4 Practice Case-Studies for your Product Management interview
The Case Study round is one of the qualifier rounds for any product manager interviews. It helps recruiters understand your product, problem-solving, and communication skills.
Generally, case studies will have multiple parts to gauge your overall product understanding.
- Product Design Questions
Expectations: Wireframes & Prototypes - Revenue Estimation/Projection
Expectations: 3 or 5 years of revenue estimation - Writing a blog or email to your customers
Expectations: Simple blog or email in 300 words - Problem Solving Questions
Expectations: User flow diagram or pdf docs or presentation
Let’s jump on the sample questions and scenarios
1. Instagram Case-study
Type: New Features, Marketing, Problem-solving, Go-to-market strategies
You have been on-boarded as a Product Consultant for Instagram. In your monthly catchup meeting, you found that businesses or brands pay influencers to post adverts on their profile. Influencers are also generating decent revenue from their followers, but the entire process is happening outside the Instagram platform. Some of the companies who help businesses do this are — Ifluenz, Scrunch, and Pulpkey.
Part 1: New features — Can you build something which can make the entire experience smoother for both brands and influencers? Think from both influencers' and brands' perspectives.
Expectations:
- Explain how you would like to solve this problem?
- User flow diagram.
- Wireframes & Prototypes
Part 2: Launch Strategies — Let’s say you have got this feature built by your tech team. How would you go about the launch plan?
Expectations:
- Explain your launch or Go-to-market strategies for this feature
- Write a blog post in around 300 words to be shared with influencers.
2. Lyft Case-study
Type: New Features, Metrics, Problem-solving, Prioritization
You joined Lyft as a Product Manager. You aim to increase the revenue per active rider in the next six months. How would you go about it?
Expectations:
List down the improvements in existing features or suggest new features. First, provide a name and a short description of your product features. Then, please select the highest value feature and describe it in detail.
- Work on a PRD and wireframes.
- Include the metrics that would help you measure whether you are moving towards your goal.
- Three years of revenue estimation plan.
3. Google Case-study
Type: Metrics, Data, Business Insights, Product Roadmap
Let’s assume; you joined Google as a Product Manager for a newly launched app Neighbourly. How would you go about planning the 12-month product roadmap?
Expectations
- Build a 12-month product roadmap.
- Choose the metrics you would track and why.
- Come up with a revenue model for this app.
4. LinkedIn Case-study
Type: Data, Metrics, Problem-Solving
You joined LinkedIn as a Product Consultant. You have observed that the newly launched “Career Advice” is used by only 5 million users out of their 575 million user base. What would you change and why?
Expectations:
- PDF document the proposed solutions and how you would validate your ideas.
- List the Data points you would analyse, which lead to your conclusion.
- Discuss the success metrics of the proposed solution.
“P.S — These are not actual interview questions. I’ve drafted this based on my personal experience with product management interivews.”
EDIT: I’ve also published the sample solution of one of my case studies — https://sushantkr17.medium.com/clearing-the-product-management-case-study-round-sample-solution-91dcbe677f4b
I’d happily share my reviews and comments if you work on any of these case studies.
