / Enterprise)? Assume it is for consumers / individual users to start with, and eventually will be adopted by Enterprises. Assume that your current target custo"See full answer

Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

John F. - "Around mid-2023, I was tasked with investigating the feasibility of selling access to our site to third-party vendors who wanted to use bots to automate processes for their clients. Some initial work had been done on this but it was very high-level and very little data or analysis had actually been done. When I was tasked with this the idea was to sell access to a special header that would allow vendors to by-pass our F5 Shape implementation, a bot defense tool. From a business and security pers"See full answer

Malay K. - "For any project based questions, it is important to structure your response clearly, showcasing your thought process, technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and how your work added value. Besides the STAR method, you can also use this kind of framework: 1. Start by selecting a relevant project (related to the role) Give the project background and what specific problem it solved. 2. Align the project's objective and your role Be specific about your role: were you the le"See full answer

Pavani B. - "Request inputs/feedback on my response below with regards to this question and ways to improve and if it looks apt for this question. As a TPM at xxx, I was responsible for delivering a feature that would provide prescription (medications) alternatives to users in the Prescription Shopping Consumer Experience App. The project had a tight deadline as it was something that our account management team promised to a client who wanted it for their employees. My goal was to ensure smooth development"See full answer

D J. - "Clarifying Questions & Assumptions: Blue collar :relating to manual work or workers, particularly in industry, they usually dont have college degree Linkedin: a social network that focuses on professional networking and career development. Why is linkedin expanding to blue collar workers? Ans: to expand new market as they have great untapped potential Do you want anew app or integrate it with Linkedin? Ans: you decide I would like to look more into the problem space before deciding on tha"See full answer

Nagendra S. - "Assumptions: Platform: iOS/Android and Web Application Service Type: Renting Bicycles (hourly, daily, weekly), possibility of buying or selling Geography: Focusing on Asian markets, e.g., India, where bicycles are a popular mode of transportation Role: Product Manager at Microsoft Objective: Design an app focusing on customer engagement and new customer acquisition Setting the Stage: Why a Renting Business? Market Potential: In Asian markets, a si"See full answer

A B. - "Great explanation on each of the components and their use. During the interview would a PM candidate be expected to go in-depth for capacity estimation (e.g. storage estimation, bandwidth estimation etc.?)"See full answer

Anjali V. - "I feel this is more about "Describe a time when I failed or struggled" rather than "Project Failure"."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

Jasmin R. - "Let's imagine you want to open Google Maps, you type maps.google.com and hit Enter. Here is what happens: You type maps.google.com into the address bar of your browser. Browser completes the address, for example, maps.google.com → https://www.maps.google.com [Address decoding] → browser breaks down the URL into parts ‘https://’: protocol → how the browser should connect to the website Default is HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) which shows up as ‘ http:/"See full answer

Vikas K. - "During a trip to Japan, I encountered a significant language barrier that influenced how I communicated with others. As I didn't speak Japanese fluently, I had to rely on basic phrases and non-verbal communication to interact with locals. This experience made me realize the importance of understanding cultural diversity. Despite the language barrier, I found that people were patient and understanding. They appreciated my efforts to communicate in their language, even if it was limited. This expe"See full answer

John F. - "Currently, I do a lot of data analysis using Azure Databricks and PowerBI. In Databricks, I write some basic SQL queries to retrieve the data and then pull that data into PowerBI for analysis. While this is sufficient, I believe there is room to make this skill set stronger. One way that I mitigate this currently is to maintain a strong relationship with our data analytics team. Whenever I have issues massaging or querying the data, I will reach out to one of those team members to help me get to"See full answer

Ben G. - "Situation - A time I dealt with conflict while on a team was while I was working at Shopify on physical and digital gift card refund point of sale solutions. The situation was that we were dealing with complex technical constraints including not changing particular UI components behavior to act as they should be intended. On the refund screen, the existing design was using a toggle on the same screen to bring up a modal for gift card selection to either select digital or physical options. Thi"See full answer