Facebook: How you are graded

In this article, we cover what the interviewers are looking for. At the bottom, we remind you what the recruiter tells you they are looking for by question type.

Product Sense: 

1. Understand motivation and mission

2. Identify who you are building for and why you are building for them

3. Identify the problem and why this one (Build for value and impact) 

4. Demonstrate creativity and prioritize

5. Articulating thoughts

6. Metrics

   
   

Execution:

1. Understand Motivation

2. Understand how to measure

3. Clear success metrics Real and Measurable

4. Evaluate Tradeoff

5. Articulate thoughts in concise manner

6. Setting up Experiment

   1. Establish a hypothesis

   2. Select a group to focus on 

   3. Be specific and think about experiment setup 

Leadership & Drive for Senior Roles

1. How do you Align Teams?

2. Can you set a Vision?

3. Do you have a natural Curiosity?

4. Do you make Decisions with Data (both quant and qual)?

5. Are you focused on User Experience?

Bonus Do’s & Don’t for Product Execution

1. Goals: 

   1. Be able to set goals for a product and drive those based on what the product is all about

   2. Mindful of setting goals and particularly ones that are quantitative and how they can be gamed or sometimes counter indicative of progress

   3. Set goals that team can directly impact

   4. Able to assess whether a team is performing well as it relates to goal setting and provide clarity for focus

2. Trade Offs: 

   Are you able to take a complex tradeoff and explore the tradeoffs in a structured way showing consideration for a ride variety of factors whether organization and cultural

3. Approach

   1. Are you able to take a methodical approach to understanding a problem

   2. Take a high-level problem and break it down into smaller pieces to isolate root cause

People do well in the execution interview when they…

1. Start with a goal and they pick specific metrics that measure progress tied to that goal

2. Explain how they would use metrics to make a decision

3. Structured thinking

4. Using a framework to brainstorm 

5. Coming to Recommendation in the end

6. Expressing opinions but open to feedback

People don’t do well or get tripped up when they...

1. List metrics  but not analyzing how they would use them or can’t justify them 

2. Provide superficial or irrelevant metrics and can’t justify them

   1. (Goals must consider things like Profitability, Retention, Competition or Acquisition and certainly dependent on topic on hand)

3. Not tying metrics to goal or in exclusion of goal

4. Not breaking down problem systematically Or not effectively weighing tradeoffs

What the recruiter tells you…

I. PRODUCT SENSE

Key Question: Can this person turn big ambiguous problems into great products? (Typically 1 deep hypothetical question) 

Four Core Areas of Signal:

1. Identifying needs: taking a big space, breaking it down into smaller parts, reasoning about what people's needs are and enumerating opportunities.

2. Focus on value and impact: developing a product vision based on the value we can provide, reasoning about why we should or shouldn't do so and communicating the most important value. (Note: deep understanding of FB's mission isn't a requirement, give them that context if the question is FB-specific).

3. Making intentional design choices: coming up with product designs (major workflows, surfacing, functionality, perhaps some rough wireframes), applying high-level goals and priorities for the product consistently to the concrete product/feature ideas being designed.

4. Handling critique, new data and constraints: listening to feedback, new data and additional constraints, being able to internalize and iterate based on it.

II. EXECUTION

Key Questions: Does this person prioritize and execute well? Can they get things done? (Typically 2-3 hypothetical questions)

Four Core Areas of Signal:

1. Setting goals: coming up with goals for a product, deriving those based on what the product is all about. Being mindful of how the goals (especially quantitative goals) can be gamed or how they can sometimes be counter indicative of progress. Setting a goal/goals that the team can directly impact.

2. Navigating trade-offs: taking a complex trade-off and exploring the trade-offs in a structured and critical way. Showing consideration for a wide variety of factors (e.g. organizational, cultural).

3. Analyzing/debugging problems: taking a methodical approach to understand a problem, being able to take a high-level problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces to isolate the root cause.

4. Setting teams up for success: showing strong organizational skills, assessing whether a team is executing well, providing clarity of focus.