Nazuk Jain

Here are 4 things that could make your interview a little smoother.

Nazuk Jain -

Product management interviews are tough, especially for those breaking or transitioning into product roles.

Here are 4 things that could make your interview a little smoother.

1. Company Research

Having a good idea of the company you are interviewing gives an edge and shows the interviewer that you are someone who gives extra input and goes out of their way to do things.

Some good things to know would be
👉🏻 What the company does?
👉🏻 Their business model
👉🏻 What things do users like/hate about them?

2. Perfect PM Portfolio

A portfolio helps a lot, especially at the start of your career. It is compensation for the experience that you lack.

A good portfolio would include Teardowns, Problem decks, and some PRDs.

Here's a short approach 👇🏻
1️⃣ Pick any product
2️⃣ Find problems in it and prioritize to pick 1 major problem.
3️⃣ Solve the problem and prioritize the solutions.
4️⃣ Include User personas, market research, and mockups.

Prepare these 4 areas for smoother PM interviews


3. Storytelling

Nothing beats a good story.
Interviewers are humans, and humans love to listen to stories.

👉Make sure you have a strong personal take on Why you want to join the company and the role.

Make sure to knit the facts into a story that's empathetic and feels true to the heart.

4. Frameworks

Frameworks are short-cuts that help you structure your thoughts.

So before going to an interview, make sure you have pre-defined frameworks for certain types of questions.

You can even design your own framework.

For example, for Product Sense questions you could go with the CIRCLES framework.

I hope this information will make your interviews a little calmer.

Personal Note…📝 it’s been a few months since I wrote this newsletter.

I decided to move on from Apple and was fun employed for a bit! but I guess life had better plan for me! Truth is it has been hard to keep up the social media content creation along with a full-time job.

I have been wanting to send more newsletters ideally but have been finding it challenging to keep up with multi-channel content creation.

My biggest realization (and something I had not been wanting to admit to myself) is that if you have a full-time job, along with content creation you are just going to go much slower than content creators who create content as their full-time job.

PM is a demanding job and content creation is another demanding but fun career.

I have been trying to let this sink in for some time now and slowly building backend systems that help me rather than block me.

Career-wise I am going to step into a very very exiciting new role soon (to be announced soon) and I’d love to document and share my learnings along the way.

I think newsletters are great form on content type that’s going to allow me to share my learnings in depth.

so here’s to more learning together! ✌️

Confused about what it means to be a Product Manager? Are you unsure how to prioritize product ideas? Do you find it difficult to drive alignment within your team, or unsure what metrics to focus on?

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