Top 10 Execution Questions to Prepare for in a Facebook Product Manager Interview

There are three types of questions that are typically asked in a Facebook PM interview: leadership and drive questions, product sense questions, and execution questions. 

• Leadership and drive questions assess how you motivate and collaborate your team. You may be asked how you solved an issue in the past, how you take responsibility for your team, or how you support your team.
• Product sense questions look for how you decide what to build and who to build for, how and why you make design choices, and how you handle critique, data, and constraints.
• Execution questions are asked to figure out how you do your job. You might be asked how you set and measure goals, how you analyze data, or how you prioritize features and tasks.

This article will take a dive into the 10 most important product manager execution questions you should be prepared to answer. All of the questions and answers will be framed for a Facebook PM interview, but they translate well to most other PM interviews.

What is an Execution Question?

An execution question is specifically formulated to ascertain how you identify and prioritize opportunities for the product you’re responsible for. You’ll likely be asked about:

• Your prioritization strategies — to gain insight into how you use your resources
• How you set goals & measure success — to assess how you develop roadmaps and KPIs
• How you make trade-off decisions — to understand how you measure the value of a trade-off

When you give answers to execution questions, your interviewer will likely challenge you – be prepared to defend your answers!

Top 10 PM Interview Execution Questions

We’re going to go over 10 execution questions that are most commonly asked in Facebook PM interviews, but they can be applied to any PM interview if the details are changed a bit.

We’re going to organize the top 10 execution questions for PM interviews into these three categories, beginning with Prioritization Strategies.

PM Interview Execution Questions: Prioritization Strategies

1. You’re the Product Manager for Facebook Groups – what features would you prioritize?
2. You’re the Product Manager for Facebook Posts – which reactions would you add next?
3. You’re the Product Manager for [a recently added Facebook feature] – how will you prioritize user pain points?

There are a few different approaches that you can take to answering these prioritization questions, but we’re going to offer the one that we find nails it every time:

Clarify the themes that are relevant to the product

An interview is meant to have back-and-forth conversation. You are absolutely allowed to – and should – ask your interviewer questions! When you’re presented with a prioritization question like one of the three above, ask for clarification.

• What does the roadmap for the product look like?
• Where in the roadmap is the product currently?
• What are the short-term and long-term goals?
• Are we focusing on user engagement or monetization?

These details will help you give an impressive answer and show the interviewer that you can be aware of the bigger picture while prioritizing.

Discuss the criteria you will use when prioritizing features and tasks

This is where you will allow the interviewer the chance to peek into your prioritization process – a necessary step during the interview so they can gauge how well your process will (or will not) work.

A Facebook PM will always discuss prioritization criteria with their team, but since your interview is likely one-on-one, you can generally give each a score of 1-5, with 1 being high and 5 being low.

Your prioritization scores could be based on

• Impact
• Urgency
• Cost

Create a prioritization scenario from the initial question, using your chosen criterion

Once you put all of the pieces together, your answer might sound something like,

“My priorities for this feature will be determined by Facebook and user goals. Once those have been determined, I will weigh the impact, urgency, and cost of the features, as well as business/user pain points.”

Check out how our community answered these questions and others like them!

PM Interview Execution Questions: Setting Goals & Measuring SuccessYou are the PM for Facebook Stories – what goals will you set, and how will you measure their success?

You are the PM for Facebook Watch – what metric would you want to measure?

How would you set goals for Facebook’s Crisis Response Feature?

You are the PM for the Facebook newsfeed – what goal will you set, and how will you measure its success?

The very first thing to understand about answering a metric question in a PM interview is that there’s a specific method you can use every time. You’ll be in great shape for the day of your Facebook PM interview if you get this method down!

It’s called the GAME method:

Goals

Actions

Metrics

Evaluations

For the sake of this exercise, let’s use a specific question as an example. Let’s say you’ve been asked the top PM interview execution question #7:

“You are the PM for the Facebook newsfeed – what goal will you set and how will you measure its success.”

Goal – The Newsfeed engages users, generates as revenue, and tests personalization features. It’s safe to assume that the primary goal of Facebook’s Newsfeed is strong user engagement.

Actions – This is where you will consider the action that users take when interacting with the Newsfeed: posting, commenting, liking, and sharing.

Metrics – Now, you will decide how you will measure posts, comments, likes, and shares.

Evaluations – Finally, you will evaluate the metrics and consider trade-offs.

In the end, your answer to the question “You are the PM for the Facebook newsfeed – how will you measure success?” might sound something like this:

“Based on what I know about the Facebook newsfeed, I would say that the primary goal is to have strong user engagement. There are many elements that reflect strong user engagement – posts, comments, likes, and shares, for example. It would make sense to track metrics by the thousands:

• Comments per thousand sessions
• Share per thousand posts seen
• Posts per thousand sessions

These metrics will give me an idea of what is meaningful to user engagement. We must be aware, however, that not all of these metrics indicate positive interactions and of the fact that comments and shares indicate a deeper interaction than posts and likes. If we wanted to measure less meaningful user engagement, we would have to look at a different set of metrics, like number of sessions per day and number of likes per user per day.”

Check out how members of our community answered this common PM interview question!

PM Interview Execution Questions: Trade-off Decisions

8. You are the PM of Facebook notifications. How would you determine the trade-offs between showing a “friend’s” fundraiser or the event the user is going to/created?
9. An engineer suggests showing suggested Buy/Sell Groups on users’ newsfeed instead of the People You May Know section. How will you determine if this is a good idea or not?
10.  Should Facebook require users to upload a profile photo during onboarding? How will you decide?

Trade-off questions are designed to test how logically and thoroughly you have considered all options when a decision needs to be made. Your answer to a trade-off question can be a tipping point for your PM interview.

Let’s look at #10 on this list and use it as an example:

“Should Facebook require users to upload a profile photo during onboarding? How will you decide?”

A PM interview question that deals with a trade-off will likely fall into one of three categories:

• Product: focused on a specific user segment or pain point.
• Analytical: involves setting up A/B testing or choosing the correct metrics for a product.
• Estimation: your answer will be based on the real-world value.

Considering the question at hand, we could look at it as an analytical question that will need proper A/B testing when put into action. When asked the question, you could discuss how you will conduct an A/B test, what you will measure, and how you will come to the best decision.

Your answer might sound something like this:

“Requiring users to upload a profile photo during onboarding could help to prevent fraudulent activity, but it may also have a negative impact on User Acquisition. In order to determine the best course of action, I will run an experiment.

I will conduct an A/B test with ‘upload profile picture during signup’ as the variable. The test will be conducted with an equal set of randomized user groups. The activation rate will be recorded and compared to the current activation rate. If the activation rate decreases, we will not require a photo at the time of onboarding. However, if the activation rate stays the same or increases, we will move forward with the decision to require a photo at the time of onboarding.”

See how our community answered this trade-off question and others like it!

Product Manager Exercises has the answer to all of the questions in this list and thousands more! Check out all of our services so you can be well-prepared for your next PM interview and land the job of your dreams.