Timing for Product Interviews
TL;DR - Candidates typically practice taking a full 30 to 35 minutes to answer all questions. In reality, outside of Meta’s Product Sense question, this is a recipe for disaster because you need to get to an answer faster in most situations.
Why should I keep it short?
At the likes of Google, you will always get asked more than one question or the interviewer will ask additional questions to rank the candidate on a number of skill set.
How long for each question type?
I advise the following timing goals:
Product Design & Insights - 20 to 25 minutes where 5 of those minutes is for taking time to gather your thoughts. You need to be ready for strategy or craft & execution questions that are follow on (for all but Meta and maybe a few companies that follow Meta’s best practices.)
Strategic Insights - 5 to 15 minutes. It is best to assume a 5 minute answer and if the interviewer wants more they will tell you or you can volunteer it up after you have answered the essential question.
Estimation - 5 to 15 minutes. It depends on context. If you need to give a TAM estimate as part of design or strategy, your estimation answer should be about 5 minutes, max. But if it is a standalone analytics question, you can take a little longer to answer.
Craft & Execution - 5 to 15 minutes. It depends on context. As you might already guess, I am going to say, when possible give a short answer
Behavioral - 5 minutes. You should be able to answer most behavioral questions in 5 minutes
Notes on Frameworks
Imagine your interviewer is an executive. For the Product Design questions, a framework you can personalize works. But for the rest of the question types, you want to be more nimble than reliant on frameworks. Use common sense.
Relying on perfect execution of perfect frameworks is rarely a reasonable way to answer a strategy question. Yes, study using the frameworks (think Lean Canvas, SWOT, Porters, etc.) but don’t rely on them as the only way to answer strategy prompts. (Ask me about my course on strategic interview questions.)
If you practice the frameworks and mock a lot, you will build instincts and can answer strategy questions by quickly identifying the most important parts of a strategy question and doing as you do with executives and cut the chase of what they really want to hear about.
But, I still want/need to use a framework
If you can’t answer a strategy question without a framework try simplified ones. I recommend the Pros/Cons, Rule of Three and Landscape approaches. (Rule of Three gets you out of soo many different situations it is amazing.)
Rule of Three
When pressed for time, identify three themes you want to adress and stay focused on those. You could spend hours on any standard strategy prompt, but you never have that time.
How to Practice
Find the most obnxious alarm on your phone. Set it to go off at the 5 minute mark. Get good at the 5 minute answer and you can always dive in deeper. It is always more difficult to answer in fewer words. The more eloquent you can be with fewer words, the better your chances of success.
