How to Nail Your Product Strategy Interview

The case interview that I see even highly experienced PM candidates and smart aspiring PMs fail on is the product strategy interview.

If you want to land a job at a big tech like Meta, Amazon, or Google, you are going to need to be able to nail the product strategy interview:

• What should AWS Build in the Next 5 Years?

• Let’s say that you’re a PM at Facebook, and Facebook has a lot of messaging apps (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram Chats). Should Facebook consolidate these?

I’ve taken you through the 101 concepts.

And those techniques work. Just last week, one of you wrote in:

Nailed my Google PM role. Your piece on strategy really helped!

But in coaching folks in the year since that post, I’ve noticed the same consistent roadblocks.

Today’s piece is going to give you all the tools to unblock them.

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Sarah stared at her laptop screen, her heart sinking.

She had just finished a mock product strategy interview with me, and she didn’t love my feedback:

Your frameworks are solid, but your answers feel... mechanical. Like you're following a script instead of thinking strategically.

After three months of preparation and countless practice sessions, she was still struggling with the most challenging part of PM interviews.

In two weeks, she'd be facing Google's product strategy round, and she knew she needed a different approach.

This is a story I've seen countless times while coaching PM candidates.

They memorize frameworks, study case studies, and still struggle to demonstrate real strategic thinking.

But here's the thing: the best candidates don't just know the frameworks—they know when to use them, when to abandon them, and most importantly, how to think beyond them.

Today, I'm going to show you exactly how to develop this strategic thinking muscle, using real examples from successful candidates I've coached.

We'll follow Sarah's journey from framework-dependent to framework-fluent, and I'll share the exact techniques that helped her—and dozens of others—land offers.

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The Interview That Changed Everything

Let's start with the question that stumped Sarah in her mock interview:

"Amazon just announced unlimited free photo storage. You're the PM of Google Photos. What would you do?"

Here's how Sarah initially approached it:

Sarah: "Let me use the Strategy Triangle framework to break this down. For 'Where to Play,' we should look at our target market—" 

Interviewer: "Before we jump into frameworks, what do you think is the core strategic challenge here?" 

Sarah: "Um... well, the framework helps us identify—" 

Interviewer: "Let's take a step back. What's your initial gut reaction to this news about Amazon?"

This exchange reveals the first crucial lesson: The interviewer doesn't want to see you apply frameworks. They want to see how you think.

Here's how Sarah eventually learned to approach the same question: