I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY)
Interview
1 recruiter phone screen, 45 min product sense with a Product Manager , 5 rounds with individual product managers spanning design, strategy, metrics, tradeoff, leadership, hypothetical. Spaced out across 2 months
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. [craft & execution + sense] - You are the PM of google flights and we need to monetize our strategy. What would you design? 2. [strategy + sense] - You are a PM at google and we are considering designing a lawn mower - what should we do? 3. [analytical + craft and execution] - You’re the PM on Search “snippets” which is an algorithmically derived tagline for organic content on search that appears under results to give people a sense of what the page is about. Say your engineering team comes to you with an improvement to the algorithm and wants to implement it - what would you do? Once you decide what to do - how would you implement this ? Who would you work with? What if you implemented it and you saw paid content from advertisers take a hit? Then a couple behaviorals like why are you leaving Meta now? 4. [cross functional collaboration + craft & execution] (this ended up being more strategy? — Lots of behavioral scenarios including “time you faced conflict” “time team disagreed” “what was the impact you landed” then a follow up on “you’re a PM at Snapchat - what is our 3 year strategy” 5. [googleyness & leadership] Why Google, Why are you leaving, Who are your closest ally’s on your team, What would happen if Google fired all of its PMs tomorrow? Then we broke out into a design —> design an experience as the PM of search for people to book flights who are traveling for the first time ever.
The process was straightforward and moved quickly. After applying online, a recruiter reached out within a few days for a brief phone screen. That was followed by two video interviews, one with the hiring manager and one with a panel of team members focused on project planning and stakeholder communication. The whole thing wrapped up in about two weeks, and the team was responsive and clear about next steps throughout.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I walked through a specific project where a key vendor delivery slipped. I explained how I flagged the risk early in our weekly status review, reset expectations with stakeholders, re-sequenced dependent tasks, and brought the timeline back within an acceptable range by negotiating a partial early delivery.
standard 1st round digital interview, they are asking about your experience, background, some behavioural questions and technical questions. and they also share a bit more about the role, culture and expectation
Very self-driven, first of multiple rounds, where I had to take the initiative to arrive at the problem, constraints, approach, solutions, tradeoffs and reasoning behind it in a matter of 30 minutes.