Before starting an interview keep the applicant comfortable, an interviewer is also an applicant when he/she applies for another company. It is ethical and part of the interview process to get him/her into a good mood to extract real talent. Keep it as a discussion rather an interrogation, the interviewer may have upper hand for an hour or so, it does not mean he has more knowledge than an applicant. Essentially, communication is problem from both the ends, if an interviewer asks the right questions in the right way, the applicant will have the right choice to exhibit right answers.

Be clear about the expectation from the applicant, generic and specific skills for the job needed, recruiting a person is all about matching the job description not to match the interviewer’s expectation.

I would suggest to keep one round of interview for any job either it could an hour or 5 hours with intervals. These important points to be considered.

1. An applicant’s mental condition will not be the same all the time.
2. Having numerous rounds may end up selecting wrong candidate. Employer should have clarity about their expectation from each round? Does it contain different topics? Does it extract different dimensions of the candidate? Does it extract different basics of a candidature? If not what is the point in having various rounds? Essentially, it is hard to understand the expectation of the interviewer of each round for the same topic.
3. A major flaw I could see in the interview process is; employer doesn’t know whom the applicant should work for, is it for his/her manager? Is it for his/her peer? Is it for the company?
4. If the manager is not able to ask questions to match the job description, to me, he is not suppose to manage that applicant, it is very simple and clear. Peer may have similar understanding or may have lower knowledge than an applicant. If the applicant is better than the peer, employer may lose a right candidate. In 90% of the cases, peer will not let his tough competitor in.
5. Not all the jobs are similar, I agree. If numerous people would like to interview the applicant, it should be one interview with all the people participated, who would like to assess him, the HR should coordinate and be part of the process to get the interview done in a right direction. I would strongly believe the process will help to find the right talent. Why?
6. It helps to ask the lead or manager or peer relevant questions, right and unique questions to avoid the duplication so that every one is on the same page, it helps to test his/her confidence level, it helps to save applicant’s and interview panel’s time, it helps to understand the candidature from each one’s point of view, it helps to avoid irrelevant questions from each interviewer in the panel, it helps to understand the HR that he is finding the right talent for the company or not, it helps to know the result quickly for the applicant, it helps to minimize the cost of interview process. Taking numerous rounds, multiple time slots, and number of days is not ethical for an uncertain commitment.

Being a product manager one should know the customer

1. What is customer satisfaction? How to maximize it?
2. What are the ways to understand customer expectation and behavior?
3. What are the types of customers and how to meet their expectation?
4. How to find uniqueness in the product?
5. How to sustain customers for a longer time?
6. What are the measures do you take as a product manager to create a loyal customer base?
7. How do you setup “customer care” to take care of your customers?
8. What is your communication mechanism to reach customers?
9. What is the role of the data to understand customer?
10. What is your contribution interacting customers?

You should know how sensible he/she is on ROI

1. What is ROI (Return on investment)?
2. What are the parameters to prepare budget for a product?
3. What are the parameters to decide pricing of a product?
4. What is volume based pricing?
5. How to create multiple revenue channels?
6. What is your focus? Is it volume selling? or profit making?
7. You have a product which can only get 5% profit margin, how can you increase it?
8. What is the relation between production cost and quality?
9. How can you increase profit margins and productivity with existing resources including human resources?
10. What is your strategy in managing budgets to sustain the product for a longer time?
11. What is breakeven point? How much time would it take to arrive?
12. On what basis will you come up with a number for profit margin?

Ownership of the product

1. What are the parameters you would consider for a product plan?
2. How do you build a core team? What are the parameters you will consider?
3. What is the product sustenance plan? What are the parameters you consider?
4. What is a product life cycle? Your contribution in each phase
5. What is the duration you will consider in a roadmap?
6. What are the key performance indicators?
7. What kind of coordination is needed from a product manager?
8. What is competitive analysis? How do you manage it?
9. What is market research? How do you handle it?
10. You were recruited for a legacy product which is not making much profits, how do you turn it into profits?

You should check how visionary he/she is?

1. Are you a trend follower or a trend setter? Please define how?
2. How do you create the feature list for a product?
3. What is the methodology you follow to prioritize features?
4. What is your plan to increase the customer base?
5. How do you create a knowledge base? How important is it?
6. What is your plan for a continues improvement of a product?
7. The product is in growth stage, what are the measures you take to not to jump into decline stage?
8. What is the difference between vision and mission?
9. How do you decide the technology?
10. Do you work with an architect? why?

We need great product leaders for every nation to increase the GDP, employment, keeps the economy healthy, solving problems, and changing the lifestyle of the world.

Another good read

Domain knowledge helps a product manager to be successful