How to Really Succeed in the Product Management Interview Process in 2024

The PM Interview is always changing. Here's "on-the-ground" dirt from a PM Interview Coach on what the latest trends are in the hiring processes at the world's top tech companies, from FAANG to OpenAI

Let’s face it: the meta (“most effective tactics available”) for how to succeed in PM interviews is always changing:

• That free advice on YouTube from 3 years ago? ⇢ It doesn’t apply anymore.

• The seminal books from 10 years ago? ⇢ Completely out of date.

Yet there’s literally zero resource that looks at how the interview and job search process is changing over time.

For some reason the industry is stuck in a form of transmitting information that does not match the rate of change of the assessment.

That’s why you’re subscribed to this newsletter.

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The State of PM Hiring

The product management profession has seen an incredibly rapid ascent. I checked in with Jason Saltzman over at Live Data to query the data:

Live Data has a sample of 90M professionals. Lenny also did a nice writeup on this.

You can see three major phases have governed the history of the profession:

Phase 1 - 2000-2010: Slow and Steady Growth

The 2000s were about companies realizing they needed dedicated roles to bridge business and technology. It wasn't explosive growth, but it laid the foundation for what was to come.

—Jason Saltzman

In this era, product management continued to grow despite challenges. There was the dot-com era implosion that hurt all of tech, but product management was still relatively early in its infancy.

Key characteristics of this phase:

• Annual growth rate of PM roles: 0.96% per year

• Focus on web-based products and early mobile applications

• Emergence of Agile methodologies in product development

In the 2000s, every company out there - technology company or not - needed to enable technology in part of their product. This powered the ascent of people figuring out how to build that technology (PMs).

Phase 2 - 2011-2021: Tech’s Golden Decade

The 2010s were when product management came into its own. It wasn't just about building features anymore; it was about driving business strategy through product decisions.

—Aakash Gupta

This period saw an unprecedented boom in the tech industry, with product management at its core.

Key characteristics:

• Annual growth rate of PM roles: 2.99% per year

• Explosion of mobile-first products and platforms

• Emergence of product-led growth as a key strategy

By 2021, the number of PM roles in the US had grown by over 34% compared to 2010.

Phase 3 - 2021+: The Tech Recession

The tech recession has hit PM roles hard - harder than Engineering, for instance.

—Jason Saltzman

The most recent phase has been characterized by significant challenges and shifts in the tech industry, impacting PM hiring.

Key characteristics:

• Waves of lay-offs across the industry

• Annual decline rate of PM roles: 0.15% per year

• Increased focus on efficiency and profitability over growth at all costs

After a peak of 458K PMs in 2021, the number of PMs has landed at 456K in 2024.

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The Big Question

So it’s really phase 3 where we want to get more granular information on what’s happening:

• What has been happening with PM jobs more granularly recently?

• How are the interview processes looking like?

• What are the most effective tactics available?

We want to know how things look in 2024 compared to 2023 and 2022.

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Introducing Nancy Li

To break all this down, I teamed up with Nancy Li — you’ve probably seen her on YouTube or LinkedIn — who runs the Product Management Accelerator, and has more inside information than almost anyone on this topic.

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Today’s Post

Words: 4,080 | Est. Reading Time: 17 mins

We’ll cover the evolution of the meta in every phase of the job search. We’ve put together some cool data on each:

1. How the PM Job Market Has Evolved

2. How PM Interview Processes Have Evolved

   (Including How Specific Questions Have Evolved)

3. How Getting the Interview in the First Place has Evolved

4. How the Types of People Getting PM Jobs has Evolved Recently

5. How Negotiations and Making Sure You Get the Right Level has Evolved

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Today’s Post in a Video

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How This Integrates with the Rest of the Product Growth Canon

In the Product Growth newsletter, we’ve covered a lot of the job search together:

1. We’ve broken down the meta to 700K jobs, Meta, Google Apple and Microsoft

2. We’ve broken down all the popular interviews

3. We’ve broken down resumes, cover letters

4. We’ve broken down the small market strategy and cold emails

Those are all focused on what works. We need a historical perspective and update on how things have changed - and a synthesis of all of them to understand the dominant meta today.

That’s what today’s piece is…