Amazon Product Manager Mock Interview: Solving Pain Points

Watch our mock Amazon PM (product manager) interview. Stephen asks Amit (Amazon PM) a behavioral question about how he's solved a pain point for customers.

Chapters -
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:51 Question
00:01:01 Answer
00:05:28 Follow-up questions
00:15:49 Interview analysis
00:20:32 Tips

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[sandeepdhyani]

Amazing story telling skill. Classic management interview where you can say anything as interviewer doesn't have any clue about the business. Neither the timelines nor the solution seem accurate.

[mystery]

Hi Stephen. I noticed that most of these interviews cut out or are edited for awkward pauses or when the interviewer is thinking. I found that taking a few moments to pause and think about the question usually helps craft a better interview answer.

In future videos, can you think about leaving this in? This will help viewers understand how long they should be thinking about different questions and interviewees can give good answers despite silence.

[abhinav]

The most important thing for a PM is to tell his / her past experience as a user story... He hit the nail on the coffin... Amazing interview Exponent team... I'm a big fan of Stephen and the way he probes the candidates..

[arabiantopacific]

The question is about solving users pain points - In India a chai hardly costs 50 cents as said by Amit, people who drink chai on stalls (usually between 20-60y/o) are aware about keeping change in their wallet.(not everyone of them). This is a very basic style of common people in India to use change (coins) for small transactions. Adopting a new way is really good, but at the same time back in 2015, considering the user segment, the usage of 4G was low. I am unsure of what basis this option was selected.

[clauselu]

Thank you both! I'm recently preparing my behavior question interview with Amazon, I found this video is super helpful that you really asked some good follow-up questions and helped me think logically on how to break my stories into different parts.

[MrWackspurt]

Hi Stephen. A question here — the case study that Amit discusses is 6-7 years before the interview. How does the interviewer read the fact that the interviewee has no recent case studies to discuss ?

[tigerrx]

Dude he definitely winged that metrics follow-up. When you start off with “a bunch of….” Just stop and think clearly. I absolutely loved the follow-up questions. I have to really think about the stories I want to highlight and preempt those questions. Thank you!

[shubhammeshram]

Thoroughly enjoyed the entire discussion. The way Amit has answered, felt like he's telling his story and quite casual making the interviewer feel like the 2-way discussion is going on. Kept things very simple, logical, fact based.

[tryexponent]

What did you like about Amit's answer? What would you change? Let us know in the comments below!

[dhirajnimbalkar]

Not sure what was his timelines - WE had QR Based payment processing right from 2010 with PAYTM and by 2015 it was much common concept.

[pandeyshakti]

Hi Amit,
Thx for sharing your experience.

Few things,
While the solution you proposed evolved from loyalty program which was meant for a different purpose, was that the only option available.
Have we tried any of these options, unless our idea was to bring a technology driven solution to align with some other objectives of the company.

1. did we consider breaking down the process into small sub processes, like one guy issuing token, next one is collecting money, usually if both jobs are done by one person, wait time increases.
2. Ensuring availability of the currency denominations before the start of the day?
3. Checking how others in the same business solving that problem? (Example: How a famous samosa vendor never gets a queue at least during commercial transaction).
4. Collect order first from the customer and collect the money while he is waiting idle for his order for several minutes.


Thx dear!
-
Shakti

[shauryavats]

Which year are you talking about Amit? In which year did you implement the QR Code payment mode for Chai Point?

[delnayo]

Help me to understand he said his job was Marketing Manager not a PM. So how did he end up building a Feature? In additions the follow up question should have been how did you build the digital payment with Bar when India didn't have a Debit card or Credit Card system at that time?

[buntysiva]

One of the things I noticed was the way he presented it. It felt more like a story walkthrough which made it a bit more interesting to listen. Even though the explicit structuring were absent the essence of the interview had a story flow to it.

One concern or rather a question I still have is how exactly he managed to convince the stakeholders. As he said, it was a 2G market with POS downtimes and not an eWallet friendly economy at the time.

[asp]

Thank you both! Awesome tips especially about quantifying your results in STAR method

[SreedurgaKurmapu]

Excellent story telling and coving many topics

[shreyansbadjatya]

I think another reason to why stakeholders may have aligned is that the customers who visit chains like Chai Point are generally young and more tech savvy, hence would have low friction in adopting to a new technology. If the same problem was being solved for a local tapri/shop at that time, this solution would have obviously failed

[rajathslr]

If the interviewer was a technically strong, this could have led to a different outcome altogether. I felt the story was not totally true, may be it's a mock that's why it was made up, overall enjoyed the interview

[greanbean]

In the first example, I am not clear how the team identified payment delay as the major contributor of the excessive waiting in the queue? Amit mentioned the payment processing time has been cut down from 40 to 20 seconds but what if the average processing time per customer is 5 mins? Cutting down 20 second in repayment would not make statistical diff. Plus, the cost of building out the solution is extremely. If this solution enabled the customer to self serve without having to wait in the queue, it would a very different case, like the self serve in Mcdonalds today.

[greanbean]

I could be completely wrong but in the first example, why was QR-based solution considered by the team a fit for purpose solution if it required upgrading the PoS infra and complex system integration? Evevn harder to justify if the eteam considered it an MVP for a polit to test the market.