Following the sharing and analysis of the interview questions in the previous part, the author has collected some questions encountered in product interviews in the product group, hoping to help you.
I have written about some of the problems encountered in product interviews before, but they have not been completely covered, and there are still small partners who consult intermittently in the group, so another wave has been collected in the product group.
I hope my answer will help you find a job quickly!!
1. What should I do if the owner's needs are repeatedly modified?
First of all, confirm what stage of this repeated modification occurs, if it is the requirements collection and confirmation stage, it is normal, if it has been put into the development stage, although it will also encounter mid-course requirements changes, but it will not be very frequent, if there will still be frequent modifications, it is a problem of the product manager's early requirements confirmation.
According to the normal product process, after the owner expresses his needs in the early stage of demand collection, the product manager needs to confirm the business scenarios of these needs, and what is the user group? Is it an individual exception or a general problem? Understand the real reason for the request, rather than saying what the customer wants to do, and the product manager will follow what the customer does without thinking, which will lead to repeated revisions to the later requirements.
And the product manager should also know how to guide the customer, what can be done to guide the customer? What can't be done? What is the reason why you can't do it? If not, what are the alternatives?
On the one hand, we should think about the problem from the customer's point of view and use the product to solve their core needs, on the other hand, we should also consider the feasibility of this demand from the company's cost, and then strive to find the lowest cost solution under the premise of solving the customer's core needs.
After the requirements are confirmed, the functional list will be issued, and the owner will confirm the signature, and then the product manager will design the prototype, and after the prototype design is completed, compare the requirements list and the prototype design, find the owner to confirm, if the owner confirms that there is no problem, you can carry out the UI design, the UI design is completed, find the owner to confirm the UI design, and the development can be delivered after the confirmation is completed.
After these three confirmations, there will be no repeated revisions to the requirements.
2. How to quickly understand a project or system that you are not familiar with, and talk about your methodology?
In fact, I have encountered this situation many times in my work, and I generally use the following four methods:
1. Collect relevant information to understand the product
Collect all documents about the project and system, such as requirements documents, design documents, user manuals, technical architecture diagrams, promotional ppt and other related materials, through careful reading, you can have an overall understanding of the project system, and you can understand the project background, service population, needs, design ideas and expected effects.
2. Understand the industry
By reading extensive industry reports and practices, and attending professional conferences and forums, you can gain more background knowledge about your project's field, industry trends, and competitors. This will help me better understand the market environment and business value of the project.
3. Experience the product
Experience and discover the advantages and disadvantages of the product from the user's point of view, and use xmind to sort out product functions, use flow charts to sort out core business processes, and record your own use experience and related problems.
4. Team communication
After a preliminary understanding of the project, I will communicate with relevant users, department personnel, and relevant marketing personnel to understand their needs and expectations, so as to more accurately grasp the key points and priorities of the project.
3. How do you analyze competing products?
In fact, to be honest, there are countless competing products on the C-side, but because of the nature of the industry, the B-end and the G-end are not as easy as the C-end competing products, but there are also methods and channels.
(1) Participate in industry exhibitions, and related companies will share their products
(2) Pretend to be a customer, go to the relevant company, and obtain the relevant product introduction materials and platform trial account.
(3) Communicate with relevant colleagues in the marketing department, they generally have more customers and projects, and they will have a lot of platform accounts in hand.
After having a competitive product platform, we need to confirm the stage of the product, and the goal of competitive product analysis is different at different stages.
In the product concept stage, we need to find product opportunities and positioning; In the product planning phase, we need to establish product differentiation features; In the product development stage, we need to find the direction of product optimization; In the product operation phase, we need to analyze the product operation strategy.
After the goal is determined, a competitive product analysis report will be output from the target user group, product architecture, product functions, highlight functions, product advantages and disadvantages, business model, etc., to guide the goals and planning of the product after the product.
4. What do you think is the biggest highlight and highlight of this product or project compared with other products?
This is the analysis of competitive products, a question that must be asked in the basic interview, even if there is none, the editor must also compile a few highlights and highlights of his own products compared with competing products.
Let me take as an example the Integrated Forestry Biodiversity Management Platform for which I am currently in charge.
In the past, most of the biodiversity surveys used manual on-site collection of paper record data, and only manually recorded data, resulting in data is relatively difficult to statistically regularize, and the data source is relatively single, without using the integration and analysis of data.
The integrated biodiversity management platform is a professional rapid biodiversity survey platform, which collects, manages and applies data through manual, infrared camera equipment, voiceprint equipment, environmental factor monitoring equipment, etc., and has functions such as GiS map, species resource library, species statistical analysis, AI species identification, species directory production, early warning push, and one-click export of professional reports, helping to improve the speed and efficiency of field biodiversity survey.
Compared with competing products, the biggest highlight of our products is the comprehensive integration of data and AI recognition.
Data integration, most of the biodiversity platforms of competing products are only connected to manual survey data, and some will have infrared camera platforms and environmental monitoring platforms, but because they are not in one platform, the fragmentation of data makes it difficult to analyze biodiversity.
We incorporate these three platforms as a whole, and also incorporate important voiceprint data into the platform for unified management, which basically includes all biodiversity data sources, and then unify the above platform data, and conduct visual analysis, and generate industry research reports with one click, which greatly saves time and costs and provides the efficiency of work research.
AI recognition, divided into image and voiceprint.
Image recognition is actually not rare, and the technology is relatively mature, for example, Baidu has opened the API interface for related species recognition, but most of Baidu's data comes from crawlers or netizens uploading, and the recognition rate of those more common species is very high, but for those that are rarer and uncommon, the recognition rate of uncommon species is greatly reduced, and we can get a lot of precious and confidential species pictures because of the related species project, which greatly improves our recognition rate of some species. It also supports fast identification in networkless environments.
Voiceprint recognition, there are relatively few voiceprint recognition on the market, and because our team has been engaged in the forestry industry for many years, we have rich sound resources, which helps us to identify voiceprints.
5. What is the biggest challenge you have experienced?
This question actually leads to the second question, arguably the biggest challenge is to enter an industry that you don't know anything about or take on a completely new project and system.
6. What was your biggest gain from your last job?
(1) I learned about this industry, found that this industry is interesting, very fulfilling, and the products I make really solve the needs and pain points of users.
(2) Slowly form your own product methodology, such as how to design the large screen, and think about the visual large screen from the aspects of user use scenarios and habits, parameter index collection, and visual display form.
(3) Improved our language expression skills, often communicated and reported with leaders, R&D, and customers, and exercised our ability to organize and express our words.
(4) I got to know a group of like-minded friends, mingled with the friends of the department, had a close relationship, and had more friends to talk to.
This article was written by Everyone is a Product Manager Author [Chenyang Product Notes], WeChat public account: [Chenyang Product Notes], original/authorized Published in Everyone is a Product Manager, without permission, it is forbidden to reprint.
Image from Unsplash, based on the CC0 license.
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