Meta/ Facebook Product Manager Mock Interview: Design a new product for the events space

This is a Facebook Product Manager mock interview. The expert takes a product sense interview and asks "Facebook wants to enter the events space, design a product for this." as an interview question to assess the candidate's product skills.

What went well?

• Excellent structure. Explained upfront in a casual way, made it easy to track where this interview would go - and allowed interviewer to modify direction if necessary.
• Proactive prioritization - when picking a focus, always led with “here’s why”. Good approach to prio, covering relative advantages (when compared to other ideas) as well as absolute ones.
• Tying topics into Facebook’s mission. Both the explanation of why events are a relevant space, and especially liked how TC tied priorities into FB’s mission (eg. the planning of event logistics, figuring out which seats to place where etc, is neither very well aligned to our mission nor is our forte).
• Building out “Janet” as a persona was an effective tactic, helped demonstrate principles consistently throughout the interview.
• Well handled scenario when unexpected priorities forced by interviewer.

Where is the room for improvement?

• Goal prioritization
  Was adequate, but when questioned on why engagement should be a focus, there was a limited explanation of what alternative goals might be viable. In this question, the interviewer is trying to gauge your strategic awareness of what matters most for different products and at different stages of their lifecycle. Some possible alternative goals to talk about/compare against:

  • Transactions. Selling of tickets
  • Monetization - Revenues.
  • Penetration/Adoption

This is particularly important given how a different goal would mean totally different customer targeting and solutions.

• Creator segmentation
  Could have been done in a more relevant way. High/low usage makes sense in a lot of scenarios - but in this one, it didn’t have too much nuance.. Some possible segmentation options which could have helped narrow down on more targeted pain points/solutions could be:

  • By type? Sports Concert Wedding etc.
  • By profile? Personal/intimate vs monetized/for-profit
  • By event size? Big vs small.
  • By event complexity? 100 moving parts or a simple birthday party.

Each will have unique pain points and gaps, which can then be filled through solutions.

• Dealing with unexpected results
  TC came up with some possible ideas to investigate, which was good - but would recommend a more comprehensive perspective on evaluating what could potentially be happening - and try to distill the underlying behavioral drivers to narrow down on the factors which might be reacting unexpectedly. Some angles to think about:

  • Users often need time to get used to a new product.
  • Some users will often use a functionality just to try it out.
  • Seasonality might play a big role in influencing product metrics.

How was your experience with Prepfully ?

5/5

How useful was the session?

5 / 5

Tell us how it went

The expert arrived on time

Yes

The expert asked relevant questions

Yes

It felt like a real interview

Yes

I enjoyed the process

Yes

How would you rate your expert's communication skills?

5 / 5

How would you rate the expert's expertise on the topic?

5 / 5

How likely would you be to refer your friends to Prepfully?

10 / 10

Do you have any message for your expert?

Thanks so much for spending time. It was great experience, and a chance to learn some of my shortcomings. Definitely helps me to know what to focus on next.