Amazon Product Manager Mock Interview: Solving Pain Points
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
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Watch our mock Amazon PM (product manager) interview. Stephen asks Amit (Amazon PM) a behavioral question about how he's solved a pain point for customers.
To see more mock PM interviews, you can browse our CZcams Playlist: bit.ly/mockpm
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Chapters -
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:51 Question
00:01:01 Answer
00:05:28 Follow-up questions
00:15:49 Interview analysis
00:20:32 Tips
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Amazing story telling skill. Classic management interview where you can say anything as interviewer doesn't have any clue about the business. Neither the timelines nor the solution seem accurate.
😂😂😂
The most important thing for a PM is to tell his / her past experience as a user story... He hit the nail on the coffin... Amazing interview Exponent team... I'm a big fan of Stephen and the way he probes the candidates..
Thanks Abhinav!
Hi Stephen. I noticed that most of these interviews cut out or are edited for awkward pauses or when the interviewer is thinking. I found that taking a few moments to pause and think about the question usually helps craft a better interview answer.
In future videos, can you think about leaving this in? This will help viewers understand how long they should be thinking about different questions and interviewees can give good answers despite silence.
Good point! We're going to include pausing time in the future videos!
@@tryexponent you can also edit but give a visual cue to show the interviewee took time to answer the questions ex: a clock ⏰ icon to show the seconds or minutes they take to respond without actually showing the entire thinking in silence. Just my 2 cents.
no such thing as time or etc, say, can say any nmw s perfx
When I was preparing for PM interviews, I found the information - both free and paid websites such as Product School, Reforge, Exponent, IGotAnOffer, IK you name it - on the internet to be too much, too disorganized and too confusing. There are articles and videos that start with PM interview questions and then end up with a very generic advice even a new college grad would not want to use. There are poor answers marketed as “Must Read/Watch before your FAANG interview” that sell common-sense as insights - e.g. “be structured with your answer”. Also, the content seems to be ever increasing - you never know what is enough, it is a game of whack a mole. Unfortunately, for many people, it may seem like the best source of information while they were poor copies of a “framework” they saw someone post on LinkedIn. Or people who think preparation takes “at least 5 months” before they can apply to their dream company.
It took a lot of trial and error for me to apply first principles to the interview preparation itself. Ever since, I have conducted real interviews and discussion with best of the best PMs from Google, Amazon, Meta and OpenAI, took the most impactful ones from articles and videos and removed the rest. I then got together with rockstar and articulate people from Snowflake, Nvidia and Netflix and iterated what I learned like a product. They have helped me crack the 2 offers in 3 months, yes in this market. I am now happy to give back for a fraction of cost I have spent. (Yes, I have spent $3000-4000 for personal coaching). Hope it will help you as well. The document can be purchased to view at: telamon.getlearnworlds.com/course/product-dreamroles
P.S. If you are a student or someone affected by layoffs, they am happy to give it away for a deep discount. Please DM me for the coupon code. I have a limited amount of those.
Thank you both! Awesome tips especially about quantifying your results in STAR method
Thanks for the awesome video Amit!
Thank you both! I'm recently preparing my behavior question interview with Amazon, I found this video is super helpful that you really asked some good follow-up questions and helped me think logically on how to break my stories into different parts.
Glad it was helpful!
Thoroughly enjoyed the entire discussion. The way Amit has answered, felt like he's telling his story and quite casual making the interviewer feel like the 2-way discussion is going on. Kept things very simple, logical, fact based.
Thank you for these interviews 😇😇😇
Dude he definitely winged that metrics follow-up. When you start off with “a bunch of….” Just stop and think clearly. I absolutely loved the follow-up questions. I have to really think about the stories I want to highlight and preempt those questions. Thank you!
Thanks a lot. A lot of learning for us
amazing guy .. he is very clear
Hi Stephen. A question here - the case study that Amit discusses is 6-7 years before the interview. How does the interviewer read the fact that the interviewee has no recent case studies to discuss ?
This was sooo helpful!!
The question is about solving users pain points - In India a chai hardly costs 50 cents as said by Amit, people who drink chai on stalls (usually between 20-60y/o) are aware about keeping change in their wallet.(not everyone of them). This is a very basic style of common people in India to use change (coins) for small transactions. Adopting a new way is really good, but at the same time back in 2015, considering the user segment, the usage of 4G was low. I am unsure of what basis this option was selected.
Excellent interview
One of the things I noticed was the way he presented it. It felt more like a story walkthrough which made it a bit more interesting to listen. Even though the explicit structuring were absent the essence of the interview had a story flow to it.
One concern or rather a question I still have is how exactly he managed to convince the stakeholders. As he said, it was a 2G market with POS downtimes and not an eWallet friendly economy at the time.
Good point! Narrative structure in behavioral questions is a really important aspect to an effect answer!
The key was to highlight the potential of what the program could become (eg- benchmarking with starbucks loyalty program) and then taking small low-cost steps in form of a pilot across just a few stores. Once we had encouraging data from the pilot, it was easier to have everyone onboard.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing your experiences Amit.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is very helpful!
Thanks! What did you find most helpful? Any types of videos we should make next?
In the first question, is it important the solution is app-based? or the problem is one that has a technical solution? What if we haven't worked in such an environment but we have addressed the customer pain points in our own way by stream lining a process?
Sounded like a very involved solution, and he even said at one point there was a chance the final cx could be worse due to downtime. One follow-up I would ask is - this seems like a case where you opted for the sledgehammer rather than the scalpel, why did you choose this approach?
Not sure what was his timelines - WE had QR Based payment processing right from 2010 with PAYTM and by 2015 it was much common concept.
Doubt that....infact 2016 was the time when QR codes picked up...and demonetization in Oct 16 was the inflection point....same for Paytm too
Awesomely articulated answers. Just feel Regulations and compliance would have been a much bigger concern and a blocker of sorts given the Digital Payment system are heavily regulated by Indian Govt. Would like to know your views around the same.
You are right, regulations did become a concern going ahead. At that time however, the tech was so new that we were mostly concerned with testing the feasibility of the idea. A few years later, when the tech really picked up, the whole ecosystem did spend a great deal of energy in dealing with regulation and compliance.
Hi Amit,
Thx for sharing your experience.
Few things,
While the solution you proposed evolved from loyalty program which was meant for a different purpose, was that the only option available.
Have we tried any of these options, unless our idea was to bring a technology driven solution to align with some other objectives of the company.
1. did we consider breaking down the process into small sub processes, like one guy issuing token, next one is collecting money, usually if both jobs are done by one person, wait time increases.
2. Ensuring availability of the currency denominations before the start of the day?
3. Checking how others in the same business solving that problem? (Example: How a famous samosa vendor never gets a queue at least during commercial transaction).
4. Collect order first from the customer and collect the money while he is waiting idle for his order for several minutes.
Thx dear!
-
Shakti
Were you as chill in the real interview as you are here? What I have seen is, being too relaxed during an interview could go either ways - you could be perceived as someone with great nerves or someone that is arrogant. Would love to know more!
Hi exponent, can we have videos on product owner too?
In the first example, I am not clear how the team identified payment delay as the major contributor of the excessive waiting in the queue? Amit mentioned the payment processing time has been cut down from 40 to 20 seconds but what if the average processing time per customer is 5 mins? Cutting down 20 second in repayment would not make statistical diff. Plus, the cost of building out the solution is extremely. If this solution enabled the customer to self serve without having to wait in the queue, it would a very different case, like the self serve in Mcdonalds today.
I think another reason to why stakeholders may have aligned is that the customers who visit chains like Chai Point are generally young and more tech savvy, hence would have low friction in adopting to a new technology. If the same problem was being solved for a local tapri/shop at that time, this solution would have obviously failed
Help me to understand he said his job was Marketing Manager not a PM. So how did he end up building a Feature? In additions the follow up question should have been how did you build the digital payment with Bar when India didn't have a Debit card or Credit Card system at that time?
Cards have been prevalent in India for a long time. It's just that people weren't used to swipe for small purchases.
@@rahulchatterjee8002 So if people were not using it then how did he jump from building an MVP for awareness or acquisition... to engagement and growth?
Digital payment via mobile phones is much convenient for a customer compared to swiping their card at the counter.
But I agree, customer acquisition - in this case getting them to use a digital wallet would be a majour issue. The discussion should have emphasised on that part more.
@@rahulchatterjee8002 Depending on your customers. What does the data tell us? # of digital wallet users vs Cash users. How many of your customers use digital payments? Do your customers use mobile payments for other purchases/payments? Do they like to use digital payments? How simple is your feature/App to use? cause if your users do not use Digital payments but the PM thinks it is a solution, then you are disconnected from your customers. Guess my question was how can he grow sales by building an online app when your users were not even using digital payments? ( Apologies it has been a while since I heard the interview) Also if your customers like to use cash or other type of payments then you have a long way to build a digital payment . PMs shouldn't build products just cause it is convenient, PMs should build products to solve their customers pain point but also need to have futuristic outlook and vision.
btw good job in reading and responding to my feedback.👌
@@rahulchatterjee8002 Depends on what his data shows. What does the data show # of Digital users vs other payment users? Do his customers use digital payment? What are the # of users that use digital payments? Do they use it for other purchases? Would they like to use it for coffee purchases? Are his customers techie or at least feel comfortable to use this mobile app? (usability testing?) How easy is the new feature to use? Cause you can't build a feature cause PM thinks it is convenient for customers. You have to know your customers. No matter how convenient or sleek your product is, if your customers are not using it it, there is a disconnect between the PM and his customers. PM should be able to solve their customers pain point at the same time should have a futuristic outlook and vision. Guess my question was how could he talk about growth when it seems that his customers were not even using any digital payments to begin with?.( Apologies it has been a while since I heard his interview)
Btw 👌good job in reading and responding. to my feedback :)
This was an amazing mock Amit!! Being from India I could really connect how big of a problem it was to make users adopt
digital wallets in India back in 2015. But loved the story of a brand that I use so frequently :)
PS: Amit looks a bit like Vir Das :P (if u don't know him google his name, he is a famous Indian actor and standup comic)
Which year are you talking about Amit? In which year did you implement the QR Code payment mode for Chai Point?
at the same time... when digital was not popular...
I could be completely wrong but in the first example, why was QR-based solution considered by the team a fit for purpose solution if it required upgrading the PoS infra and complex system integration? Evevn harder to justify if the eteam considered it an MVP for a polit to test the market.
Very interesting
Glad you think so!
If the interviewer was a technically strong , this could have led to a different outcome altogether. I felt the story was not totally true, may be it's a mock that's why it was made up, overall enjoyed the interview
Was curious to know how did he convince his stakeholders, when the technology wasn't in his favour.
valid question, would like to hear his response
Unfortunately they don't dig in deeper
By taking calculated risk and doing pilot and not investing much time and resource in it.
You miss 100% of shots that you don’t take 🙂
Generally these questions are not really about how each process was achieved. rather its about framing the answer in STAR format and majorly focusing on User Pain points, Context setting, goals, resolution, Challenges and metrics. He was very clear in these aspects.
He has stressed on this part in additional points at the end of interview where he added, how he could have convinced his CEO better by taking the example of data from Starbucks the company his CEO used to admire.
What did you like about Amit's answer? What would you change? Let us know in the comments below!
11:00
Can't know how I stopmed onto this. All in all Awesome video 🥇😎. I also watched those similar from JTechTown and kinda wonder how you guys create these stuff. JTECHTOWN also had amazing information about similiar things on his vids.
STAR?
Flipkart > Amazon
Nah
Most of the interviewees are Indian
how many Indians are there in the world
Now try to explain that it in 120 seconds, that's what they want in a HireVue interview