If given a chance to be a PM of any product that you wish to change, which product it will be and what will be the change you do and how will you do it?
This is one of the interview questions that every PM gets. So why not share your answers here.
Mine is WhatsApp’s delete for everyone feature.
For what it’s worth, just saying WhatsApps’s delete for everyone feature isn’t going to get you very far in an interview. Some things I’d expect to be included in an answer to a question like this:
Exactly! Came here to say start with a problem and why it’s important. Defining clearly what you want and why?
Thank you for your detailed reply. What I am trying to do is understand how others would have answered this question.
If you’re gonna pick WhatsApp, then think about the why the problem exists, the people that use it, the problems it solves. The problems it doesn’t solve well, why it’s important and how you would fix it.
Give me the iPhone wireless stack. There is a way to be both a quality consumer device and enterprise capable. I’m tired of having to argue with doctors about the value of an iPhone when it didn’t receive their critical alerts because it was “off network.”
A good answer for this question includes …
I would become an PM at TikTok and create a dating app that groups people based on likes. TikTok’s algorithm is so great at giving you the content you want, I’ve seen people use it as a dating app already. (Whether or not its successful is another story)
If you start your answer with the change you want to make, you’ve already been rejected.
More important is showing that you understand how to think about new product features and how to prioritize them correctly. There are also bonus points for creativity but the basics of product thinking need to be there.
You need to think much bigger than a behavior change of a small product feature.
Mine is being a PM at Robinhood, then I talk about goals for RH, user segments, pain points users have, prioritize which ones will address goals, ideate on improvements which are large and aspirational such as build portfolio analysis and recommendations system that guides users to make smart decisions.
The problem with your proposed change to WhatsApp’s delete-for-everyone-feature is that you’ve described changing what is essentially a parameter of a feature. The change in of itself is not a feature. I’ve heard similar examples come up in interviews, such as changing the order of the Facebook feed or moving a button. They are too trivial to be considered a feature in their own right, and if I hear this in an interview it usually ends up in a ding. If that’s the best a candidate can come up with it means they hadn’t dug deep enough into the users and their goals.
Moreover, this change is not an obvious net benefit. I imagine that the folks at WhatsApp wanted to avoid the situation where someone makes a post, other people respond, then the post gets deleted and everyone’s confused why the thread no longer makes sense. As a recipient of the now-deleted message, I’d rather know that a message has been deleted. By pushing for this change you’ve privileged the sender over the receiver, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing on balance.
To answer your question, I’d like the ability to draw with a stylus on Google Slides. It’ll make presentation slides become collaborative whiteboards. I would use it to have design discussions with engineers, create mockups with designers, and annotate comments during presentations in real time. Teachers would love this in their classrooms. Google has an entire side business model built around this premise (Jamboard), so it’s clearly something people are willing to pay money for, but they won’t get this to work on Slides. Huge oversight if you ask me.
If I was asking this question in an interview, I would always add “why do you think this hasn’t been done yet”
The answer is be looking for is what your take on the internal discussion about this was, and how you would have persuaded them differently.
The major problem is there’s no way to filter search results for physical versus digital products. Users have been asking for it for years and as a current user I often get frustrated enough that I close out of the app and don’t buy something. I know a lot of other people do as well.
I’d look at search data and bounce rates and figure out a way to implement being able to filter results, while also looking into how to prevent sellers from getting around the filters and labeling a digital product as physical.
I would immediately start with the YouTube mobile app. It feels like it was designed under the assumption that we all still have 4" phones from a decade ago. Why is the search button in the top right corner? I know that “Shorts” is being pushed and is probably unmovable from it’s current prime real estate at the guidance of higher leadership, but the whole interface needs a revisit. I think subscriptions and library don’t need to be right next to each other. Put library at the top and bring search back down to thumb range.
Facebook app > market > vehicles. There are so many things wrong with it. I would enable exact matches only, allow search filter save, disable canned response because ALL sellers hate them and buyers don’t know how to properly use them. Drives me crazy
Yelp -
talked about the benefit
how to use /wisdom of crowds and filter out bad review
blowback from people who don’t really know how it works (its SPAM filter is aggressive)
So solution/increase reliability of reviews is to verify people made a purchase. This would use the enter a credit card number and if you use the same number get points
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