[On Demand] Product Management Webinar: PM Hiring

[00:00:00] Janna Bastow: Hello everybody and welcome. Glad you could all join. We’ve got a really good crowd here today and as you can see from the chat, people are calling in from all over the place. So welcome to this webinar series that we’d run here.

It’s the product expert fireside series that we’ve been running for years and years now. So you can actually go back in time if you go to prod prodpad.com/webinars. You can see all the past sessions that we’ve run and it’s always with a a focus on these experts that we bring in, right? We’re all about learning about the expertise and the insights and the experience.

That different experts out there in the product management world can share with us. So today’s very much about learning and sharing and getting to understand this space. And as I said, today we’re gonna be talking about how to master the product management hiring process. Today is gonna be recorded and it will be shared with you right away or in the next couple days.

So you will have a chance to ask questions, get them into ideally the q and a section. ’cause it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on in the chat. So if you have any burning questions, get them in there and we’ll go from there. And we’re joined by Lewis Lin today who I’m gonna introduce properly in just a moment.

And we’re gonna get his insights. But in the meantime, I just want to give you a little bit of heads up about who we are here at ProdPad. There we are. So ProdPad is a tool that myself and my co-founder built when we were both product managers ourselves, and tools like this just didn’t exist.

And so we started hacking away and it turned into this tool that is now being used by thousands of product people around the world. But basically it’s a tool that was helping us keep track of our backlog and all the experiments we were running and, all the stuff that’s on the, the roadmap and what it was doing, it gave us a sense of control and organization and transparency into the product decision process so that we could understand what we were building and why we’re making choices, and also communicate that to the rest of the team as well.

Provide that clarity. It basically creates a single source of truth for all your product decisions, and you can try it for free. There’s a free trial. There’s a sandbox version as well, which has preloaded with example data and lean roadmaps and OKRs, and you can see how it all fits together.

And pro tip for anybody who’s out there looking for product management jobs right now, we have a lot of people who use the sandbox as part of their product management hiring process. So they’ll use it to feed into case studies that they’re doing as some of these take home exercises. So if that’s something that you’re looking for, then jump in there.

You can access the sandbox and you can make use of it to help you land your next job. And our team is made up of product people, give it a try and let us know your feedback. We’d love to hear from you. The other thing that’s worth flagging to you, for anybody who is new to ProdPad or hasn’t been keeping an eye on what we’ve been doing, but we’ve launched something called co-pilot, which is an AI agent that’s there to help you with everything from product coaching to helping you make clear product decisions.

And basically it’s now there to understand what your customers are asking for and what your vision is and what your goals are, what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. And work is your sidekick to help give you clarity on all of these things so that you can make faster, clear decisions and communicate them to your team.

So jump in and give that a try as well. We’d love your feedback there. Now on that note I’m really excited to properly introduce Lewis Lin, who is our guest for today. Everybody say hi to Lewis. Lewis has been the go-to expert for the PM interview prep for over a decade. His book D Decode and Conquer, which he’s probably got right behind his screen right there.

It was showing me just a second ago. Is that the fifth edition that you’ve got there? 

[00:03:36] Lewis Lin: This is the fifth edition. 

[00:03:37] Janna Bastow: All right, excellent. So it just, this is 

[00:03:39] Lewis Lin: the previous fourth edition. 

[00:03:42] Janna Bastow: There we go. Does anybody have the fourth edition? I’d love to hear from folks who’ve already read it. So has anybody lined up to read the fifth edition?

Anyways, it’s just hit its fifth edition and it’s still the playbook for anybody trying to land a top product role. He’s been guiding product folks through the interview Maze for years and is here to share, what works, what’s changed, what still works and how to stand out in today’s hiring game.

I. So everybody say big welcome to Lewis. Lewis. Thank you so much for joining here today. 

[00:04:10] Lewis Lin: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:04:11] Janna Bastow: Yeah, of course. And I think it’s a really important topic. Especially in this day and age. I actually love to hear in the chat, is anybody here out there looking for roles or recently gone through the process right now?

Say hi in the chat, let us know what, where you are in that and what you’re looking to learn today. And Lewis, your book has been the gold standard for PM interviews for years. What inspired you to first write it. 

[00:04:35] Lewis Lin: Yeah I’d have to say my product management roots.

I’ve been an interview coach since 2008, and for the longest time my customers said, Hey Lewis, have you ever thought about writing a book about product management interviews so that you can take all of the great things you’ve been discussing in our one-on-one coaching sessions in a book? And I thought to myself A bad pm no.

I don’t wanna do that. Because I hate writing. And that’s such a grind. And then eventually I came to my census and the good PM kicked in and said, oh, you know what, if the customers are asking for it, I should write it. And so I sat down, and could commit myself to writing the first edition that came out in 2013.

And 12 years later, here we are. Brilliant. Excellent. So why a new edition now? What’s changed? It comes back to the customers once again. Especially in the fall I was starting to wrap up some projects. I started to hear from some of my readers and they said, Lewis modern interviews have changed.

Some of the information in your books is no longer up to date, especially with companies like Meta and like a bad product manager. I said to myself, complete denial. No, there’s no way that meta has evolved the interview landscape. There’s no way that other companies have. And then I started to do my research and you know what?

My readers are right. The landscape has changed. And one thing led to another. At first I thought to myself, maybe I could just evolve the fourth edition. But as I got more and more into my research, I came to the realization that, you know what, I actually need to rewrite the book completely. Oh wow.

From scratch because it has changed that much. 

[00:06:15] Janna Bastow: Oh wow. So not an iteration, basically a pivot because the world’s changed so much. 

[00:06:20] Lewis Lin: I’d say so. We are still covering the same content. Yeah. But it’s so much bigger. The last edition was 216 pages. This new edition is 528 pages. Oh, wow. I don’t know if it’s a pivot still covering the same material, still solving the same problem.

Exactly. I would almost think of it just to be a little bit of a tech nerd. Maybe it’s refactoring, the code base is how I’d like to think about it. 

[00:06:46] Janna Bastow: And that’s never fun or comfortable refactoring, and it was not 

[00:06:49] Lewis Lin: fun for sure. When I write books, I think to myself, it’s like writing a term paper back in my university days.

Yeah. But it’s only like a thousand times more painful. So I’m so happy that I’m across the finish line. 

[00:07:02] Janna Bastow: Lewis, how does it feel to rewrite your book? Five 

[00:07:04] Lewis Lin: times a thousand. Yeah. That’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work, but I, 

[00:07:08] Janna Bastow: yeah. 

[00:07:08] Lewis Lin: It’s like that journey once you cross the finish line, whether it’s like a marathon or just going to the gym in the morning, you’re like, I’m glad I did that, but 

[00:07:16] Janna Bastow: Yeah.

[00:07:16] Lewis Lin: Before that process. During that process, there were definitely a lot of frowns. Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s talk about how it’s evolved. What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in product management? Product management interviews over the last few years? 

Oh my gosh. There’s just so many things to mention. Just to keep it brief and succinct, it’s.

In my mind, there’s really two major phenomena that have occurred. The first one is just meta. When I think about the first edition of Dakota and Conquer actually did the math the other day, I think I might’ve mentioned Facebook, like less than five times Meta Zero, just because I think the branding had not taken root yet.

Back in 2013. Yeah, at the newest edition of Dakota and Conquer. I mentioned meta 45 times. And so it’s really to meta’s success. Not only their stock price, but the number of product management candidates that they’ve hired. Product sense is part of our vernacular thanks to meta execution interviews, which now they’ve been named to analytical thinking as part of our day-to-day vernacular too as interviews.

And so they’ve really set the standard and compared to my first edition of Dakota and Conquer concrete it was really Google that set the standard. But meta is just, this gravitational pull is so big. And then the second big change is something that is top of mind for all of us is good old chat GPT.

That has really changed the game for both the candidate and the hiring managers too. 

[00:08:51] Janna Bastow: Absolutely. And actually you mentioned it being inspired by how Meta has been evolving their interview techniques. Somebody in the chat just said that they’re interviewing with Meta this week, so it sounds like this is a gold standard book for that.

How does meta compare to other companies? Are they light years ahead? Is it a completely different animal getting interviewed by Meta? Or there things I don’t wanna say, 

[00:09:13] Lewis Lin: yeah, I don’t wanna say light years ahead because every company’s got a different culture and a different way of identifying candidates that fit for their culture and how they assess them.

When it comes to meta the first thing that comes to mind is they get. Full credit for bringing us into this age of metrics. And so the execution interview defining, what should the success metrics be, what should the North Star metric be? Trade off questions, which I’ve taken a step further on behalf of meta to define it in terms of binary trade-off questions and hidden signal analysis.

Those kinds of questions just did not exist, I’d say 10, 15 years ago. Back in 2013, we saw a little bit of meta’s orientation towards metrics. But even when they were asking those questions at the interview, I think they themselves didn’t know what the right answer looked like. But really in the last two years, internally at Meta, they do have a very strong point of view about not only the questions that they’re asking, but what a good response looks like.

What they prefer in a response. And so I think that’s the element that’s really changed there. The other thing about meta that’s really changed is product sense. And I know a lot of people out there have read my book and are familiar with the circles method, but they’ve taken circles to another level and they’re emphasizing new things that I did not emphasize back when the first edition came out.

[00:10:39] Janna Bastow: Back up on that. Do you wanna explain what you mean by circles? Yeah, absolutely. Circles, people know that I have a fixation, maybe an unhealthy fixation with acronyms, and I just love them because it’s a super memorable way to remember what makes a complete and satisfying response. And so circles have seven letters and it’s basically the seven steps to answering a product sense or product design type question.

[00:11:07] Lewis Lin: It starts off with comprehending the situation and it ends up with summarizing the recommendation. And so this seven step journey has a lot of the fundamentals that you guys know from product design, product thinking, product innovation. In terms of setting the goal, identifying a particular set of stakeholders, understanding their pain points, prioritizing those pain points, and then finally brainstorming some solutions to solve it.

And so that’s what circles is all about is that seven step process that encapsulates that. 

[00:11:40] Janna Bastow: Brilliant. I love this. And it, what I like is that it sounds widely applicable, not even to people who are going through an interview process. Being able to understand what sort of questions they need to be asking of themselves when it comes to things like you’re talking about setting success criteria and how to measure those.

Even internally, a lot of PR people aren’t asking these things quite critically or being able to articulate them in a way that shows that they understand the context and are able to summarize it and communicate it outwards. 

[00:12:08] Lewis Lin: Yeah I think that was one of the really eye opening and humbling things about writing the fifth Edition where.

I told myself, you know what, I think there is something different about metrics questions these days. And if you had pushed me before I started researching fifth Edition in St. Lewis, do you know metrics? I’m like, oh yeah, totally. And you’d do a follow up question. It’s okay, I’m gonna test you Lewis.

What’s the difference between a bounce rate and an exit rate? I’m like can I get back to you and Google that? And it’s just, it’s hard. You know it, 

[00:12:40] Janna Bastow: yeah. 

[00:12:41] Lewis Lin: Product management, and you probably know much better than I do, has evolved so much in the last 10 years where we’ve really got this metrics driven orientation.

And I think people say, oh yeah, I look at Mixpanel or I look at Amplitude every other day, so I know metrics, but it’s a big old beast. Not only that. It is hard to understand the concepts and all the intricacies and complexities all but just having the baseline definitions. And that was an eye-opening experience to me, helping to educate my readers about the concepts, about the definitions before we go on and discuss the nuances.

[00:13:18] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. And actually Met is a really good one to to lean on for examples of how they do this because they have, I assume I’ve always had way more applicants than they even know what to do with. And so they’ve honed this process around it, but in a very similar way, I know that there are way more people out there looking for roles than there are roles right now.

It’s been really tough out there the last couple years, frankly. Oh yeah. And every company is having to hone their way of working and every candidate is having to hone their way of getting forward. So I think it’s a really key time to be looking at how the best of the best to handle this so that we can all make sure that we’re, putting our best selves forwards for these things.

So on that note, like what if it comes down to a couple strong candidates? What tips the balance? What are companies looking for these days? 

[00:14:06] Lewis Lin: Oh gosh. How much time do we have at such a. Difficult question because it’s so complicated. I’ll start here, Janna. I think this AI age has really been something.

And it’s not just chat GBT, but just this movement to move faster, get more done with less, be agile, flexible, adaptable. Because, global macroeconomic situations, what was true Sunday is different from Monday. Yep. And long story short anxiety inducing and a lot of uncertainty.

Speaking of uncertainty, I. The hiring managers need to own up to this. One of the craziest phenomenons that’s really crystallized in my head in the last few weeks is that hiring managers are being less specific about what they’re looking for. And this is happening to many candidates that I work with.

They don’t have job descriptions. They just say, Hey , you’re interviewing with this company. This is your hiring manager. We don’t have a jd. But when you do sit down with the hiring manager, they’ll, they can tell you a little bit more about the role. And when you do talk to the hiring manager about the role, they’ll give you three words or 30 words and say, Lewis, is that good enough?

And because it’s a difficult economy, we’ve let the hiring remainders have a lower standard. And it’s true. Yeah. I get the idea after 10 words, what? Interviewing for Yeah. What’s the next step of the process? How can I get an offer? And it’s so detrimental because you don’t have that written record and gosh, all about written records.

Without that written record, there’s no common expectation either on the hiring manager side or on the candidate side. What skills are gonna be evaluated. And so that’s something that I’ve done traditionally as a coach, is that I would ask our clients and say, Hey, do you have the job description?

And then I’d zoom into the responsibility section and say, okay, they’re looking for these seven responsibilities. We need to get ready for behavioral and case questions around your ability to prioritize a backlog around your ability to work cross-functionally with engineers. But because we don’t have that written record, we’re at a loss at what to prepare for.

We’re literally boiling the ocean because we have very few signals and indicators about what the hiring manager’s gonna ask. And then on the flip side, the hiring manager also doesn’t have that written record. And so I can imagine what they’re doing is they’re saying, okay, I’ve interviewed a candidate, his name is Lewis, he’s got this kind of background.

I’m considering him for this role chat, GPT, what questions should I ask him? And Chad, GPT is too happy to oblige and comes up with this list of questions. And then the lowest surprise, question number one is blank. And I’m like, wow, I would’ve never imagined in a million years it would’ve asked me that.

And it’s yeah, neither did I, but Chad, GPT told me to ask you that question. So here you go. And oh that’s a thing that bothers me a lot is yeah, the lack of a job description and it’s hurting us on both sides. And it’s, yeah, just making the situation kinda everything else in 2025, instead of confining the range of possible discussion topics to a finite set of five to seven, now it’s five to 7,000.

[00:17:33] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. And actually that’s something that I find as well is that there’s often a job ad, something describing, high level what this job is, and they come off very generic. And I think you’re right, A lot of them may be written by chat GPT or just copied off the next person.

Whereas the job description should be, much more detailed about what this job actually entails. And if that’s not available, then what’s the job ad based on, right? And that’s, I think, where a lot of these problems are coming from. So what does an actual interview process look like?

You mentioned the execution phase, so it sounds like there’s multiple steps to worry about. What are the different stages and what sort of questions would you get? 

[00:18:09] Lewis Lin: It varies from company to company and for those of you who are interviewing at Meta, here’s the contrarian viewpoint.

I think there’s a lot of trepidation about Meta’s interviews. But ironically even though their interviews could be perceived as difficult, it actually to me is one of the easier interviews because they’re so disciplined, they’re so clear about what they will be asking you during the interview process.

And so they’ll tell you, Hey, there’s x number of interviews for your first round. You’re gonna get a product sense interview for your next round. You’re gonna get an analytical thinking interview now. And then for your final round, you’re gonna get a leadership and driving interview. And we talked a little bit about all of those.

The product sense is that product design circles works beautifully for that. The execution slash analytical thinking that’s all about North star metrics, binary trade-offs hidden signal analysis, and then leadership and drive. Is what we would normally think of our traditional behavioral and traditional interview questions.

So tell me a time when you disagreed with your counterpart in engineering, or tell me about your biggest weakness and how have you improved upon it, 

[00:19:21] Janna Bastow: right? Yeah. And would candidates be expected to know the product inside out and be answering questions about the hiring company’s product itself and know their North Star and metrics and all that?

Or are they supposed to be talking about a time when they did something similar? Is that applicable? 

[00:19:37] Lewis Lin: Unless it’s the leadership and drive round, it’s typically about a hypothetical situation. So it could be about Instagram’s products, Netflix products et cetera. And then the other thing that’s, that I, validates my belief as to why meta is something that I consider to be a.

A more known and potentially easier interview is that meta interviewers are known to recycle questions. And so you can find a lot of the questions that candidates have reported in their meta interviews at my question bank, and you’ll see oh, they’re gonna ask you a question about launching a brand new podcast feature for Netflix.

Or that before, or they’re gonna ask you a question about developing a brand new product on Facebook about volunteering. And that’s the great thing about meta the universe of questions as it is fairly well known and constrained. It’s not infinite. 

[00:20:32] Janna Bastow: Okay. So these question banks, do they have specific answers or are they more about pulling out the info, the insights and how the candidate turns it around in their head.

And do you have any examples of questions from your question? Bank? 

[00:20:43] Lewis Lin: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:20:44] Janna Bastow: What are 

[00:20:45] Lewis Lin: your 

[00:20:45] Janna Bastow: favorite 

[00:20:45] Lewis Lin: questions? Oh, from the question bank? The metal ones come to mind once again, just because of their magnetic pole. They just absolutely dominate. I have mixed feelings about recycling questions.

I, I think for a candidate it’s great because it shrinks down the universe of questions and you can practice for them. 

[00:21:03] Janna Bastow: Yeah. 

[00:21:03] Lewis Lin: But I think on the interviewer side I kind of wonder if they’re concerned that they have candidates who have practiced specifically for those questions.

And people are not really thinking when they’re answering them. They’re just simply reciting what they have practiced in advance. And I wonder about that. And the other thing that’s really interesting is because the meta interviewers are constantly asking from a finite set of questions, I.

They start to develop, I wanna call them biases. They are at least certain expectations of what a good answer sounds like because they’ve asked that same question five times before, 10 times before, 50 times before. And the really interesting dynamic of those questions. Gosh I think one of the more interesting ones really revolves around binary trade-offs and hidden signal questions.

And just to because you’re gonna ask me like what are binary trade-offs and hidden signal questions. The classic binary trade-off question is they’ll say, Hey Lewis, you’re the product manager for the Facebook newsfeed. Pm You have two options, option A do you put an ad unit in the newsfeed or option B?

Do you do people you may know widget? And what they’re really testing for is. Can you think about the pros and cons of the situation? Can you pull in the right evidence and ultimately draw a firm line about which way to go? Because most candidates, they like to hedge and they say, you know what? I don’t work at Meta.

I don’t have all the information. And until I get more information, I’ll decline to answer. And just say we agree to disagree and that’s not what they’re looking for. And that’s my assertion as to why they called that interview process the execution interview. They’re testing your executive decision making skills, because I’m sure Janna, all the time, you can’t hedge, you’ve gotta make a call and it’s Hey, do we do an AI feature or do we not do an AI feature?

It’s not like a little of both. Yeah. So 

[00:23:08] Janna Bastow: going into these questions, do they give you more context about why you might pick one or the other, any data to work from? Or are you just making calls based on what you might walk into the interview knowing about this product feature? I guess with Facebook stuff it’s pretty easy because I think a lot of people have used Facebook or are up to date on it.

But obviously it can get quite difficult if they’re asking about features that you don’t actually have knowledge of. 

[00:23:34] Lewis Lin: Yeah, it’s the second one. That you typically go into these interviews leveraging your base of knowledge, the great news is they’re so disciplined. These meta interviewers, they would only ask you about very popular B2C type products.

Things like Netflix, Spotify WhatsApp they won’t even ask you about Hey, how would you improve the iPhone? Because they have recognized that outside of the United States, a big portion of the world has never had an iPhone because Android has 85, 90% market share. I think that is one of the common mistakes candidates make is they might have a little bit of experience, especially if they were closer to their university days.

Practicing case questions for consulting firms like McKinsey, for example, where the interviewer has a base of information that they can share with a candidate with, so the candidate can say, Hey, Mr. Ms. McKinsey, interviewer, can you tell me more about the competition? And they’ll say, great questions.

Here’s exhibit number five, our market share for all of the different competitors in our landscape. In tech outside of consulting. 

[00:24:43] Janna Bastow: There’s 

[00:24:43] Lewis Lin: rarely prepared materials like that and so I feel like a lot of candidates waste too much time hoping that the interviewer will give them some sort of given information when the interviewers are expecting them to provide their own assumptions.

[00:24:58] Janna Bastow: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And actually it’s really good context. ’cause it’s, you never know when you’re going into these things as to whether it’s a trick question ah, don’t answer it because you don’t know. And that’s the answer sometimes. Or is it that they’re looking for you to come up with assumptions, to talk them through why you’ve come up with these assumptions.

And, probably put some caveats on it going if I had access to actual users, I would do this, but here’s what I think. Exactly. And that can be a really tricky line to walk. 

[00:25:22] Lewis Lin: And I feel like it’s just conversational dynamics, right? It’s like working with your coworker.

You might want to try initially and say, Hey, do you have any background information to share? And it’s worth asking. Yeah. If they say Yes, fantastic. You can leverage it. If they say, no context has been set, we’ll have to work off a lot of assumptions. Yeah. 

[00:25:40] Janna Bastow: Yeah. So how does the hiring process differ between these large companies like Meta and Google and Amazon versus startup or growth stages?

[00:25:49] Lewis Lin: Yeah. I wanna say just reinforcing the original point: Meta’s gravitational pull is so immense and Meta’s been around for, I don’t remember the math anymore, 20 years, 25 years. Long story short, there’s a lot of Xme employees at other companies now at places like Reddit, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Uber, and they’ve taken the meta hiring practices with them, or their companies have encouraged them to evaluate candidates using the same types of questions and the same kind of rubric as meta.

And so long story short, a lot of companies have adopted a meta type process. When I think about other companies Google comes to mind. Google I. Predates meta. So they have a slightly different interview process. Will they ask you product design questions? Absolutely. Will they ask you analytical questions?

A little bit similar to meta, but they like estimation questions a ton. And so if you go into a Google interview, you’re more likely than any other companies to get a question like the London Marathon is happening in three months. How many people have applied for a spot? How many people can we actually support at the marathon?

And so Google’s known for those kind of questions but 

[00:27:09] Janna Bastow: glad to know they’re still doing those. I read, I’ve read a book, not my favorite. I first just go 

[00:27:14] Lewis Lin: to chat GPT and say, Hey. How many people are running the London Marathon and then just spit out an answer. 

[00:27:19] Janna Bastow: Yeah I read a book several years ago and it was called, How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

You might know it. Oh, there you, yeah, that’s, it was all about it was back, it was before meta. It was Microsoft and possibly Google that sort of stuff. Oh gosh. Wow. Late nineties early naughties questions. And they, all the questions were how would you move on an entire mountain?

Or how many piano tuners or things like that, that you don’t actually have the information about, but what they’re looking for is how you think about it. Are those questions still popular? Is that what you would expect at meta or elsewhere? 

[00:27:49] Lewis Lin: I think it’s really died out and part of the reason is interviewers have found different ways of assessing candidates, those metrics type questions or the hidden and signal or the binary trade off type questions.

And so I think it’s good news for us. Estimation is still a super valuable skill. I can’t tell you how many times. At the workplace, I’m like, Ugh, I’m such an idiot. I just said yes to some project. And I didn’t realize, because I thought in my simple little head that it was a one week project and it turned out to be a seven month project.

And had I sat down and just sketched out what was involved, how many people were doing it, how much time it would take them, I’m like, oh, that seven months, should we have really signed up for that. So yeah, so I feel like those are dying out. The other one that’s dying out is any sort of whiteboard coding for product management candidates.

Yeah. For the same reasons. I think before they didn’t know any better and they said, okay, sure. This is a test of intelligence. We’re working on a software product. Sure. Let’s make the PMs code a little bit. Yeah. The industry has really rallied around system design questions as the more appropriate way to assess candidates technical fluency, if you will.

[00:29:02] Janna Bastow: Yeah. Yeah. And actually that’s the world that I entered in when I was a product person, and probably why I never ended up working at something like Google or one of these other ones, because at that point in time, the requirement was that you had a coding background. You could put your code on.

I’m like, I can’t do code on a screen. I can barely do code with Google’s help. So there’s a whole cohort of us who would always ask the question, do I need to be a developer? Do I need to learn how to code to be a good product person? And the answer resoundingly today is no.

But obviously it’s changed. 

[00:29:30] Lewis Lin: Yeah. I think the other thing that you mentioned was startups. What kind of questions will startups ask? Startups, I’m actually I have the most trepidation about interviewing at a startup because unlike a meta or Google those companies are super well structured about what kind of questions they’ll ask you, startups.

It’s free for all. You have no idea. And then the other thing about startups of course not ProdPad, but other startups that are not ProdPad is they’re so desperate for ideas and inspiration and so more so than bigger companies I see a lot of startups attempting to abuse the power dynamic between them and the candidates to attempt to use them as free consulting.

And so I’d say startups are more likely to use interview assignments under the guise of evaluating the candidate. Startups are also more likely to sometimes buttonhole candidates and say, Hey we’d love to meet you in the office. It’s just gonna be like a 90 minute chat. And then they’re more likely to say, Hey, I.

We’re really like talking to you, but this other person, and oh, we want to give you an additional interview assignment. And before you know it, it’s wow, how did this 90 minute interview turn into a six hour interview? Is this ever gonna end? And they keep dragging on the process and say, Hey Lewis, we really enjoy chatting with you for six hours.

We need to have another set of interviews and another interview assignment. And we’re like, I think I’m being abused here for free work. Some to work on, some strategy projects that they can’t resolve on their own. 

[00:31:07] Janna Bastow: Yeah. And so how do you know when that’s happening? Where do you call BS on it and call a stop?

Or is this just something that happens? 

[00:31:15] Lewis Lin: It’s it makes me think of dating analogies and just at some point you’re just like, I think there’s a misalignment in terms of what we want. I feel like I’m being strung along here. Yeah. And you can just say Hey, just have an anonymous conversation.

How many more rounds do we have to go? Are you guys seriously still looking for a candidate because yeah, I’ve got some of these other opportunities I might have to reprioritize where I spend my time. 

[00:31:40] Janna Bastow: Yeah. So any tips on setting expectations or understanding what’s required when you’re given some sort of take home assignment or any sort of presentation?

[00:31:49] Lewis Lin: Yeah, it’s possible. I just 

[00:31:51] Janna Bastow: someone asked in the chat about or in the q and a about take home tasks that could take anywhere from five to 50 hours. How do you know what to put into it? 

[00:31:59] Lewis Lin: Oh my gosh. I’m just, I feel bad. 50 is just not reasonable. Yeah and when it comes to the interview assignments phenomenon, it’s unfair to everybody.

Those who have families and kids, like how do you think they’re gonna be able to clean out 50 hours if they’ve got like a 4-year-old in the background trying to get your attention? Yeah it’s just difficult and it’s the power dynamic between candidates and employers.

It fluctuates with the health of the economy. And at the moment we’re not in a good shape. Three years ago when labor, there was a massive labor shortage. Employers were on better behavior and slash lower standards. Yeah. But now the pendulum has gone in the other direction.

[00:32:41] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. So what’s happened in the last year? How is getting hired this year different than getting hired this time last year? 

[00:32:50] Lewis Lin: Once again, so many things. So many things. But I, one, one phenomenon we haven’t talked about sufficiently is just the usage of chat, GBT and.

Here’s a new point that I haven’t brought up. And we talked about hey, using chat GT to generate job descriptions. Some of you might have thought ahead about interview assignments. I could, I use chat GPT to cut my 50 hours down to 10 or 50 hours, down to five minutes. But I think that the really detrimental thing about chat GT these days is that six months ago, nine months ago, not everybody was using chat GPT.

It was still a little bit like, yeah, I’ve used it for a couple of things but I’m not too sure. I think chat GPT can hallucinate and make errors and so it’s not something I really use. I’d want to say, and we could hold the audience. I feel like now we’re in like peak chat GBT, where we can’t. Go very far.

You can’t go for 20 minutes or five minutes without saying, huh? I wonder what chat GPT thinks. In fact, that happened to me this morning. My wife was like, Hey I think there’s something wrong with the coffee press. And I thought to myself, let’s ask chat GPT, like how to solve it. And so now I just feel like we’re in peak chat, GBT, we’re just constantly going to chat GBT for everything.

And it, I call the brain fog. We’ve stopped figuring out how to think for ourselves. 

[00:34:11] Janna Bastow: And we’re 

[00:34:12] Lewis Lin: just constantly going to chat GBT and saying, Hey, I’ve got an interview tomorrow. My friend says, I’m gonna get a question about Lewis. How do you work with difficult stakeholders?

So chat, GBT, what do you think? What should I say when I get that question? And so we’ve delegated the thinking to AI and then AI. Is so eager to please they won’t tell us like, oh, Lewis for me to answer that question, I need to understand the situation. Or the question as it’s phrased, the interviewer wants an example.

And so you need to give me more details about your career history. What happened in 2023, 2022, 2021? It chatt doesn’t ask those questions. And if it did ask those questions, I’m thinking to myself, oh, 2023, what did I do? I don’t know. It’s so hard to chat but can’t you just do your magic and give me a two second response?

And so that’s what’s happening is it reminds me, history has a really wicked way of repeating itself. It reminds me maybe 20 years ago when you went into a bookstore, they would sell these books like I. The top 50 interview questions and like model answers. And so that’s what chat GPT is doing.

It’s giving us these model answers or what it claims to be, model answers. And the hiring managers, they’re like, what’s up with all these candidates? Everybody’s response is starting to sound the same. When I ask a candidate, how would you deal with a difficult person? They would say things like I don’t really see the world as difficult people.

There are just some people who have more questions and some people who have less questions. And so I just take the time to make sure that I answer everyone’s questions diligently and address any sort of follow up questions they might have. And you on the other side are like, okay, it sounds okay, but it sounds shallow or missing or something.

And it just, you can just tell as a hiring manager something is not quite right, what their response is. 

[00:36:15] Janna Bastow: Yeah. And 

[00:36:15] Lewis Lin: a lot of hiring managers have that feeling these days. 

[00:36:19] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. This is why I like asking questions. Tell me a time when you did this. Talk me through when you’ve run up against something similar to this and talk me through that.

Otherwise you do end up with quite a lot of generic answers, I think, 

[00:36:32] Lewis Lin: and you make a great point. Like I just, and it’s not just Chat GPT, but the tech talk influencers too. Yeah. I just saw a few days ago, a TikTok influencer said, Hey, if you’ve got a hiring manager like Janna, asking you for an example, the best solution is to not give an example, because if you give an example, you’ll get trapped.

And so answer it on a generic level. So is that Oh my God, mine is, that’s not the 

[00:36:56] Janna Bastow: advice you’d give. No. Absolutely not. Specific. 

[00:36:59] Lewis Lin: Absolutely not. And that’s the thing, right? Because hiring managers want factual evidence. Yeah. Sure. Generic answer doesn’t sound bad, yeah. Did you actually do that last week, Lewis? Did you actually do that last year? Give me the facts, give me the evidence. 

[00:37:15] Janna Bastow: So there’s tons of competition out there, right? Everyone’s trying to get the few jobs that are available. How do you stand out compared to other candidates who are probably using chat GPT and have great backgrounds just like you do.

How do you stand out and signal that you are the one that they need to have that conversation with? 

[00:37:35] Lewis Lin: Yeah, so I think on the heels of our previous discussion point I’d say step one, just take a step back from chat, GPT, that there absolutely is a place for the tool, but just exert that independent thinking.

What am I trying to do here? With this particular hiring manager, what am I trying to say? What are my facts to back that up? What were the different options that I had considered? Just really reactivate those critical thinking skills. I feel like we’re definitely in that peak brain fog moment where we’ve just delegated thinking to ai.

So I think that’s step number one. Step number two, related to AI, is to do the hard work. The hardest part of work is around the behavioral stories. Nobody wants to sit in pain over the course of an entire weekend, especially with spring and summer around the corner. What happened to a project six months ago?

Who was involved? What were we trying to solve? What were the different scenarios? What were the dilemmas? What kind of pushback we got? Because it’s just grinding work to recall those details. But you gotta do it because you’re gonna have interviewers, like Janna saying, Lewis, can you go into more detail about what happened?

And if I say, oh, Janna, like the usual, like just, prioritization stuff. I’m like, Sean, that doesn’t quite fly. Did you actually do that? I’m like, oh, of course I did. I’ve done that 35 times. And it’s just more hand waving, more generalities. Same thing with the case question side.

The case question equivalent is, wow, all these candidates come in sounding the same, memorizing frameworks like circles, what’s the next layer of depth behind it? And that’s really one of the unique things about the code and Conquer, which is I said, you know what? I side with the hiring managers enough with the frameworks we need actual knowledge.

And so I created like these six playbooks around metrics, around hidden signal questions, around technical concepts, AI innovation, and said, you know what readers, I know 528 pages intimidating, but I need you to build a base of knowledge so that you can answer in real time about. These more detailed nuances, more specific nuances, and not just say, Hey I won’t go into the details now, but I know how to do it.

That’s not gonna cut mustard. And then the last piece that comes to mind is just the importance of networking. You guys have probably imagined the way that the world works now is the recruiter’s AI bot will now talk to your AI bot. I don’t mean that literally but just the proliferation of automation just has created so much noise.

And for you to be able to stand out and to be on the short list of, on the hiring manager, you probably need to have some sort of warm intro into that particular role. And so take the time to build those relationships with the hiring managers, with the people that the hiring manager respects, so that when there isn’t an opening, you’ll stand out from the noise and say, oh, you know what?

Lewis is not just another name in the TS. I’ve actually had a coffee chat with him. I’ve had several coffee chats with him. I’ve seen how he can add value to my company because he gave me three really brilliant ideas about how to improve ProdPad in the AI era. And I actually thought it was information that I could use and help grow the company.

And so I absolutely love to have him on the short list. 

[00:41:00] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what I see as well is that anybody who’s able to get a warm intro through to me generally just gets at the top of the list. It doesn’t put them through, but definitely gives them that waiting that allows us to say, actually, of these 500 applications, here’s a handful that we definitely wanna take a closer look at.

But then also what I always really appreciate are people who’ve done the research into the product. If you’re applying for a product role and you haven’t tried out the product itself you’ve, you, that’s step one, right? You’ve gotta show that you’ve actually been in there, but also having a clear understanding as to what problems.

We’re likely trying to solve it. And sometimes those clues are right there in the job description, or as you said, Lewis, like you’ve gotta do the research work upfront. And some of that is figuring out like, what is this company? What makes them tick? Who’s this hiring person and what makes them tick?

What are they trying to achieve by hiring this particular role? And if you’re able to speak to that then you’re able to cut through the noise and point out, here’s why I’m gonna help take away your pain. 

[00:41:58] Lewis Lin: And I think that you just hit the nail on the head, which is, there’s just in this chat GPT era, there’s just too many candidates who are just not authentic and genuine.

And somebody who takes that time to do their research, to have a genuine interest in your company and ProdPad will absolutely stand out. 

[00:42:15] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. Now, any tips for folks who are coming out of the world where they’ve been laid off? How do employers view candidates who’ve been outta the job due to layoffs?

[00:42:27] Lewis Lin: Oh yeah. Definitely a tough time for sure. There is just this crazy belief from recruiters and hiring managers that those who are laid off are not valuable. And that’s absolutely not the truth. The way that layoffs operate and I’m not a layoff expert. You need to find somebody from McKinsey to tell you.

There’s just this whole rubric between, which ones are priority projects, how much does a particular head count cost, et cetera. And so it’s definitely a very detrimental stigma. I guess I would put it in a very positive frame because compared to people who are trying to conduct a job search while employed, I just don’t know how they have enough time in the day.

I. And so maybe that’s how active job seekers can think of it is like, Hey, everybody else, they’re doing like 10 minutes of prep. They’re gonna get generic chat GPT answers because I have time to dedicate to a full-time job search. I can come up with those thoughtful responses, I can come up with those 

[00:43:22] Janna Bastow: yeah.

[00:43:22] Lewis Lin: More detailed research to make me stand out from other candidates. And that’s how I would think about it. 

[00:43:28] Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. And oftentimes that effort does make a difference. We were hired for a product manager role. This would’ve been middle, late last year.

So I know the world has changed, shifted since then. But we had hundreds of applications, but ultimately there were only maybe a couple dozen that were actually worth calling in and having more conversations with. When you really started looking at the surface level of these applications that were done versus the people who put the effort to understand why we were hiring and what we were trying to get at.

And embedding the scales are probably similar in other places as well. Yeah, absolutely. So what about framing things like if you’ve been fired or if you’ve got gaps? Are there any tips you’ve got for putting yourself your best story forward when maybe things haven’t gone to plan in the past?

This is another question from an anonymous person today. 

[00:44:15] Lewis Lin: Yeah, absolutely. Generally I think to myself, let’s keep everything response wise, positive, and so definitely not an opportunity to either despair the company or the hiring manager or to be defensive about it. Typically just because we’re human, you have some social grace.

I, it’s hard for me to imagine an interviewer say, Hey, were you fired? They’ll just say, Hey, why did you leave Amazon? And, you can have, some sort of like more positive sounding statement and say, Hey, there, had two beautiful years at Amazon. I was so lucky that they gave me some really unique opportunities and experiences, and I was able to build up my network.

I just made a decision right around February of 2024 that I needed a bit of a career change and then decided to part ways with Amazon to to pursue my next opportunity. And just try to keep it positive and upbeat and I think most people will respect that. 

[00:45:16] Janna Bastow: Excellent. Excellent. Thanks for that.

And so another question from somebody, another anonymous person in the Q and A. How do you differentiate yourself as an associate or entry level product manager? 

[00:45:27] Lewis Lin: Oh gosh. 

[00:45:28] Janna Bastow: It’s tough for everybody, but it’s gonna be particularly tough for anybody trying to get in. How do we do it? 

[00:45:35] Lewis Lin: I think, step number one I.

Avoid the generic responses. I know it’s like Lewis. Yeah, sure. If I was like 15 years in, in the workforce, I’d have ton plenty to say about new product innovation for ProdPad or metrics or, different hidden signals. But I don’t have that experience. And so Chat GPT is my friend.

Absolutely. You could use it as a tutor, but let’s stay away from the generic responses. Step one. I’d say, step two builds that knowledge. And so if you don’t know too much about metrics, if you don’t know too much about product innovation, read those playbooks that are in my decoding conquest and just build up that knowledge and really deploy that intellectual curiosity.

Some of the information might not make sense, but just, take a step back. It’s huh, what is Lewis really trying to say? What additional questions can I ask of Che JBT to help me fill in the gaps? After that, communication skills make a huge difference. And I’m just, I’m not just talking about the ahs and the ums, but being able to communicate a piece of information effectively, succinctly, without being long-winded, beating around the bush without introducing any sort of unusual emotional baggage.

I’m a huge communication nut, and I love communication frameworks. One of my favorite communication frameworks is the rule of three, which is really just a fancy way of saying, anytime Janna asked me a question, why did you write the code and conquer? Why did you decide to become a product manager? Don’t just give one reason.

Two reasons better than one, but three reasons. Then it’s oh, wow. Like he was really thoughtful about it. And those communication frameworks are great. Another really great communication framework is called SCR Situation. Co complication resolution is a beautiful way to structure your proposals if you’re trying to propose a brand new product to the interviewer.

[00:47:27] Janna Bastow: And so gimme an example of that SCR thing. How would that work? 

[00:47:30] Lewis Lin: Yeah. Let me see. Gosh you’re putting me on the spot. I feel like I’m in an interview. Let’s see. So are these during 

[00:47:36] Janna Bastow: the execution part of the talking very much about tactical stuff within the product?

Or are we talking about situations like, tell me about a time you’ve diffused a fight between your sales and your engineer? 

[00:47:47] Lewis Lin: It could be anything. And so maybe I’ll take current events and you put me on the spot, so I’ll do my best. No to everybody. This is not the way to do it. Prepare in advance when you get this question.

But one of the things that you might say is Hey at our business the situation is such where revenues are down 20% year over year and we need to come up with a plan to increase revenues by about 15%. However, the key complication is our business. We are an import export company and we just got wind that three weeks ago that all tariffs coming outta China are gonna be slapped with a 145% tariff.

And so to resolve this situation, we have three potential options. Number one, instead of sourcing from China, we can source from a secondary country like Vietnam or India. Number three, I don’t know anything about import export, but we can continue to source from China, but purchase our China source goods from intermediary countries like Canada or Brazil.

And then option number three, something else. And so that would be an example of the SCR method. 

[00:48:56] Janna Bastow: Excellent. All right. That’s really good to have that as a a framework something that we can bring into next meetings. There’s another question that people have been asking pretty resoundly is do you have a digital version of your book 

[00:49:10] Lewis Lin: at the moment?

No plans to have a digital paperback is the way to go. I love it because I’ve. It’s just always there. You don’t have to like, reach for the computer, turn it on, on, on the 

[00:49:19] Janna Bastow: desktop, that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:49:21] Lewis Lin: Amazon is the place to go. So yeah, no, no digital version.

[00:49:25] Janna Bastow: Excellent. And is there anywhere else that, that people can get your reading in your writing stuff, articles that you’ve written, or how can if people find out more about you? 

[00:49:32] Lewis Lin: I do have a substack and so I do talk about career topics, but then I also talk about leadership topics and workplace topics like.

How do you deal with a workplace bully or how do you over communicate your accomplishments at work so you get recognized for what you’ve done? And so if you’re interested in those kinds of topics, definitely search Google for Lewis. Lynn stuff’s substack, and you’ll find it. 

[00:49:55] Janna Bastow: Fantastic. What we’ll do is we’ll make sure that we follow up with that link with a link to, to your work where people could find you and to your book as well.

But also to the recording of this conversation. I know a few people have asked about it being recorded. So it has been recorded. You will be able to find this online and share it with other people. As soon as it’s out there. Give it a couple days and we’ll pick it up from there. So on that note, thank you for jumping in today, Lewis with your insights.

And thank you everybody for all your questions. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to go to all of them. I was knocking them off as fast as you guys were piling them in. But hopefully we’ve had a good whirlwind tour of how to master the product management interview process. So on that note, Lewis, thanks again.

And if anybody wants to jump in and try out a demo of ProdPad, start using it to create your own roadmaps and manage your own backlog or make use of our sandbox version of ProdPad prodpad.com/sandbox, which you can use in interview situations. So thanks again to everybody and huge thank you Lewis for setting this up and walking us through today.

[00:50:58] Lewis Lin: Thanks again for having me. Have a good Monday, everyone. 

[00:51:01] Janna Bastow: All right, take care. Bye for now.