Tips to land a Product Management role at Google

I rang in 2022 with exciting news – I joined Google as a product manager! I work in the Google Cloud team, with a focus on Technical Infrastructure that powers Google Search, Ads and YouTube among other Google applications and services.

Google has always been a holy grail company for me. This might be inexplicable to some people, but I knew at the ripe old age of 23 that I wanted to be a product manager at Google some day. This was driven by the fact that product management thought leaders I followed fanatically (like Ken Norton and Hunter Walk) had worked for Google at some point too. And if I’m being honest, the notoriously high bar to be a product manager at Google was part of the appeal—mostly to prove a point to myself.

The Google PM interview process at this point has been expounded on exhaustively, but I did want to add some tips that may not be as widely known. I will caveat that this advice is applicable to folks who already have some PM experience and not for folks transitioning to a PM role for the first time. Here goes

1. Get a referral to the role at Google from someone you have worked with in the past who can attest to your professional capabilities. Even better if you can network your way to a hiring manager at Google and have them reach out to you. This works much better than trying to cold apply or asking an acquaintance from middle school you haven’t spoken to in a decade to refer you.
   
2. Think of the Google PM interview process like a standardized test. For better or for worse, that’s how it works. The good part about this is that there are no surprises; everything is transparent and the recruiter will walk you through exactly what to expect. The flip side is that you need to master how to take the test, and take it well.
   
3. Give yourself plenty of time before each round of interviews. I gave myself two weeks to prepare for the phone interview and about five weeks for the on-sites.
   
4. There is now a vast repository of resources to prepare for PM interviews. My personal recommendation would be to ditch the books. The online courses are more recent, relevant, and tailored to Google. I used Exponent but there are several others (Product Alliance, Product Management Exercises etc.). I’d say it’s less important which one you choose and more important to use these tools to
   • understand interview structure and the types of questions
   • figure out a framework for each type of question and commit it to memory
   • practice using that framework with as many real Google interview questions as possible
     
5. I know a common recommendation is to do practice interviews with others. I didn’t and it worked out fine for me (yes, yes, survivorship bias). The key is to practice answering questions by yourself exactly like you would in a real interview. Present your framework, state your assumptions, use a digital whiteboard, walk through your thought process, fin. And do this all within a reasonable timeframe. Recording myself answering questions was also helpful to eliminate vocal fry and make better eye contact with the interviewer.
   
6. Most questions that you’re asked in a PM interview don’t have a right or wrong answer. What really matters is that you use a framework to structure how you approach the problem. At the end of your prep period, you want to reach a point where you can blindly apply the framework like a formula and just plug in values. The goal is to expend as little mental energy as possible until you reach the more creative ideation stage of your answer.
   
7. If you have trouble generating new ideas on the fly (a requirement to succeed in Google PM interviews), that’s something you can actively work on (see S.C.A.M.P.E.R. as an example).
   
8. Team matching can take a while if you weren’t targeting a specific team. Keep this in mind if you have multiple companies you’re speaking with. Additionally, negotiating at Google only works if you have a competing offer. Yes, they will ask to see this offer and no, your current compensation is not sufficient leverage for negotiations.

I will conclude by saying that there’s a lot of luck involved in the process. Timing matters too! I interviewed twice at Google during my MBA program (once for an internship and once for a full-time role) and was unceremoniously rejected both times. I don’t think I’m any smarter now than I was then – but what I do have now is a good network in the enterprise PM space, domain specific expertise, and most importantly, a greater degree of confidence in my own abilities as a product manager.

To get notified of new posts on the blog: subscribe!