The best advice I ever got for Product Design interviews

How to be intentional and principled with frameworks

What’s a CIRCLE?

Almost everyone I knew when I was preparing for product roles conformed to some framework for tackling the product design interview. The most common framework was CIRCLES - a framework made popular by Lewis Lin.

For me, however, and others who have worked in/with product, a framework can sometimes clash heavily with intuition and your own product-sense. As my good friend and great PM-turned-McKinsey-consultant Val would say, “A circle is a geometric entity consisting of a round plane and equidistant points from the centre - not quite sure what place it has in product interviews”. Something about CIRCLES and other frameworks felt rote and mechanical. Disjointed even. This is not a disparaging of CIRCLES, just my personal preference.

I instead tried to define my own methodology: Define the problem, pick a goal, brainstorm and prioritise: users, then CUJs, then solutions. It wasn’t a million miles from CIRCLES but it felt more like a process I owned.

But I still felt some lingering discomfort as I went through interviews. I was still facing problems similar to CIRCLES when using my own framework. I didn’t feel confident I had nailed product design interviews, even when others told me so. Something was missing. I had hit a performance plateau despite trying to constantly tweak and improve each stage of my framework. Maybe you feel that way too?

One conversation resulted in a paradigm shift for how I framed the product design interview.

The turning point

When I had my Google conversion interviews (an exit interview at the end of your internship that has a large weighting on whether you receive a full-time return offer), I practiced with some PMs in my org as most interns do. Again, I had a familiar feeling of anxiety around my performance - something still felt off and incomplete. Despite having interned for almost 12 weeks!

My final mock interview was with an experienced PM and Google Veteran, Jeremy. At the end of our mock, I anxiously asked Jeremy how I could have done better on my product design interview. “Was this too much of a vanity metric?” “Could I have thought about this additional dimension for brainstorming users?” “Was this painpoint a red herring?” And he responded very honestly:

“Jeg, this is what I do in my job every day and what you’ve been doing for the past 10 weeks. I look at a problem. I define it. I pick my goal. Think about some users. Pick one. Understand some CUJs. Pick one. And then I think about solutions and prioritise them. And at each stage, I care about what’s going to have the most impact towards fulfilling the goal I outlined. This is what I do everyday for a living. And we just want to see if you can do something like that too.”

There was something profound about Jeremy’s simple synthesis - his frankness and the contextualising of his core guiding principles. It felt elegant yet grounded. And I remind myself of this conversation often. 

So what?

It took me some time to decipher why this advice was so meaningful and dispelled the anxiety I had felt around frameworks whether it be CIRCLES or my own concoctions. I boiled it down to the following three key insights on nailing product design interviews:

1. The real test = conceptualising great products, not following frameworks

2. Frameworks are tools, and tools need to be wielded intentionally with principles

3. Isolated improvements will struggle to compound

The real test = conceptualising great products, not following frameworks

This seems simple and obvious. But with the cognitive load of a recruiting process, the entropy of ongoing life, and in the heat of an interview, we can be easily susceptible to forgetting the purpose of the Product Design interview. There isn’t some special rubric that you’re trying to check off with a framework. There very well might be a rubric of some kind that your interviewer is using, but ultimately its likely just a guide.

What your interviewer, a PM, is actually looking for is whether you can build great products.

Are you a great maker at heart? Do you show the traits that make a good builder? Can you ideate and launch great products? Because that’s what PMs do. And it’s likely what your interviewer is doing every day for a living. Your interviewer is looking for a potential peer who can also do what they do at a high level. Remembering this is key, so you don’t get lost in a framework and resurface often enough to remind yourself of what you are actually trying to demonstrate. That you’re a maker too!

Frameworks are tools, and tools need to be wielded intentionally with principles

“A poor craftsman blames her/his tools” - some wise, likely Greek philosopher

Frameworks are not solutions. They are tools. Tools can be wielded effectively or ineffectively depending on whether you take the time to understand how and why to use them.

Take a samurai sword. A novice collector may keep a sword and think ‘well, if it comes to it, I can definitely slice something and/or use it for defence’. A practitioner on the other hand, has many guiding principles for how to wield this weapon: when to use it, optimal technique for a given situation, ensuring safety, etc. The novice collector is likely in for a surprise when using the sword proves relatively ineffective vs their daydreaming. On the other hand, the practitioner is very intentional about how to use the sword, has some guiding principles and has some sense of what range of results to realistically expect - this is how one walks the path of mastery.

It’s common for us to look at a framework and take comfort in them.

“Run through the framework and everything will work out fine.”

But if we’re not intentional, a framework is at best a blunt tool and at some point it will have limitations. And it’s easy for frameworks to become rote. A framework in isolation may get you comfortably in the top 70% of performers if you’re lucky, but without some guiding principles, you’ll hit a ceiling. I was all too familiar with seeing folks get to a performance plateau very quickly when practicing for product design interviews. They were very good but they were struggling to be great. It’s easy to miss the point of the product design interview when we fall back on a framework. However, when we use a framework in service of ‘why’ (intention) & ‘how’ (guiding principles) - they become powerful and have far greater utility.

Improve your performance holistically, not in disparate silos

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” - Aristotle

Without some connecting tissue (i.e. why you are using the framework, what goal is the framework in service to), the whole (framework) falls short of the sum of its parts. A lengthy framework can easily become an exercise of optimising silos.

“Maybe I can get a little better at brainstorming creative solutions?”

“Maybe I should add this dimension when thinking about potential personas/users?”

We inadvertently forget the whole and the reason why we even needed the framework in the first place. Which is to show how we would create a great product to solve an interesting problem. And achieve a goal we defined earlier on.

Tweaking performance improvements on the individual components of CIRCLES (or other framework of your choice), does just that, you get slightly better in a silo of your framework. This doesn’t compound. When you’re very clear about your guiding principles with your framework being a tool, your tweaks and improvements compound resulting in exponential gains on your overall performance. 

Go forth and conquer the Product Design interview

So, remember why you’re using that framework. And if it helps, just remember how Jeremy and other veteran PMs go about their job:

“I look at a problem. I define it. I pick my goal. Think about some users. Pick one. Understand some CUJs. Pick one. And then I think about solutions and prioritise them. And at each stage, I care about what’s going to have the most impact in terms of fulfilling the goal I outlined at the beginning. This is what I do everyday for a living.”

Show your interviewer that you can do the job and be a great builder too. That’s what they really want to see!

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