Google product manager mock interview (SUPERB answer)

0:02Hi, welcome to this Google product manager mock interview. My name is Anika and I used to be

0:07a pm at Google where I worked on a number of teams including YouTube, Google search

0:13and Maps. Today I will be playing the role of interviewer and my candidate is Akshat.

0:20Hi I'm Akshat I was also a former product manager at Google where I worked on messages

0:25in Google Stadia and I've done hundreds of mock interviews. In this mock interview we want to

0:31show you what it's like to really ace your Google interview so let's get started, Akshat

0:39no pressure. The question I'd like to ask you today is “how would you improve Google Chrome?”

0:54Awesome so I guess my first question would be what do you mean by improve,

1:00are there specific things that we're optimizing for? So for example our goal could be to

1:07increase our user acquisition it could also be to increase how often people use Google

1:13Chrome or maybe improve how satisfied they are with the product, did you have a particular

1:18goal in mind? it's really important to ask clarifying questions both so that you can

1:24make sure that you're on the same page as the interviewer as well as so that you can scope

1:28the question into something that is feasible to solve during the course of the interview,

1:33so when Akshat asks the interviewer what they mean by improve that's a really great way to kind of

1:39narrow down the problem space and understand specifically what the question is asking or

1:44at least one version of what can be talked through in the course of this interview.

1:50Yeah that's a good point it's definitely a broad question I'd actually love to hear your

1:54suggestions for what metrics you think would be most important for Google Chrome to improve

1:59okay I think there's probably at a high level maybe three or four different

2:06goals that we could have and i'll talk through each of those.

2:18So to start there's user acquisition and I think a common metric for this

2:22is just what are the number of daily active users monthly active users etc for the product

2:28and I think it could be interesting to talk about acquisition if our goal is to increase the market

2:33share of Google Chrome as a product and bring it to more and more different kinds of user segments.

2:39Another goal or metric north star metric that we could have is engagement with the

2:44product. Things that we could look at to this end are how often are people using the product,

2:50what's the average amount of time they're spending on the product every day or every week etc,

2:59we can also look at user satisfaction and there's a couple of different ways that we could measure

3:03user satisfaction you know we could look at csat or customer satisfaction scores,

3:08we could look at net promoter scores and a host of other sort of user satisfaction metrics like

3:15we could look at help center or other places where bugs and tickets are filed. And then another thing

3:22that we could look at is monetization right are we monetizing the product well what's the average

3:26revenue per user roughly, so amongst those I think for me what would be most important is

3:34making sure that the satisfaction of using Google Chrome is high there's a lot of other competitors

3:40out there now and I think Google Chrome already has significant market share so it's important

3:46to make sure that user satisfaction is high so it continues to be one of the leading web browsers.

3:51One great way to show the interviewer that you're kind of thinking two steps ahead

3:55is to proactively suggest different options or at least you know what you think might be the best

4:01option for the clarifying questions you ask this not only helps you take the question down a path

4:07that you feel might be best but it also shows the interviewer that you know you have in mind what

4:14a great way to talk through this might look like and that you're thinking about that ahead of time.

4:19Awesome I think that makes sense user said satisfaction seems like a very relevant thing to

4:25look at for Chrome improvement. Before you kind of get into it could you talk through what the metric

4:34for actually measuring that user satisfaction improvement might be. For sure, so I think

4:40there's a couple of different ways we could gauge how satisfied users are with the product we could

4:47run actual surveys two very common formats for this are calculating this customer satisfaction

4:53score or csat and then the net promoter score both of them give you an idea of how

5:01satisfied users are with your product and nps goes even a step further and also can sort of

5:07measure how delighted your users are and if they would actually be advocates or promoters

5:12for your product. for something like this I would probably stick with a metric like csat

5:20just because people are usually not promoting uh you know this is the browser I use there might

5:25be some power users but what we're really looking for is making sure that most of our users are very

5:30satisfied so that they continue using Chrome versus they adopt it for the first time. Okay

5:36great that makes sense so feel free to continue talking through what those improvements would look

5:42like. Okay cool so our goal is to basically make sure that customer satisfaction remains high

5:59I think the first thing we should do is probably segment our user base and one way that I would

6:05segment all the different Chrome users you know Chrome is a huge product it's got billions of

6:09users and they're all sort of different use cases and different personas but one way that we could

6:15sort of stratify the user base is really just by how much they use Chrome. I think there's

6:22probably three segments that I would look at one is the power users and these users really spend

6:29almost their whole day in the browser you know examples of such power users are knowledge workers

6:34so a lot of people who are spending time on the computer and on the browser for their day job,

6:42this middle segment would be you know casual users or middle users so people who are using the

6:49browser for leisure maybe just casually surfing the internet semi-frequently and then finally

6:57the tail segment would be light users so these may be users who are just infrequently using Chrome uh

7:04maybe just infrequently using the web right so I suspect probably older populations or populations

7:09and less in areas with less connectivity. So in terms of where we should focus our time

7:17I think for light users since we're not focusing on acquisition or you know activation

7:24they're probably not the right people to focus on because you know improving their csat scores

7:30is gonna is not gonna be super relevant to keeping sort of our most high value users on the platform.

7:38I would recommend starting with focusing on power users these are the users for whom like every

7:44little adjustment in Chrome makes a huge difference this is where they're spending

7:47all their time and so having them be advocates for the product or having a really good experience is

7:54is a good way to make sure that Chrome remains like one of the leading web browsers. Spending

8:00time segmenting your users and thinking about how different types of users might act and what

8:06those user journeys might look like is very very crucial to answering a product design question

8:13the reason is because different users have different needs and you want to make sure that

8:18you are building specifically for the needs of the users you're focusing on the danger of course is

8:25that if you kind of go off of your own assumptions or if you don't take time to walk through this and

8:30understand these nuances you might build a product that users don't actually need or want to use.

8:38Awesome this all sounds good so far.

8:42Cool okay so then I guess I'll move into talking about some ways that we could

8:47improve the csat scores for power users, does that sound good?

8:51Yeah looking forward to hearing your ideas. Okay cool so I'm personally a power user of

8:59Chrome so I'll basically draw on my own personal experience and that of people I work with. I think

9:06the key pain points that I have as a user of Chrome I think there's maybe two of them one of

9:13them is around Chrome's power usage you know we've all had the notification that Chrome is using a

9:20significant amount of memory or battery power and you know my computer definitely gets drained a

9:25lot faster when Chrome is open I imagine for power users who always have Chrome on and probably have

9:30a lot of tabs open this is a this is a significant problem so that's one sort of category that we

9:36could look at and the second one is productivity so because we are using this you know user segment

9:42is using Chrome for work it's really important that Chrome help them be as productive as possible

9:48you don't want to spend your day fighting Chrome you want to spend it actually working on things

9:52that you care about. I think between those two I'm probably going to focus on the latter

9:58so let me think about features that would help me personally be more productive within Chrome,

10:04does that sound good? Sounds great yeah feel free to keep going. Okay cool

10:19so

10:23when I think about you know as a user how I'm using Chrome there's a couple of things that come

10:30to mind usually I've got a lot of different tabs open and that's one big pain point I'm

10:35usually looking for the right tab to open or navigating through multiple windows and tabs

10:41another thing that I use Chrome for is you know managing my email and my meeting calendar those

10:48are tabs that I always have open and Chrome is sort of like my central operating system

10:54so based on this there's a couple of feature ideas that come to mind the first is a universal search

11:02feature so my use case here is that you know I'm using Chrome I've got a lot of tabs open and I'm

11:09trying to find a very specific document I don't know if the document's already open in a tab if

11:15it is I'd like to just go to navigate to that tab and if it's not I'd like to open a new tab

11:22right now this is pretty painful in order to find it I usually have to scan through

11:29all the different open tabs and this gets hard when there's a lot of tabs because you can't see

11:36you know what the tab is actually called you can just see the icon

11:40usually the document I'm looking for is like a Google drive

11:44document right if I'm a power user of Chrome then it's also likely that I might be using

11:49g suite and if I don't find the Google drive folder or the Google drive document then what

11:56I currently have to do is I have to go to Google drive open that up in a new tab pick you know what

12:02kind of document I'm looking for is it docs is it cheats is it slides then I have to search for the

12:08thing that I'm looking for and then actually open that up in the process of doing that you know I'm

12:13adding two or three new tabs and it's taking me four or five steps to just open a document

12:20and then the final thing that I can do is I can look through my history this is something that

12:24like I personally don't do that often and I would imagine that users aren't looking through their

12:28history that often but even if you do you have to navigate to the history tab and then you have to

12:34sort of look through all your history to find the Google drive thing that you're looking for

12:38so one way that we can save the user a lot of time and make them more productive is by having

12:44sort of a universal search bar and what this search bar would do is it would essentially

12:50look at three different places the three different places we talked about

12:54first it'll look through your open tabs to see if you know any of them match the document that

12:59you're looking for they would also look through your Google drive and there's a lot of things we

13:04could do here to make that really fast you know you could have your Google drive sort of cached

13:11so that it's extremely fast right now or which which it isn't right now rather and then it'll

13:17also look through your history you could invoke the universal search bar through maybe a keyboard

13:22shortcut so you can imagine you know maybe you press a keyboard shortcut and you type in the name

13:28of the document or like a keyword right so if I'm looking for sales leads where I just type in sales

13:36leads and it brings up all the relevant things in my open tabs in my Google drive and in my history

13:44and so with that the goal is to basically make it as easy as possible for someone to get to a

13:50document that they're looking for so that would be one feature idea basically a universal search bar

13:57another feature idea I have is you know I use Google Chrome to look at all my emails and also

14:03to manage my schedule one pain point is you know often times I'm working in Google Chrome

14:11and before I know it I've like I'm I'm five minutes late to a meeting

14:15I think this is something that's happened to a lot of us uh what I would love is for Google Chrome to

14:20be able to send me a notification that says hey your meeting's starting and that notification

14:24just includes a link to join the meeting whether I'm using you know uh zoom or Google meet or

14:33any other video conferencing platform it would be great if instead of having to juggle all those

14:37uh I just have a single place to join my meeting what I imagine this would look like for the user

14:46is if you know Google Chrome already lets you create a Chrome profile where you can log in with

14:51your email and your calendar I think for people who are using Google calendar which is probably a

14:56significant portion of the Chrome user base Google Chrome can basically get access to your calendar

15:04and send you a notification before your meeting's about to start and in your in your Google calendar

15:09there's already a field for each event for you know what's the video conferencing link

15:14so maybe Google Chrome could essentially intelligently figure out like based on what

15:19the meeting conferencing link is what conferencing platform it's using it'll just automatically do

15:24the legwork to you know log me into that so the user the end user experience would be you can keep

15:31working in Google Chrome working on docs you know looking at the internet and then when it's time

15:36for a meeting you'll get a you know notification from Chrome with a link to join without having to

15:42sort of find your calendar amongst all the open tabs or find your email and keep checking that

15:52and I think the last feature that comes to mind is really around sort of managing a lot of open tabs

16:01I know that Google Chrome introduced a couple of new features around tab management recently where

16:06you can create groups of tabs and you can even pin certain important tabs I think these are great I

16:13think there's probably a lot more that Google could do especially with its capabilities in ai

16:19and machine learning the goal here would really be to reduce the cognitive overload for users I think

16:25it's we've heard so many people you know talking about like it feels so good to close that last tab

16:30or it's you know it's so annoying to have so many different tabs open so I think we can have a much

16:36healthier and more delightful experience for users by sort of smartly managing their tabs for them

16:41so I imagine some sort of like ml based model that automatically surfaces tabs that the user

16:48navigates too frequently right so your email and your calendar might be such tabs there's a

16:54lot of times we just have open tabs for things you know maybe things that we searched on the internet

16:59but are no longer going to look at imagine something that automatically kind of cleans

17:04those up so you don't have this uh constant you know stream of tabs that you're no longer using

17:13I imagine for like the end user the way this would work is it could be a setting in Chrome you know

17:19like a smart tab manager that you could toggle on and off and once it's on it sort of learns over

17:25time based on certain signals right so figuring out which of your tabs are the most looked at tabs

17:34which of them are never looked at again right so this could just be like search results pages

17:39that you know you look at once but then they're not looked at again maybe if you're a developer

17:43that's like stack overflow you want to keep those tabs open right now maybe if you're you

17:48know a marketing person hubspot or salesforce or whatever sas tools you're using it keeps those

17:54open but there's probably a lot of insight into or that Google has that could help someone manage

17:59those better it's great to have multiple examples as long as you can be concise and clear about them

18:06because it allows you to show the interviewer that you can think broadly and have both maybe more

18:12simple easy to implement feasible ideas as well as maybe a little more out-of-the-box creative

18:19ideas and that all of these are within your spectrum of how you think about product solutions

18:25okay so just to summarize there's three features that I talked about I talked

18:30about universal search and the goal here is to help people get to where they want to go faster

18:36the second is meeting notifications the goal here is to have people spend less time in

18:41their actual calendar tab and to basically join meetings faster without with less distractions

18:48and then tab management which is reduce cognitive overhead for people reduce the number of tabs

18:53that they have open and just overall make it a healthier experience to work inside Google Chrome.

18:58When you get to the end of describing your ideas and your possible solutions it's really helpful

19:04to just provide a quick summary of what each of those ideas were and what the impact of each of

19:09those ideas might be for your user base. Awesome I think these all sound great, I can certainly

19:18identify with the need for all of these especially tab management so I'm I'm all for improving

19:26Google Chrome from that perspective but for the purpose of taking a more objective look at the

19:33question how would you prioritize amongst these three features? Let's say you know you had to

19:39start building next week, how would you decide which of these three to start out with? yeah

19:54so

19:57I think the criteria I would use to prioritize these there's a few the first I would look at is

20:06how much time could this actually save for users right if our end goal is to make the users more

20:10productive then my question would be which of these ideas actually will save users the most

20:16amount of time right and my assumption here would be the more time we save users the more

20:21it'll improve our csat scores which is sort of our north star metric and the overall goal

20:26uh that we're building towards the second criteria I would look at is the apple uh the applicability

20:33across sort of our user base how many users would this actually apply to and then finally I would

20:41look at what's the cost to build are there any is there anything that's particularly prohibitive or

20:46hard from a technology standpoint and you know sort of taking that into consideration

20:52so based on those three criteria if I think about the different features that I suggested

21:01so for universal search I imagine this will save someone a lot of time you know if I just think

21:08about like personally how much time I spend looking for the right tab it's it's probably

21:14significant especially just given the number of times I perform that action so my guess here is

21:21that it's probably the potential for saving a user time is quite high and so I would rate that highly

21:29it's also pretty applicable across the user base I think it applies even more to people

21:34who are g suite users but because we are talking about Chrome I think it's safe to assume that

21:39a lot of people are g suite users or at least a significant portion of the user base

21:46the second idea meeting notifications I think this will also save someone time

21:52I think it would depend on how many meetings they have so I think for people who have a

21:55lot of meetings this would be particularly useful but it may not apply to as much of the user base

22:01you know I think on average people probably have some meetings and then there's a set of users who

22:06have a lot of meetings throughout the day but maybe this would only be super useful for them

22:13and then tab management I think I think this is one of those user delight features

22:18I think it's very applicable across the user base but it probably doesn't save the user

22:22too much time it it again going back to like the thesis behind the feature it's really

22:28about reducing their cognitive burden uh and just making Chrome an overall more pleasant experience

22:35it might not actually save them too much time so I think based on those criteria the universal

22:42search is probably the most compelling from a user standpoint just given that it has a potential to

22:48save users a lot of time and it's also applicable across the whole user base in terms of cost to

22:55build because Google is sort of a leader in search already I imagine that a lot of the infrastructure

23:02for building this kind of feature is there or at least a lot of the know-how is there

23:08and that could be something that is that we could take advantage of

23:14so I think to summarize I would probably prioritize building the universal search

23:18bar first because it has the most potential to save users time it applies to the most users and

23:24you know the cost to build is reasonable and if not at least as much as the other

23:30ideas. It's very important to be data driven about how you define this prioritization process and

23:37just like Akshat you want to define your criteria for weighing features against one another up front

23:43so that you can have a clear very data-driven approach to how you make that decision.

23:51Awesome that makes a lot of sense I'm I'm just imagining looking through my own files on the

23:57Google search homepage and that sounds like an amazing experience so now I'm waiting for the day

24:03that that actually appears on Chrome, but thanks again Akshat that's the end of this interview,

24:10well done you did an awesome job and thanks again for being with us today. Thanks, I had a lot of

24:16fun. Awesome. Overall Akshat did an amazing job with this question and I would say the one general

24:25takeaway I would highlight from how he walked through his answer is to always communicate what

24:30you're thinking as you're walking through your solution process so you'll notice that even when

24:35he was kind of thinking independently he talked out loud with the interviewer and walked through

24:41that process and that's really important so that the interviewer can understand

24:45how you come up with ideas how you prioritize and ultimately how you make decisions as a pm.

24:52Well I hope this interview was helpful to everyone who's watching, both Akshat and I are coaches on

24:57IGotAnOffer so if you have an interview coming up and you need to prepare you can find us there and

25:02feel free to reach out. Thanks to everyone again for joining and good luck with your interview