Bijan Shahrokhi 
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Cracking a PM interview is possible but requires work: especially at leading companies like Uber. In the first installment of our community success story series, we interviewed Sravya Vsv, a PM Exercise Community member to learn about how she aced the interview at Uber and got her dream product manager job.
Read on to learn more!
How Did You Prepare for Your Interview At Uber?
I started by writing down all the topics I need to study. Then I dedicated 2-3 full days to study each topic. For example, with ‘metrics,’ I would first study the framework from different resources such as books, blog posts, etc., and then watch mock interviews to understand the interview process at Uber.
After that, I would practice the interview questions from Uber that I found here on PM Exercises. Every day I would choose 2-3 different questions to practice answering and write down the mistakes I was making and conduct more research around those topics. For example, I struggled a lot with customer segmentation in design questions. So I searched customer segmentation and learned more and more about it until I got the hang of it.
I repeated this process again and again until I was comfortable with the given framework: the process of preparing for all the questions Uber asks in interviews took about 15-20 days. After I was satisfied with the frameworks and questions, I took on 2-3 case studies per topic and conducted mock interviews with my friends and people working at Uber. My university has a vast alumni base, so it’s easy to find people.
How Many Hours Did You Spend Preparing for Your Uber Interview? Can You Give Us a High-level Breakdown of How You Distributed That Time?
It’s probably easier if I break it down into three steps.
Step 1. Learn the frameworks
As I previously mentioned, I first started getting comfortable with the frameworks at PM Exercises. That took about 2-3 days per topic at an average of 8-10 days. This took about 15 days. Here’s a breakdown of my process:
Step 2. Revise and perfect the frameworks.
This process took about 5-6 hours per day for ten days. My process was to:
Step 3. One more round of revisions and fine-tuning
I did this about ten days before my interview at Uber. At this point, I was pretty comfortable with the frameworks, so I turned my focus to case studies I was able to find. On average, I worked on each case study for 20 hours. The process included:
How Many Uber Interview Questions Do You Think You Practiced?
Let me see. If I break it down by the steps above:
And for what it’s worth, about half of the questions I practiced were in the mock interview format.
How Did PM Exercise Help You During the Process of Preparing For Your Uber interview?
My prep groups and I primarily relied on interview questions from PM Exercises during the initial stage of our preparation. PM Exercises was an excellent resource because the questions and answers there are practical, relevant, and well-detailed, thanks to the community.
How Much Did You Follow the Frameworks At PM Exercises?
I watched the mock interviews and frameworks for my preparation. The frameworks I found at PM Exercise especially came in handy during my last round of preparation before the interviews. I was able to go through all the frameworks quickly because the information is in one, easy-to-find place.
What Other Resources Did You Use To Prepare For Your Interview?
I read the following books:
What Is Your Advice To People That Are Preparing For Their Product Manager Interviews?
Practice, practice, practice! You’ll only understand how difficult PM interviews are when you start practicing.
I would also say to find peers who are at the same stage of their preparation as you are. Don’t be afraid to reach out to folks on LinkedIn for mock interviews: Most people are really helpful! Having prep groups and prep buddies helped me stay on track with my preparation. And most importantly, have multiple groups so that even if one group is busy, you can practice with others and not miss out on prep time.
Another piece of advice I have is to use multiple resources. Most people use 1-2 books or a blog to prepare, but I found that using numerous resources will help you understand the same concepts from different angles.
Lastly, I would practice customer empathy exercises, which are easier said than done but essential. Most companies look for PMs who are user-centric. While frameworks give structure to the solution, the solution itself should solve a customer’s problem. Being user-centric helped me a lot during interviews because I was always mindful about solving customer pain points.
Ready To Nail Your Uber PM Interview?
PM Exercises exists to give product managers all the tools they need to prepare for their interviews with an active community of over 30,000 members, over 1000 interview questions with online lessons, and group and private coaching. Ready to get started? Visit https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/ to sign up today!
