Brian’s Product Management Guides Overview

Here's where the story starts

Subscribers get access to a treasure trove of continuously updated content some of which was previously available only to my coaching clients. Subscribe today.

PM Interview & Career Guide Collection: 🚀

1. Interview Guide - Overview 📚 (https://tinyurl.com/mryzdebn) - You're reading it now!

2. Product Sense 💡

3. Analytical 📊

4. Behavioral 🤝

5. Comparing Companies; Google, Meta, Amazon 🏢

6. The Interview Process 🎯

7. The PM Resume 📄

8. PM Comp Negotiating Secrets 💰 (It's not what anyone is telling you!)

9. Google Craft and Execution ⚙️

10. Guide to Product Management Frameworks 🧠

11. Google Strategic Insights 🔍

12. PM Leadership Resume Template 👑

13. Leadership and Drive | Behavioral Workbook, Frameworks and Tips 💪

14. Product Management Frameworks Guide 🎨

---

For access to all guides, become a paid subscriber 💳. It's just $12/month or $100/year for a trove of continually-updated content designed to multiply your career 10x 📈.

My series of Interview Guides based on my own successful study program for product management interviewing at Meta, and Google 🏆. It is not official advice. Rather, it's reverse-engineered from public material, based on extensive research and sourced from experts in the industry 🔬. While my guides are skewed toward Meta and Google PM interview prep, the approach, frameworks, and question archetypes generalize to other FAANGs, and top, VC-backed startups 🌟.

Once you become a subscriber, I will add you to a Google Group to receive access to the exclusive content in a Google Drive Folder 📁.

Intro: What motivated me to create these guides 💭

When I was coming up as a PM more than 15 years ago at Google, there was sparse information available to help me transition to PM 📍. At the time, the only people who were PMs were people who had gone to "the right" undergrad engineering schools, had "the right" engineering job, and then went on to "the right" MBA program to land in the best associate product manager program (Google's, of course!) 🎓.

For mid-career professionals like myself, there were steep career, organizational, and even psychological barriers to entry 🚧. I had to hack my way in; and figure it out without web-based resources, coaching services, coaches, or formal support 🛠️.

I passed my Google PM interviews on my first attempt which included a software engineering interview ✅. It was hard fought and hard-won 💪. I want it to be easier for you, so I made these guides 🎁.

Today, the problem is the opposite; there is too much, sometimes conflicting information! 🌊 That's why the interviewing process can feel overwhelming. There are question banks, AI bots, online influencers inventing new frameworks by the hour 🤖. There are PM prep services and a cottage industry of people exposing advice, it can be hard to know what framework to pick! 🤷‍♂️

That's where my approach comes in ⚡. I've passed PM rounds and risen to senior leadership at Google and Meta 🏅. I've learned and can share with you the right frameworks and methods to make your transition process more time-efficient and less stressful while maximizing your chance to land your dream PM job 🎯.

Why my approach is unique 🌟

It applies product thinking to the interview process using proven strategies, frameworks, and archetypes will maximize your interviewing outcomes (number of offers, comp) and minimize your prep time ⏰.

Proven: hundreds of people have used them to land level 4 through level 8 (director) roles at FAANGs and top, VC-backed startups 🏆. This includes multiple PMs who have up-leveled and one person who leveled up 2 levels to L7 from L5 📈. They've also helped several non-PM directors transition to PM director including an L9 senior director 👨‍💼.

I have more than 15 years of PM experience at Google and Meta and even more in the industry 📅. I've interviewed 500+ candidates for PM roles and successfully landed PM roles at both Google and Meta (both on my first attempt) 🎯

It is fresh 🔥. Not just in the sassy sense, but also in the sense of being up-to-date with current information based on my own recent research, interviews, and relationships with thousands of people at FAANG companies.

By applying product thinking to the interviewing process, you will learn how to be a better PM in your current job 💡. Think of interviewing as a way of staying fresh, current, while learning from the best in the industry 🌱.

What people are saying about my approach 💬

Hundreds of colleagues have used these guides to transition to PM and land dream PM jobs:

"You've authored impeccably written and very helpful guides." -SN Meta ⭐

"Thanks Brian for putting together the best PM interview guides I've come across (and I've seen A LOT of PM guides" -LZ Meta 🙌

"I'm 5 minutes into reading this, and this is THE BEST write-up I've seen. This has reinvigorated my motivation to study. Seriously, this write-up is so good. I can't emphasize that enough, I am geeking out over it LOL!" -AT Meta 🤩

"I just stumbled on your interview guide for PM and it's amazing. I have been trying to gain more insights and resources to better myself for product manager interviews." -ZM Meta 💯

"Just wanted to shoot you a quick thanks for the PM Interview Prep series you created. It's been so helpful for me and had reduced a lot of my anxiety with the prep process ❤️" - SB Meta

"I have been exposed to many PM readings and interview-prep sites, but only felt so enormously blessed after encountering the guide you have put together." E- an undergrad now PM interning at a software company 🙏.

Caveats ⚠️

While my guides are skewed toward Meta and Google PM interview prep, the approach, structure, frameworks, and question archetypes should generalize to most other FAANGs and startups 🔄.

Be careful to research each company for nuances and deltas 🔍. This guide should get you about 70-90% of the way there for non-Meta or non-Google companies and closer to 100% for Google and Meta 🎯.

Google and Meta's hiring rubrics generalize better than most companies 📋

Companies are constantly changing their interviewing methods 🔄. While I believe this to be one of the most up-to-date and recent guides, be sure to validate this assertion against what your recruiter tells you and the unique nuances of your target company ✅.

Your success is yours - use your own judgment over any guide - including mine! 🧭

Each guide covers 📖

There are 4 interview guides; the overview (this doc), and one for each of the typical interviews including product sense, leadership and drive, and analytical.

Each covers:

• What the PM interview is and is not ❓

• Strategy 🎯

• Question archetypes 🔤

• Frameworks 🧠

• What to study 📚

• How companies evaluate your responses 📊

• Curated Youtube Mock Interview Playlists 🎥

I'm working on a negotiation and a leadership guide as well 🚧.

Frameworks 🏗️

Frameworks are great at helping us think, structure, and solve problems consistently and in a way that your interviewer can follow 🧭. This makes it easier for them to provide feedback and gives them an insight into how you think 💭.

There are no perfect frameworks; trying to evaluate all of them is a distraction 🚫. Use what you're comfortable with today or what I have below and don't spend precious time to find the holy grail of PM frameworks. It doesn't exist 🏆.

You need to learn to have a baseline, but also to be able to think on your feet since interviews are inherently unpredictable 🎭.

There's only logical, structured communication and its opposite; unstructured, stream of conscious mouth-fidgeting 😵. The latter is an anti-pattern and a sure fire way to put your interview asleep and earn you an SNH (strong no hire) 💤.

If you decide to use a framework, internalize it so it doesn't sound like you're rotely going through it 🤖. Adapt an existing framework or build your own framework (as I did with my proprietary, trademarked CATS framework*) 🐱. Don't spend too much time trying to figure out the best one. Any of these can work ✨.

*joke 😄

Top Frameworks 🏆

• Overall Rule of 3 3️⃣

• Product Sense: CIRCLES ⭕

• Analytical Thinking: AARM, HEART/GSM, CATS 📈

• Behavioral: STAR ⭐

Paid clients get access to my complete PM Frameworks Guide 🔐

About me 👨‍💻

I've interviewed and successfully landed PM jobs on my first try at DoorDash, Google and Meta 🏅. I'm a calibrated interviewer. I conducted something on the order of 500-lifetime interviews, including approximately 200+ product management interviews 📊. At Google, I ladder-transferred to product management from program management years ago and never looked back 🚀. I have helped scores of people transfer into product management from engineering, program management, design and data science at all levels from IC4 to Director 🤝.

Before joining DoorDash as a Product Lead, I was a PM Lead at Meta and before that, I spent a decade at Google as a PM working on making communication accessible, inclusive and private for people with disabilities ♿. I launched zero-to-one products Live Caption, Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier 🎤. I brought beloved products like Gmail, Google News, and Search to people in underserved countries including Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Indonesia 🌍. I helped produce independent documentaries such as Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia (2016) and Dani's Twins (2022) 🎬. I hold a half-dozen patents, and am based in San Francisco, CA 📍.

I love hearing from and helping fellow PMs and PM-aspirants 💙. Feel free to drop me a line a brian.kemler@gmail.com and connect with me on LinkedIn 📧.