5 things to keep in mind while introducing yourself in a PM interview

I have been harping on the aspect of time management in many blogs. One important aspect of time management is also keeping your introduction short & crisp to help you lead the interview.

8 common mistakes in a Product Management interview.

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One key aspect of your interview is your introduction. If done well, it can change the course of your interview and you can lead your interview from the beginning. If not done well, it can drain your energies and you may find it hard to bring your interview back on track.

Here are 4 simple things you should keep in mind while introducing yourself.

#1 Name

Introduce yourself with your name, if needed. If you have already exchanged pleasantries and called each other with your names, then that is redundant.

#2 Relevant experience

Your interviewer may have read your resume. If he/she requests, you to share any highlights from your resume then stick to the highlights of your career.

Few Dos and Don’ts here:

1. Do not start stating your resume verbatim.
2. Do not talk about every experience in the last 15 years of your career.
3. Talk about your relevant experience in a summary i.e., 6 years of PM and 4 years of dev experience.
4. Focus on what you wish to highlight. For example, my focus is on building products grounds up mostly for customers who struggle with identifying the true value of their data. I work with customers in the retail and financial sector. Do you wish to know more.

This introduction has 4 key elements:

1. It talks about your expertise in building products grounds up.
2. It talks about the problem that you are solving — i.e., customers who struggle with understanding the value of their data.
3. It talks about your customer persona that you cater to — retailers and financial firms.
4. Do you wish to know more gives your interviewer a chance to ask you the next set of questions and you can lead the interview from there.

# 3.1 No jargons

Product Management space is massive and as an interviewer I learn so much from PMs from various domains and niche sectors. At times, we are so involved in our domain that jargons become a part of our language. Unless you are interviewing for your domain expertise, keep the conversation jargon free.

E.g., you can tell which one makes more sense: If I say,

I work on IDW that allows customers to use ARM templates to map their data to ADRM data models using the ingestion wizard to reduce their overall ROI.

Versus

I help customers to bring their data to cloud so that they can realize the true potential of their data by serving meaningful recommendations to their users or making their employees more productive.

Both meant the same.

# 3.2 No tasks

In your introduction, you are trying to make an impact in 2 minutes. You need to showcase your contributions and how you can potentially make a difference to the organization. In such cases, you can avoid talking about tasks unless asked. E.g., You can avoid talking about I write great specs, I do vendor management, I have good communication skills, I manage projects well, I have a great working relationship with my devs etc.

Stay away from table stakes. I can almost guarantee that all PMs interviewing will have these skills.

# 3.3. Impact you made

Instead, of tasks and jargons, you can focus on the impact you made. Please note that the impact may not always be monetary. You don’t have to find a dollar value to your impact. The impact could be anything.

For example, one of the interns who worked with me had one of the greatest impacts on our products without shipping any feature. His impact was that he was able to save 6 months of engineering effort by convincing the team to not invest in a product capability.

# 4 Impact you wish to make

This is completely optional.

Think about why do you wish to join the organization that you are interviewing for? What value do you bring to the table? In case you are asked, you must be prepared with this answer. This is different from what are your strengths. Let me explain you with an example.

My strength could be problem-solving skills and a keen eye on design. But the value that I wish to bring to the organization may be slightly different.

The value you bring to the organization has to be met with the organization’s needs as well. It can’t only be based on you. So let us see how to answer this question.

This requires some research. Do a good study about the organization, the role, the team that you are interviewing for. I have talked in my earlier blogs how you can use a company’s financial statement to learn about the culture and initiatives. Once you have the basic information, talk about how your expertise can augment the company’s objectives, strategy, and product offering.

To summarize, “your strength + company’s needs = your value to the company”.

#5 Keep it short

That is it, keep it short.

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