How to Nail a Product Owner Interview
Four special tips to help you shine during your interviews
Four special tips to help you shine during your interviews
After three years working as a Product Owner, something happened: recruiters would approach me for job interviews almost every week. Honestly, I felt good about it. I felt seen by the world, and I was excited about it. Yet, my excitement didn’t last long as I failed most of the interviews.
I consider myself lucky because I rarely had to apply for a job. Most of the time, someone approached me, and I reflected on whether it was worth giving it a try or not. In 2016, I was tired of my job, and I longed for a change. That’s when I started interacting with recruiters, and it didn’t take long to realize I sucked at interviews. After ten interviews and no job offers, I knew I was doing something wrong. I had to review my strategy; otherwise, I’d remain stuck where I was.
After many failed attempts, I found a strategy that worked pretty well for me. Instead of being rejected in 10 out of 10 interviews, I started being accepted in 7 out of 10. Let me share with you what I do to increase my success chances during a Product Owner job interview.
#1 Become a Customer
Let me be clear: If you want to be a Product Owner, you should feel you can own the product. How can you do that? Easy. Become a customer of the company you are applying for. You may think that’s not always possible, and you can be correct, but you can indeed become a customer in most cases. Let me give you some examples:
B2B Products: get a trial version and test everything you can. Understand how the service works, reach the sales team, and listen to what they tell you.
Online shop: buy products, cancel orders, return items, talk to customer service, register a complaint, etc.
Digital bank: open an account, make bank transfers, deposit, withdraw, use the app on different devices, and so on.
I used to fail on interviews because I didn’t understand what it meant to be a customer. Once you are a customer, you can discuss more confidently during the interview because you know what you’re talking about.
A real case happened when I was part of the interview process of Evino in Brazil. Before the interview, I ordered some products, returned them, called customer service, and tried to refund my order. The return process was painful, and I was pissed off. Let me share part of my interview with the CPO,
CPO: “Suppose you are a Product Owner here. What would you do to increase our customers’ satisfaction?”
David: “I would redesign the return process because it sucks. I had to talk to three people until I could return my items.”
CPO: “Your answer surprises me. How do you know our return process?”
David: “Because I made three orders, kept one, canceled another, and returned the last one. And I realized the return process is horrible for customers. I wouldn’t do business again with you as I was so disappointed with the return process. I guess I am not the only one.”
After this exchange, the CPO invited me to the next rounds. I had three more interviews, and a week later, I got the job offer.
#2 Understand the Business Model
Once you decide to be a Product Owner, you should be aware of the heavy burden you will carry on your back. You can’t maximize the value of the product without understanding its strategy. Therefore, knowing the business model by heart is critical for your success.
Before I go to any interview, I create a business model canvas of the product. It can be time-consuming as I often don’t easily find all information I need. But after becoming a customer, it’s more natural to understand the critical aspects of the business model. However, I want a full business model. I often find the missing information on the company website, which helps me finish the draft.
For me, the goal of creating a business model canvas is understanding the product dynamics. Mainly, I want to answer the following questions:
What is the value proposition of the product?
Who is the target audience?
How does the company develop relationships with customers?
What are the revenue streams?
What are the key aspects to ensure success?
After having an overview of the business model, I gained confidence in wearing the Product Ower hat. This is a critical step for interview preparation.
#3 Reflect on What Is Relevant to Share
As I understand what it is to be a customer of the company and the dynamics of the business model, it’s time to evaluate what I could add to that. I think it’s vital to know why you could become a Product Owner of a particular product. It’s about connecting your experiences with the position you are applying for.
I failed several interviews because I didn’t reflect on what would be relevant to share and what to skip. I messed up many times with the question, “Could you walk us through your CV?” I used to be lengthy, sharing from my first experience to the last one, I’d give the highlights of every experience I had. The problem is I worked for ten different places. At the end of my answer, the hiring manager was either asleep or lost with my fuzzy experience.
I call my current strategy “Information on Demand,” as I start with an overview and deep dive only once the hiring manager is interested in something. Before the interview, I prepare some stories related to the position, but nothing more than that.
The critical point is not to overwhelm the hiring manager with irrelevant experiences.
I worked as a butcher assistant when I was fourteen. But I guess this experience is pointless when the position is about a digital marketplace in Europe. The crucial part of the interview is finding which stories you have that are worth sharing. The hiring manager wants to find someone who fits professionally and culturally to the position. That’s why you should be authentic, don’t focus solely on the professional traits, just be yourself.
#4 Show How You Think
Interviews can be incredibly tedious sometimes, but they can also be exciting. What I learned is, abstract interviews often lead to rejection. Hiring managers will be distant to you if your exchanges are purely abstract. Yet, if you can make the interviews more concrete, you increase your chances of succeeding. To illustrate this scenario, I need to share another story with you.
After passing the first interview round with the Human Resources team, I had my second round with the Hiring Manager and CPO. The interview took place after my work, at 6 pm. I was tired but excited about it. We started with a brief introduction, and the CPO jumped into questions like:
How do you define success as a Product Owner?
What are the key responsibilities for you?
How do you ensure value is maximized?
After answering the third question, I felt the conversation was going nowhere. It was too abstract, and I decided to take a stand, “I think these questions won’t help you understand how I work as a Product Owner. I want to suggest exploring how my experience is helpful for your challenges.” That was the turning point of the interview, and it unfolded like this:
Hiring Manager: “Thanks for bringing that up. Then, tell us how you could help us.”
David: “I noticed you started a marketplace as a greenfield project. Now it’s time to scale that up. I’ve got significant experience with that. I helped two startups in Brazil scale up in different scenarios.”
Hiring Manager: “That sounds cool. But then, could you tell us more about how would you help us scale up?”
David: “Sure. May I take the whiteboard?”
As I took the whiteboard, we explored the challenges the company was facing. I drew a quick mindmap where I could identify three main assumptions that, when proven valid, the business could grow. I wrote possible approaches to validate the assumptions as soon as possible. And we resonated for around one more hour around it.
The interview took two and a half hours in total, and at the end, the hiring manager asked me, “When can you start working with us?” I said I would take the offer once I got to know the people I’d work with. I was thrilled as I didn’t see that coming, but I felt confident I could join them, and yet I played safe.
The hiring manager perceived that as the right move and organized a talk with the whole team. I remember it as if it was today. I talked with ten people in two hours, it was intense, but I got a feeling we could rock together. Then, after that, I finally took the offer.
Success Is the Result of Preparation
Preparation is what matters the most. You’ve usually got only about an hour to convince the hiring manager you can match their expectations. To stand out among the crowd, you had no alternative but to go the extra mile.
Preparation beats talent.
The interview is your unique chance to build trust with the hiring manager, and preparation is your way of reaching that. Be humble, and give your best to learn as much as you can about the product you want to be a Product Owner. The secret is to keep improving your interview strategy and don’t let rejections put you down.
Reality is tough. No matter what you do, you will fail some interviews, and that’s fine. Instead of being hard on yourself, take failures as opportunities to learn, and do better next time. It’s like what Rocky Balboa said:
“It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.”
I believe that the journey is the destination. We may fall sometimes, but we should always stand up and keep moving forward.
