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    Facebook Product Manager Interview Questions

    Updated Aug 11, 2017
    70 Interview Reviews

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    Helpful (79)  

    Product Manager Interview

    Anonymous Interview Candidate
    No Offer
    Positive Experience
    Difficult Interview

    Application

    I applied online. I interviewed at Facebook in February 2017.

    Interview

    I applied online and was contacted for a Product Manager position in either Seattle or Menlo Park by HR. After the phone screen, HR explained I could be hired on for an allocated role or go through the generalist process (where you would get to take a couple weeks after you get hired to learn about Facebook in bootcamp & choose a team). I chose the generalist process, and HR set up 2 45-minute video interviews (product sense & execution). After the video interviews, HR sent me an email to set up a phone call, which she then told me that they would not be moving forward and gave me feedback on what could have been improved.

    Video interviews were fun and I enjoyed talking to the interviewers. Next time, would definitely focus on having a process of answering the design question.

    Interview Questions

    • HR Phone Screen:
      1. Tell me about yourself.
      2. Why Facebook?
      3. What is a project you've worked on recently?
      4. What's your favorite facebook feature?

      Product Sense Video Interview
      1. Design a way for people to find apartments.

      Product Execution Interview:
      2. How do you deal with trade-offs between opposing metrics, such as higher AoV but lower conversion rate?
      3. For Facebook Groups, how would you increase usage?
      4. For Facebook Marketplace, how would you go about setting the price of the products? What tradeoffs would you make in the options you described in terms of metrics?   Answer Question

    Other Interview Reviews for Facebook

    1. Helpful (63)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Facebook in March 2017.

      Interview

      As most others have noted, the interview process is a 30-minute phone screener with a recruiter, then two back-to-back 45-minute video interviews with lead product managers, one on Product Sense and another on Execution, and then onsite interviews. I did not make it past the video interviews.

      For the phone screener, the recruiter is just looking to make sure you've done relevant product management-type work:
      - Tell me about yourself
      - Have you ever worked on a product/feature you worked on from idea to launch?
      - How did you measure success of that product/feature? (provide examples of metrics you looked at)

      My Product Sense interview was with a product lead on Facebook Messenger. He quickly told me that he had already read through my resume and asked if there was anything else unique about me that wasn't on my resume. He then asked me about two of my favorite consumer products to try and suss out any commonalities across the two to determine what characteristics I value in a good product. We then moved onto the meat of the interview, the product sense hypothetical. He presented the following hypothetical: "Design a way for people with similar interests/hobbies to connect".

      I had prepped a structure of walking through the problem, the user, potential solutions, etc, but I struggled with this particular use case. His feedback was that I jumped too quickly into the solution, and that I needed to back up and talk about "pain points" in a bit more depth. Then, he provided feedback that I was getting stuck on pain points and needed to move onto the solution, as we were running out of time. I had 5 minutes at the end to ask him questions.

      My Execution interview was with a product lead on Instagram, working on safety/community. He briefly introduced himself and his role, and asked me to quickly do the same. He the presented the following hypothetical: "Tell me what metrics you would look at as a product manager for Instagram ads".

      We went through multiple follow-ups, asking me to prioritize which of those metrics would be most important, what to consider about how that metric might not tell the whole story, what I would do if I saw a sharp decrease in that metric from one day to the next, how I would rally the team around addressing that problem vs moving on, etc. I had a lot of fun here and thought I did fairly well with this interview, as it more closely reflected what I do in my current role day to day.

      My advice for the Product Sense and Execution video interviews:
      - Figure out how well you're balanced between these two skill sets.
      - If you're unbalanced, like I was, focus on the area where you are weaker
      - Identify a structure to use for either interview. For Product Sense, I would recommend: 1) Clarify the problem, 2) Understand/make assumptions about the user, 3) Identify pain points, 4) Brainstorm solutions, 5) Explain rationale/tradeoffs. For Execution, I would recommend: 1) Identify the proxy metric that most closely reflects the real-world change, 2) Identify related metrics, 3) Refine to reduce chance of "gaming" the metric, 4) Identify what questions you would ask if those metric(s) fell (external factors, internal to Facebook factors, internal to product/feature factors), 5) Explain how you would make tradeoffs to prioritize addressing the issue. There are various books and websites that can lead you through other ways of structuring your answers to these two types of questions. I'd highly recommend writing out a flow chart of your structure that you can refer to during the interview.
      - Practice hypotheticals out loud with a friend. It was extremely helpful to also refine any problems you might have with communicating your ideas. Take the flow chart you created above and refine it by practicing out loud with a friend. I found it helpful to create a sort of mix-and-match flashcards by printing out 6 starts to a question and combining them with ends of a question. I put all of the starts in one bowl and all the ends in another bowl, and had my friend pick from the two bowls at random. Examples:

      Starts:
      1. Tell me your favorite thing about...
      2. Design/re-design...
      3. How would you measure success of...
      4. How would you fix a problem with...

      Ends:
      1. ...a way for people to find apartments/meet people with similar interests/find something to do this weekend
      2. ...X feature of Facebook/Instagram (i.e. Birthdays, Messenger, Saved, Ads, News Feed, Trending, etc)
      3. ...your favorite product

      Ultimately, this interview process does a really good job at sussing out the skills that you've already developed. Prep can take you the last 10%, but if you don't have a firm foundation, it will be fairly difficult to succeed (at least in my experience). Trust your strengths and shore up your weaknesses.

      Interview Questions

      • Design a way for people with similar interests/hobbies to connect.   Answer Question
      • Tell me about your favorite product.   Answer Question
      • Tell me what metrics you would look at as a product manager for Instagram ads.   1 Answer
      • What questions do you have for me?   Answer Question

    2. Helpful (5)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Facebook.

      Interview

      The interviews are designed to be challenging - you're going to be asked to drill deep in a particular area or change course (depending on whether you have already covered enough ground or if it looks like you're stuck). Definitely look at Glassdoor for representative questions and practice ahead of time. I enjoyed this process. The Product sense and product execution interviewers let me know they would be taking notes and would interrupt me from time to time. That made it easy to take it in my stride.

      It took them over a week to let me know of the outcome since their debrief meetings kept getting postponed. The recruiter kept me informed throughout the process so I was aware of what was going on.

      My sense of the culture from the interviews was, they definitely look for a certain type of attributes in the types of PMs they hire - think fast on your feet, highly articulate and succinct. They certainly screen heavily for those attributes/characteristics. If you can nail that during your interviews, you will do well.

      Interview Questions

      • Execution - FB decided to launch Reactions? How would you measure success? How would you test?

        Prod Sense - Design a social travel product

        Execution - How should FB grow registrations?

        Prod Sense - Pick a product that you like. what do you like about it.   Answer Question
      3. Join the Facebook team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3.  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Menlo Park, CA
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience

      Interview

      I did a phone screen, but never heard back from the recruiter. They seemed interested only in experience working on consumer software. One question was what areas of the product you are interested in. They require mobile experience to work on instagram.

      Interview Questions

    4. Helpful (4)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Menlo Park, CA
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6+ weeks. I interviewed at Facebook (Menlo Park, CA).

      Interview

      Fairly straight forward and clear. Interviewers are ok. Cleared the video but failed on on site.
      Execution is analytical. Product sense can be vague at times. Leadership was purely behavioral.

      HR is very slow. I also they they don't care to inform if you failed. I understand they have a ton of people and can't respond but atleast to onsite people, after promising to send a feedback within 3 hours. Horrible HR. Cannot believe why FB can't fix this.

      Interview Questions

      • Execution - how do measure X ?   Answer Question
      • Product sense: how would you use FB to improve X ? This can be vague or on a topic completely unknown to you.   Answer Question

    5. Helpful (5)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in San Francisco, CA
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Facebook (San Francisco, CA).

      Interview

      A few weeks after I applied, I had my first call with the recruiter - very simple, basic Q&A.

      Three weeks later, I had a 30-minute phone interview with the hiring manager who arrived late to the interview. More high-level, talking about my background, how I approached roadmap prioritization, taking features from idea to lunch, what metrics did I monitor, and how did I know what actually impacted those metrics.

      I heard back one week later that I would be moving on, and it took another week for the recruiter to respond to my availability. At this point, I had offers in-hand from other companies and asked multiple times to accelerate the process since I would need to get back to the companies I had offers from, but it didn't seem like she even read my email.

      I finally had my second-stage interviews three weeks after my first-round. I had 2 video calls with an engineering manager and a PM. The PM was nearly 10 minutes late to a 45-minute call. The questions they asked were pretty boring and uninspiring. I didn't really get a great vibe from the interviewers - almost felt like they were arrogant.

      Then, almost two weeks later, my recruiter finally got back to me saying I wasn't moving on.

      All in all, the process took more than 2 months from my initial application and I still hadn't even made it to an offer stage. My recruiter was completely irresponsive. At each stage of the process, I probably sent her 1 email every 3 days, and sometimes it took her more than 2 weeks to reply.

      Overall, a completely terrible process. I had an irresponsive recruiter, and late interviewers who asked questions that I felt didn't accurately showcase my skills, strengths, and prior experience.

      Interview Questions

      • How do you prioritize a roadmap?   1 Answer
      • How would you increase the number of engineers Facebook hires? Brainstorm some ideas, walk me through your process, etc.   1 Answer
      • How would you improve an internal CRM that the sales and marketing teams use? Walk me through what you would do in your first 90 days if this was your project. What metrics would you look at?   1 Answer

    6. Helpful (4)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Los Angeles, CA
      Declined Offer
      Negative Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Facebook (Los Angeles, CA) in April 2017.

      Interview

      Recruiter was constantly "super busy" and after three weeks was able to get a schedule for phone/video interviews. Before hand I was given the areas that would be questioned, which was nice but ended up being more of a hindrance--more specifically it seemed like a distraction given the interviewers had their own answers/agendas in mind.

      Both interviewers were friendly but felt very fake and when I asked a few questions to clarify and about the company it felt like they didn't care to be there. At the end of the interviews they seemed happy with my answers and scenarios but I was just not excited to be working with them due to what I perceived as arrogance.

      The frustrating parts were the 1) slow process, 2) "you want to work here more than we want you to work here" mentality across the board, and 3)the lack of clear direction on what I would have worked on if I accepted the position.

      Interview Questions

    7. Helpful (1)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in San Francisco, CA
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Facebook (San Francisco, CA).

      Interview

      I applied online and had a call with the recruiter. He then sent me a follow up email with prep material and asked me to give him 3 available times. That was 5 weeks ago and I haven't heard from him since, after sending 4 follow up emails that were opened multiple times according to my tracker.

      Interview Questions

      • Experience and general question   1 Answer

    8. Helpful (40)  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Employee in San Francisco, CA
      Accepted Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3+ weeks. I interviewed at Facebook (San Francisco, CA) in November 2016.

      Interview

      There were 3 stages to the interview process:

      =====

      1) Recruiter interview:
      A great chat with a recruiter / sourcer who explained to me how the process would go and the kind of questions I should expect. Throughout the process the sourcer and the recruiter were extremely helpful in explaining what was next and what to expect.

      =====

      2) Video interview:
      A product sense and an execution interview. Both interviewers were very courteous.

      Execution #1 - The interviewer focusing on execution explained she would be interrupting me but that this wasn't something they usually did at Facebook. It's such a small thing but helped me be more relaxed about our interaction. I came out of the interview thinking I didn't do too well but received feedback after the fact from the recruiter that I had done well.

      Product Sense #1 - The interviewer who focused on product sense nodded and smiled from time to time. It was difficult for me to understand whether I had performed or not.

      =====

      3) On-site interview:
      I was in the interview process with other firms but coming on-site and meeting other product managers made it clear to me this was a great place to build product. Every PM who interviewed me with was sharp and interesting and I felt I had "permission to not hold back" which helped me give be clearer in my thinking and presentation.

      Execution #2 - We dived into Facebook live. The interviewer asked tangential questions to test both big picture thinking, goal-driven and detail focused execution.

      Product Sense #2 - This was such a fun interview. Letting go and thinking big and different is important (and fun) but it's also crucial to stick to a structure and go back to it.

      Leadership & Drive - The interview was a (great) conversation but I found it useful to present things in a structured way as it made it easier for my interviewer to follow.

      =====

      ADVICE:
      - Preparation books are useful but counter-productive after a first read and a pass on the exercises.
      - Use the books to create your own structure.
      - You've done the job and you know how to do it, now you just need to gather and organise your thoughts.
      - Blog about it as a way to reward yourself for the thinking process!

      Interview Questions

      • Execution #1 - You're the PM for Facebook pages. What features would you prioritise?   2 Answers
      • Product Sense #1 - Tell me about your favourite app.   1 Answer
      • Execution #2:
        You're the PM for Facebook live. What are your priorities?   1 Answer
      • Product Sense #2:
        What is your favourite product? Redesign it.
        Choose a Facebook product. Redesign it.   1 Answer
      • Leadership & Drive - Tell me about a time where you had a difficult interaction with a colleague.   1 Answer

    9.  

      Product Manager Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Menlo Park, CA
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Facebook (Menlo Park, CA) in February 2017.

      Interview

      Initially had a phone screening with the recruiter for 30 mins and he only reached out to set up a phone interview with the hiring manager 1 month later.

      Phone call with the hiring manager went well as he was very agreeable with most of my answers. He mentioned he would recommend me to come on site. Radio silence for 1 week. Followed up with recruiter with no response. Very unprofessional compared with other Tech companies. At least have the decency to send a rejection letter!

      Interview Questions

      • How do you handle a challenging situation?   2 Answers
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