Homework: Clarifying Questions Drills

When answering a product case question, the clarifying questions are often the most important part. If you don’t ask the right questions, you can’t set yourself up for success.

Common Problems:

• Memorizing a general list

• Not paying attention to the question/prompt

• Asking questions that sound as if you are begging for answers

• Asking too many questions and thus exhausting your interviewer

• Start asking about location when it isn’t important

• Ask about a “company” without knowing why (i.e. the mission could change the strategic focus)

• Presume the prompt is for the company they are interviewing for

Suggested Homework/Drill

• Get a list of 10 prompts from your favorite question bank (see links below if you need some question banks)

• Try to come up with 2 to 5 clarifying questions

• If 10 are not enough to get comfortable, try some more.

Question Banks

• Google Design Prompts

• Meta Product Sense Prompts

• Google Strategy Prompts

• Lewis Lin’s Crowdsourced list of all types

Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash