Loved this article. One thing I'd like to add to the conversation is that phrasing a question like "How often does the team interact with customers?..." introduces the chance of receiving an idealized response. And they wouldn't be intentionally lying to you - humans are just bad at being honest.
I've had the opportunity to be mentored by some amazing UX researchers and one thing they taught me was the importance of story-based user interviews. I've never really thought about it before, but a job interview is an excellent opportunity to put those skills to use.
So in this circumstance, one might consider a question like, "Tell me about the last time you (or a PM on your team) talked to a customer." There is plenty of opportunity to excavate more detail ("Can you tell me more about how you recruited the customer, What happened after the interview was over, etc").
Here's how one could adapt the questions in this article to solicit stories (and hopefully remove bias):
- Tell me about the last time you (or a PM on your team) interacted with a customer.
- Tell me about the last release you shipped... (this is a really powerful question and based on your follow ups will tell you about team structure as well as the scope of releases and the nature of cross-functional workflows. This question could lead to an hour-long interview easily.
- Tell me about the last time you shipped a release that wasn't adopted by your user base
- Tell me about the last time you shipped a severe code defect
- Tell me about your least release - how did you decide what was going to get built?
- Tell me about the last time you updated your product roadmap (this is a really interesting question as well)
- Tell me about the last time your org set goals. How were those goals set? Did you use a framework? How did you track your progress?
- Tell me about the last time a PM decided to leave the company
- Tell me about the last time a PM received a promotion at the company
But again, this is a great list of topics to explore, and I found the 'great/good/bad' framework and examples to be valuable. Thanks so much for sharing!
I love your suggestion, Max. And completely agree. To the extent you can ask non-leading questions here, the better. What a great adaptation to this original concept!
Loved this article. One thing I'd like to add to the conversation is that phrasing a question like "How often does the team interact with customers?..." introduces the chance of receiving an idealized response. And they wouldn't be intentionally lying to you - humans are just bad at being honest.
I've had the opportunity to be mentored by some amazing UX researchers and one thing they taught me was the importance of story-based user interviews. I've never really thought about it before, but a job interview is an excellent opportunity to put those skills to use.
So in this circumstance, one might consider a question like, "Tell me about the last time you (or a PM on your team) talked to a customer." There is plenty of opportunity to excavate more detail ("Can you tell me more about how you recruited the customer, What happened after the interview was over, etc").
Here's how one could adapt the questions in this article to solicit stories (and hopefully remove bias):
- Tell me about the last time you (or a PM on your team) interacted with a customer.
- Tell me about the last release you shipped... (this is a really powerful question and based on your follow ups will tell you about team structure as well as the scope of releases and the nature of cross-functional workflows. This question could lead to an hour-long interview easily.
- Tell me about the last time you shipped a release that wasn't adopted by your user base
- Tell me about the last time you shipped a severe code defect
- Tell me about your least release - how did you decide what was going to get built?
- Tell me about the last time you updated your product roadmap (this is a really interesting question as well)
- Tell me about the last time your org set goals. How were those goals set? Did you use a framework? How did you track your progress?
- Tell me about the last time a PM decided to leave the company
- Tell me about the last time a PM received a promotion at the company
But again, this is a great list of topics to explore, and I found the 'great/good/bad' framework and examples to be valuable. Thanks so much for sharing!
I love your suggestion, Max. And completely agree. To the extent you can ask non-leading questions here, the better. What a great adaptation to this original concept!
I am loving Substack Notes!