Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology (Cracking the Interview & Career)

by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Since the product manager’s role in product design can vary so much across teams, it’s a great thing to ask about during your interview.

Engineers and developers can usually pick up most of the other important skills on the job, but a customer focus is one of the defining characteristics of good PMs. This means not just thinking of cool ideas, but relentlessly thinking about the target audience, their hopes and dreams, their needs, and how they’re different from you and the other people at your company.

Writing story-like user scenarios for the features you’re building is another way to develop customer focus.

As you’re preparing for the product manager role, practice describing features from the customer’s point of view by calling out the user-facing benefits.

As an engineer, you’re probably very focused on what is possible to build. For most of your career, you’ve needed to lower other people’s unrealistic expectations. As a product manager, you need to let go of that instinct and allow yourself to envision a world where you’ve made the impossible happen.

Start your brainstorming with the phrase “If I had a magic wand...”

As an engineer, it’s better to prove things through data than charisma. As a product manager, you need to master both.

The more certain you are of the right outcome, the more persuasively you can speak and the more credibility you’re putting on the table. If you end up being right, you gain credibility and can convince the team of bigger things in the future.