Peer Mock Interviews for Product Managers
An excellent way to prepare for PM interviews is to practice mock interviews with others. If you solely prepare on your own, you’re unlikely to identify ways to improve your performance; but, when you work with others to receive live feedback, you’re much more likely to get to the next level.
In this guide on peer mock interviews, we discuss what the different goals of mock interviews are, how long to practice during a mock interview, and how to evaluate mock interview performance.
Note that in this guide, we will not be covering PM interview question types e.g. behavioral questions, product sense case questions, product execution case questions, etc.; for a more in-depth explanation, see our on-demand course on PM interviews.
Peer mock interview practice objectives
When practicing for product manager interviews, keep in mind that there are two different potential objectives for your peer mock interviews. Crucially, you cannot pursue both at the same time.
The two objectives are, in priority order:
Rapidly improve the structure and content of your response (“learning mode”)
Stress-test your verbal performance under realistic conditions (“stress mode”)
Let’s discuss each objective in more detail.
Learning mode mock interviews
Your first objective is to focus on learning as much as you can, so that you can quickly improve your performance in future interviews.
When optimizing for learning, try not to rush through the session. As you move through each question, ask your peer mock interviewer for their immediate feedback, and discuss the areas that you could have further improved. Consider the way that you structured your answer, as well as the logic that you use to move from step to step.
Don’t spend too much time on the “polish” of the response. A PM who stutters but provides an airtight argument will make it farther in the recruiting process than a PM who sounds confident but demonstrates significant logic gaps when pressed for detail.
By bouncing ideas off of one another, you’ll find new angles for addressing your bottlenecks, and your peer interviewer will also learn from the experience. I’ve personally found that teams of two can identify significantly better ways to attack an interview question than having each person split up to tackle the problem independently.
While you’re in learning mode, don’t worry about hitting interview response time constraints. That is, don’t feel forced to conclude each mock question within 10-15 minutes. Your current objective is to solidify your foundational logic; you can always improve your response velocity later in future mock interviews.
Stress mode mock interviews
Your second objective is to “stress-test” yourself in realistic interview situations. Only start stress-testing yourself once you feel you’re comfortable with each individual interview question.
In stress-test mode, minimize requests for feedback to the interviewer until after the session concludes. After all, during the real world PM interview, you won’t be able to ask for performance feedback.
And, even if you feel you’ve completely failed a question, continue to press forward. Stress-test mode is a valuable way to practice recovering from bad situations. The more ability you have to bounce back, the better you’ll perform during the real interview.
Remember that it’s way more important for you to learn the structure and logic for an interview than it is to stress-test yourself. As a rule of thumb, spend at least 3x the time in “learning mode” as opposed to “stress mode.”
A big mistake I see candidates make is that they spend 90% of their prep time in “stress mode” rather than “learning mode”, causing them to plateau and ultimately fail the interview round.
Effective interview practice
You might not realize it, but there’s a right way to practice and there are multiple wrong ways to practice. You have three options:
Repeat the exact same exercise over and over again
Repeat the same exercise, but make slight modifications for each one
Try many different exercises, but do each exercise only once
Here’s how these three options engage your brain:
If you practice the exact same exercise, your brain doesn’t learn much from repetition.
If you repeat the same exercise with slight modifications, your brain engages at a deeper level, and you learn much more quickly.
If you practice totally different exercises, your brain doesn’t consolidate info across those exercises, and can actually wind up forgetting past learnings due to fatigue.
Most candidates try to use option #3, because they believe that the more practice they do, the better they’ll get. This tactic is demonstrably ineffective.
As a PM coach, I’ve personally observed PM candidates who failed to secure PM job offers, even after they had practiced for 50+ hours across 150+ PM questions. This failure was due to their usage of option #3.
On the other hand, I’ve also personally observed PM candidates who secured PM job offers by only practicing for 10 hours total by using option #2.
That’s why we strongly recommend you use option #2. You get significantly more leverage for your time investment.
Other logistics to keep in mind:
Try to run your mock interviews in settings that reflect real-world situations (e.g. a well-lit and quiet room, wearing the clothes that you would bring to an interview, keeping your webcam on for virtual interviews, etc.)
Be sure to use pen and paper to structure your thoughts
Mock interview practice durations
When running mock interviews, plan to spend a minimum of one hour per session per interviewee, whether the session is in “learning mode” or “stress mode.”
In learning mode, expect to tackle about 1-2 questions per hour.
In stress mode, expect to tackle 3-5 questions per hour.
If you and your mock interviewer are practicing on one another, then expect to take at least 2 hours - one hour for yourself, and one hour for your peer.
Try not to practice for more than 4 hours per day, or you’ll run into exhaustion. When you’re exhausted, you will no longer be able to learn and improve.
Serving as a mock interviewer
Mock interviewers should select 2-3 points during the interview to push the interviewee on their decision making. You should be pressure-testing your candidate irrespective of whether they’re in learning mode or stress mode.
After all, PM interviews are interactive - the candidate needs to have practice with updating their answers on the fly, based on the reactions of their interviewer.
For example, question how they selected their target segment (and whether there’s a better one), or question whether the pain point they selected is truly valuable, or question whether they should add more factors into consideration for solution assessment.
The interviewee should demonstrate enough flexibility to know when to bend (i.e. change their answer when underlying information informs them to do so), but also enough conviction to know when to persist (i.e. not being a “doormat” and automatically deferring to the interviewer when faced with the slightest resistance).
If your mock candidate has elected to practice in learning mode, then give them as much feedback as you can after each question. Share how you would have approached the question, what you liked about their response, and any areas of improvement you identified.
If your mock candidate has elected to practice in stress mode, then hold off on providing feedback until the interview has concluded. Don’t end the mock interview even if your candidate is struggling with a particular question type; it’s important that we give them the chance to practice “bouncing back from perceived failure.”
Closing thoughts
Mock interviews, when used correctly, are an excellent tool for improving your ability to perform during the PM interview process.
However, many people misuse mock interviews. They rush through too many at the same time, and they conflate “learning mode” with “stress mode.”
Work with your mock interviewer to identify whether you’re going to be tackling learning mode or stress mode. In learning mode, be collaborative and ask for feedback frequently. In stress mode, mimic real-world situations as much as you can.
We wish you all the best as you gear up for your PM interviews! If you’re looking for additional resources on PM interviews but you’re not sure how to get started, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Thank you to Pauli Bielewicz, Mary Paschentis, Goutham Budati, Markus Seebauer, Juliet Chuang, and Kendra Ritterhern for making this guide possible.
