hi guys program manager interviews so one of my YouTube subscribers asked me if I would talk through these interviews I recruited program managers for three of my five years at Google and I can tell you that the complexity of these positions is unbelievable and so we're gonna talk through a lot of items today and I really want to apply my knowledge of those three years at Google to help you get the job if you like my content please like if you have any comments please comment below and if you like my overall content please subscribe
let's dive right in item one is all about wearing multiple hats so any program manager knows right the role is very complex that program managers are really covering three roles their program managers which in part is a project manager and in part oftentimes will also have some product management as well and so as you're preparing you want to be looking at product management questions and project management questions as well so when you're thinking in the product manager space product managers tend to be entrepreneurial customer focused industry focused obviously obsessed with having great quality having this
kind of vision and strategic roadmap and ultimately focused on an ROI now if you're flipping over to a project manager they're gonna be a little bit more focused on fundamentals so scheduling resourcing scope thinking about not only the risk but who are the people and then a little bit of this conflict / negotiation piece and that flips you over at a program manager which you're really trying to take these skills and then influence without Authority and navigate higher levels of ambiguity and so we will dive a little bit more into the ambiguity piece later on
item 2 is p.m. methodology so I can tell you for the specific program manager roles that I hired at Google there was no PM methodology so they weren't using agile they weren't using scrum it was really what have you done in the past and how has it worked and typically for program manager roles because of the scope you're probably not going to be tied to one methodology but I'm sure at certain companies within certain groups they do like for you to use a certain methodology some of the time so that's a great question to be
asking the hiring manager be asking the recruiter hey is there a certain methodology that this team uses because it will really help how you prepare but just overall don't be rigid right certain scenarios are gonna call for certain items and just be thinking about that and really be focused on your strong examples not this specific methodology you use to get the results item three problem-solving probably one of the most critical when you're interviewing for any role but because again of the scope of the program manager role this is really gonna be important and so simply
I want you to talk about how you've identified developed structured implemented solved and then ultimately monitored because of the complexity of your examples with problem solving keep them brief you can always go back to the interviewer at the end and even have it planned in where you say are there any areas you would like me to clarify any follow-up questions I kept it brief because of the complexity of the example that I had item four leadership this is so critical at any organization and oftentimes leadership comes without direct reports you're an individual contributor but I
just want you to be thinking about some leadership concepts so communication obviously no program manager is going to get the job without great communication skills but also how do you innovate how do you motivate how are you working on a shared vision that sets those long-term goals for the organization for the team again you may not be leading people but an ability to delegate but also get your hands dirty when it's important building again working on more of a project management skill of conflict resolution and negotiation decision-making how do you present how do you coach
there are so many items that go into leadership and this is a critical one and will be tested and I can tell you at Google this was extensively tested item 5 is data-driven and so of course program managers are gonna be heavily focused on metrics and just overall data but I want to dig in just a little bit more one of the pieces of feedback that I saw most often from the team that I had the most hires at Google was they didn't demonstrate an ability to derive results with data so it wasn't just using
data and how that helped it was really taking that data and driving the program forward because you had that specific piece of information or pieces of information in most cases I want to get back word for item six to navigating ambiguity there are so many unknowns in today's world and so this is important again for any candidate but for program managers where you're trying to influence across multiple groups multiple teams that's where this really becomes important and then also the second reason is the piece of technology now we're seeing items come up every three months
every six months that will significantly impact how we move forward and so knowing that sometimes you're moving forward with maybe an anticipated technology that might help the overall process something else to be thinking about but have two good examples in this space you will absolutely be asked these questions and then expect follow-up questions really how you dealt with it and how you push forward item 7 I love this one adaptability flexibility fungibility this is going to be critical throughout and and oftentimes it's about how you responded and navigated these really tricky situation your ability to
continually flex and adapt so your ability to have great examples it's gonna help and so be thinking about times where you've really flexed and adapted in your career the last item is domain and technical so really when you break that program management interview it's gonna be two parts it's gonna be behavioral which is what we've heavily focused on because it's the area you can really prepare and then the second is the domain and technical piece and so as you think about the domain and technical piece your first step is talking to the hiring manager talking
to the recruiter and identifying really what the team needs are in these spaces because these are the areas where at least if you know the items you can prep a little bit but this is going to be skills that you already have and then I want you to get a little bit more into thinking about it from a design and architecture perspective for domain and technical so thinking about system design thinking about architecture thinking about technical specifications technology fundamentals I can tell you at Google getting back to those fundamentals was critical but what I found
is that candidates for either great program managers and didn't have the technical domain or they were great in the technical domain part but the program management skills were weak and usually it was one or the other that fell a little bit short this is a ton of information but if you're a program manager you already know the role is extremely complex so good luck if there's anything that I could clarify please let me know in the comments below and I can do a quick follow-up video if you like my content please like if you have
any comments please comment and if you like my overall content please subscribe thanks so much
