Are You Ready for Your PM Interview?

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There’s no better feeling than walking into a product manager interview with extreme confidence. Conversely, if you’re lacking self-confidence, it’s sure to show — and that can harm your chance of impressing the interviewer.

While no two candidates take the exact same approach to preparing for a PM interview, one thing never changes: the importance of knowing when you’re ready for anything and everything that will come your way.

Here are three of the best ways to determine if you’re ready for your PM interview:

1. Positive Feedback From Mock Interviews

When you partake in mock interviews, your peers will provide you with honest feedback. And as your feedback improves, you’ll gain confidence in your ability to ace your next interview.

In addition to the overall preparation for an interview, this is why mock interviews are so important. As you improve in a mock interview setting, your confidence will skyrocket. From there, all you have to do is translate your mock performance to the real thing. 

2. Positive Feedback When You Share Answers and Info Online

Another thing you can do is answer common interview questions on PM Exercises. Once again, this is good practice for real interviews, but it also allows you to track your progress.

When others begin to praise you for strong, well-thought-out answers, you’re on the right path. At this point, you’re no longer using interview Q&As solely to prepare for upcoming interviews. You’re also able to help other interviewees. 

3. You Can Feel It

As your confidence grows, you’ll know deep down inside that you’re ready to tackle a PM interview head-on. At this point, you’re confident that you can quickly come up with a framework in your mind for answering any and every interview question. You’re no longer worried about being stumped.

But How Do You Get There?

At this point, you have a clear idea of how to determine if you’re ready for a PM interview. However, you may be struggling to implement a strategy for getting there. 

Here are some tips to follow:

• Go through as many practice interviews as it takes to ensure that you don’t have “fake” confidence. In other words, you don’t want to trick yourself into thinking you’re prepared when in all actuality you’re setting yourself up for failure. 
• Don’t get ahead of yourself. As excited as you may be about landing a PM interview, don’t accept it if you feel that you’re not ready. Not only can this kill your confidence, but it greatly reduces your chance of landing a job with the company for at least a year. 
• Take interviews with companies you don’t care so much about. This doesn’t mean you want to waste the company’s time. It also doesn’t mean you should go into the interview unprepared. What it means is that you won’t care nearly as much if you put on a less than stellar performance. 

If you remember nothing else about this article, let it be this: practice makes perfect. The more time you put into preparing — such as through our prep course or group practice — the sooner you’ll feel ready for your product manager interview.