Analytical Interview Questions

Anonymous Flamingo - "As a product manager, my first step in designing a free product would be to define the product's target audience and the problem it aims to solve. Once these factors are established, I can then determine the best way to monetize the product. One way to monetize a free product is through advertising. This involves displaying ads to users as they use the product, and earning revenue based on the number of clicks or impressions the ads receive. This model is commonly used by social media platforms,"See full answer

Sabi M. - "there's no audio the last ~10 minutes from the interviewer so we can't get a sense of the feedback from the interviewer. I did think it took the interviewee a little too long to figure out the issue itself and could have benefited from taking some time to think and gather thoughts before jumping into drivers of the issue."See full answer

Kiley S. - "Measure Success of FB rooms. First I would like to clarify my understanding of the product: FB Rooms is a video call product similar to zoom in which a user can create a room and then invite people to join either with Facebook, if they are already friends or with a link or invite. Able to use filters and virtual backgrounds Now that we have aligned on the understanding of the product, I would like to think about the goals for the product. Goals: Business goals: Rooms was FB’s"See full answer

Pathworks P. - "I would begin by asking the following clarifying questions: Are there any special use cases such as VIP Penthouse access, restricted floors etc? Do we need to consider safety requirements or other technical constraints such as maximum load/capacity? If the lobby for the entire hotel located on the ground floor? Can we assume that the majority of the guest amenities are located near the lobby and lower floors? Can we assume that the passenger controls on the floors are purely directional"See full answer

P K. - "Clarifying questions, Before I begin, I want to make sure I understand what the product is. FB fundraiser is a platform for entities (charitable organizations) and individuals to create fundraising campaigns, invite certain users to it, share it with others and ask them to invite potential contributors to it. It is also part of the core facebook product. The approach I want to take about defining goals is as following: Define the mission of FB as a company, goal of fundraiser p"See full answer

Karthik M. - "I would always pick a specific product and make a case. Answering this question without a specific product in mind makes the answer unstructured in my opinion. For instance, I would pick Gmail as an example to answer this and structure my response. Clarifications & Assumptions Let us pick a specific product and structure our response - for instance - let us pick Gmail as the product that you want to analyse and make a Go / No Recommendation to Sunset the Product. Overall Google Revenu"See full answer

Sri A. - "Mission: to help users buy and sell products from groups. If we think about the value here, users want to join groups that sell/buy products of interest (young moms or vinyl), or location of interest, or trust, or some other factor - either from other users or SMBs. User Actions: create groups, join groups, active in groups - make posts to sell or show interest in buying (like, commenting, sharing or ideally transacting) deeper engagement - sharing , saving , searching more based on wh"See full answer

Coach - "Great question, give me a moment to collect my thoughts…. When faced with a situation where a product defect is impacting my customers as a product manager my goal would be to roll out a quick & effective enough solution that minimizes the negative impact on users. I would seek available incident information to understand, its blast radius i.e. the impacted users, platforms, duration, if available understand the nature of failure i.e. recoverable vs not, it's root cause and short/long t"See full answer

Pratik H. - "How would you define success for Doordash Clarify- Are we looking at the US Market? Yes Are we we looking at it from today? Yes Are looking at mobile or web? Both Has anything changed in doordash;s strategy or marketplace I should be aware of? Nothing major Lets talk a little about the misssion of doordash. It probably goes something along the lines make food delivery as easy as possible. Their core product is three sided. You have drivers on one end, customers that order food on the other and"See full answer

Alfredo M. - "The question refers to a very specific event: "step into the back for a few minutes, return and see a lot of people waiting"... I might try to clarify goals and scenario: Before I stepped back, there were no ppl waiting? If so, we might be talking about a very specific, even uncommon scenario, in which optimizations for the complete serving system in the long term might not be needed. Maybe they even arrived all together and this is expected behavior. Are people waiting for something specif"See full answer

Arthur Y. - "Clarifying Questions: By “down”, do we mean creation of messages (activation), engagement, or both? My assumed answer: engagement How are “messages” defined? Is it comments to posts, DMs, or posts themselves? My assumed answer: DMs How is engagement of DMs defined? Is it by number of DMs viewed, created, replied to? My assumed answer: all of that Quick Product Strategy Discussion: Why messaging is important to LinkedIn LinkedIn’s mission is"See full answer

Christopher K. - "In order to answer this question, I am going to do the following: Ask some clarifying questions Go through some major external and internal possible causes Hypothesize and test/valid Conclusion 1. Ask clarifying questions Any particular market? Is it a US market or a new market with less than 12-18 months of full operation US market What do you mean by a given city? - Metropolitan with plenty of public transportations (subway, bus, etc), a large city with limit"See full answer

Ben L. - "First I want to look at how Facebook stories overlaps with Facebook’s mission. I can see pretty instantly that stories stays true to Facebook’s mission with bringing the world together and connecting friends and families. I want to make sure I understand the product journey. Facebook stories allows users to post videos and photos. While also being able to add filters, music, and stickers. Users are also able to comment on other stories and react to them. Does that sound correct? Interview: Ye"See full answer

Rohit K. - "First, let's align the Airbnb homepage with Airbnb's mission. Airbnb's mission is to "create a world where anyone can belong anywhere by providing healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable." The homepage serves as the primary entry point for both potential guests and hosts, setting the stage for their journey and embodying this mission. Now, for the goals of Airbnb homepage, we can consider different aspects like awareness, engagement, and ultimately, driving bo"See full answer

Bhuppi S. - "To measure the success of the WhatsApp engagement and retention is crucial along with monitiozation. So, i will make sure following metrics:** Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU): DAU and MAU are critical metrics for understanding the scale and engagement level of the user base. A healthy ratio between DAU and MAU (known as stickiness) indicates strong user retention and habitual use. Message Sent/Received Volume: The volume of messages sent and received is a d"See full answer

Disha - "TikTok → short-form video platform where users share, post, comment, and like each other’s videos Clarifying Questions Define Active → Users who are opening the app at least once a day for a particular duration say 1 min Geography? Consider India for this case Is the source/BI Tool where we saw the drop valid enough? TikTok is both on the app as well as browser - Where are we seeing the drop? Is there a particular platform wherein we are seeing the drop? Android or iOS New"See full answer

Jeff H. - "Google Pay currently makes money from a small percentage of interchange from each transaction. They also make money with Mobile recharge sim card fees. Questions Do we have a timeframe for this? How could we 10x this? Let's think about Alphabet's goal and vision to make the world more accessible and useful. To 10x it, we will need a combination of improvements, new revenue sources, and some paradigm shifting thinking. The goal in this case is monetization, and a steep on at t"See full answer

Aniket A. - "Clarification: Is it consumer facing or business? -- consumer Launch is global or regional? -- global Is this full blown launch or beta release? -- full blown What goal does this app serve? How is it aligned with the company goals? -- AI Chatbot Can you explain the strategic importance of the app? -- gain market share; compete with other players who are already ahead in the market Do we have any data around potential customers/TAM with this app? -- billions of users "See full answer