I wasn't looking to apply to Facebook, but since a recruiter reached out to me, I figured why not. I like to stay on top of my interviewing skills so decided to do the 2 45 minute video conference calls for Product Sense and Product Execution. The recruiter emailed a helpful description of what both were like:
EXECUTION (45-minutes)
Key Questions: Does this person prioritize and execute well? Can they get things done?
Focus Areas:
• Setting goals: coming up with goals for a product, deriving those based on what the product is all about. Being mindful of how the goals (especially quantitative goals) can be gamed or how they can sometimes be counter indicative of progress. Setting a goal/goals that the team can directly impact.
• Navigating trade-offs: taking a complex trade-off and exploring the trade-offs in a structured and critical way. Showing consideration for a wide variety of factors (e.g. organizational, cultural).
• Analyzing/debugging problems: taking a methodical approach to understand a problem, being able to take a high-level problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces to isolate the root cause.
• Setting teams up for success: showing strong organizational skills, assessing whether a team is executing well, providing clarity of focus.
PRODUCT SENSE (45-minutes)
Key Question: Can this person turn big ambiguous problems into great products?
Focus Areas:
• Identifying needs: taking a big space, breaking it down into smaller parts, reasoning about what people's needs are and enumerating opportunities.
• Focus on value and impact: developing a product vision based on the value we can provide, reasoning about why we should or shouldn't do so and communicating the most important value. (Note: deep understanding of FB's mission isn't a requirement, give them that context if the question is FB-specific).
• Making intentional design choices: coming up with product designs (major workflows, surfacing, functionality, perhaps some rough wireframes), applying high-level goals and priorities for the product consistently to the concrete product/feature ideas being designed.
• Handling critique, new data and constraints: listening to feedback, new data and additional constraints, being able to internalize and iterate based on it.
I read through the recruiter's email and Glassdoor reviews, but didn't prepare beyond that. The interviewers were both nice and I felt like I answered things clearly and explained my rationale at each point. I didn't catch any red flags during the interview, but the recruiter got back to me saying I did not make it to the next round.
I asked for feedback on my weaknesses but the recruiter said she couldn't give any due to "legal" reasons. It was interesting to get a glimpse of the Facebook PM hiring process, but if you're doing it in hopes of receiving feedback, you won't get any if you strike out.
