Flipkart Product Manager Mock Interview: Root Cause Analysis (Razorpay PM)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2024
- Don't leave your product management interview to chance. Make sure you're interview-ready with Exponent's PM interview prep course. bit.ly/3Pprmiz
Watch our mock Flipkart PM (product manager) interview. Stephen asks Khanjan (Razorpay PM) a root cause analysis question about cart additions.
To learn more about Khanjan, you can follow her here: / @khanjandesai2467
Chapters -
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:12 Question
00:01:47 Clarifying questions
00:02:47 Factors
00:14:42 Summary
00:20:05 Interview analysis
00:23:57 Tips
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#flipkart #productmanagement #pminterview #razorpay #tech #productmanager #entrepreneurship #product #prodmgmt #exponent #execution - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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What is the avg salary for a mid level PM with an experience of say 10 yrs overall with no experience in product management. Taking my example, I have a salary of 23LPA as a team lead in a small scale company. If I were to switch to a PM role how much can I expect. P.S : I'm really greedy, excuse me for that!!!
Op
who is this girl
she is from a well financied family in vadodara,gujarat
This is the exact way I answer when I know about interview question well in advance.
🤣😂😂
Haha 😂
Also, after the interview
😎😂
🤣 😆
Lol
Few more additional points which might be useful:
- Catalog and inventory analysis of the product in last 3 days.
- Which product category etc. has the highest dip.
- What products were not available because of the supply chain or sold out thing.
- Any recent Machine learning changes like recommendation/ranking algorithm can bring the dip (unlikely since A/B testing is done but possible)
- Checking into the date pipeline to understand the click through events, analytics dashboard bugs etc.
- Any partnership change or any merchant backed.
- Re-engagement through emails/notifications and ads on other channel
- Geographical distribution of the influx of users on the site like a flood, internet blackout etc. can cause a damage in supple chain etc.
- Look for seasonality - Diwali/Pay day (Bonus time) etc.
and there could be many more...
I was thinking along those lines as well but the problem was only android specific. Its unlikely that things like partnership or inventory is only specific to android apps.
You are correct and so was she in her approach. The list could go on unless the problem falls within your list.
Hey Aditya, that’s a good observation. But do remember that the interviewer is not looking for the right answer, but they are mainly looking at a structured thought process here.
@@dhruvrudrakapoor true
@@dhruvrudrakapoor Yes true. I was adding few more, what I learned at Google for wider audience.
The level at which she is answering shows a clear difference between experience Vs having a theory knowledge
Cannot agree more..
True
Are you saying that she's just using theory based knowledge? Iam just curious.
@Aakash Yadav buddy I am thinking the other way around.. she was practical in her approach ehh
As a PM myself, I also find the answer not very strong. The first reaction of any PM would be to ask more on the numbers, how much was the drop, and then to check from technical side first (any new release, any major UX change, server change) and get from customer service team any customer complaints, check on App Store ratings. These are the easiest and quickest info sources you can get, and if they are actually the root cause, you can get the fix the fastest (every minute matters when you are facing technical issues lol). Researching on the competitors, or trying to learn what's the upcoming promotions we are having would be one of the last things, only if the previous options were eliminated.
The way Khanjan, funnelled from the external factors to the internal ones, and asking relevant questions, made this interview really thoughtful.
We think so too!
Internal factors should be discussed first because those answers are easier and faster to get. External factors come second.
@@dariusneidhart1068 same thoughts
@@dariusneidhart1068 could there be multiple ways of approaching the issue? In that one strategy might favor external -> internal while for another the opposite would be ideal?
th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html
It was a delight to do this mock interview with Stephen. Thank you for having me. Just like everything in life, this is not the only way or the best way to solve this case. Shown is a framework which can be modified as per the situation at hand. Exponent has been sharing extensive content which might be helpful for people starting out as PMs.
It was so great to have you on the show Khanjan!
Nice interview Khanjan. Great content Stephen
So Big Billion sale ha 😂, well that absolutely makes sense in such kind of drastic situation, but as being a developer I've been more concerned about the app bug might be the problem but... I didn't think another competitor might affect the sales graph by launching their own on product sale scenario, even though the app is bug-free. Pretty helpful it was... Thank you so much both of you!
I loved the way you tapered the possibilities to the exact cause.
Well done ...Appreciate your thought process
Me finishing the interview in 5 secs... Big Billion Day is over, so cart addition is less😅
So true! lol
Me finishing the interview in 5 secs: Button kharab ho gaya hoga :D
@@AdityaPillai009 Me as a QA, I do that first. But I felt her answering structure is very great. That can be used for any other problems which are not even straight forward.
🤣
Better luck next interview
These interviews are so wonderful. I reference them as a PM, and they ALWAYS help me find new ways to approach a problem. Keep 'em coming Exponent team! Well done! Appreciation from Austin, TX.
Thanks so much! Fun fact: Stephen's video is filmed in Austin, too!
th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html
Thank you to Khanjan Desai for an amazing mock interview video! Have any special requests for our next video? Let us know in the comments below 👇! And as always, don't forget to like, subscribe, and visit tryexponent.com for even more videos like this!
This is ridiculous..how Flipkart can all sort of information..
interview me
@@pamalimaity5336 loda😄😄😄😄
New market entry or business strategy (w product lens) case please!
Excellent answer. Confident, clear and effective. Excellent self-evaluation as well. Overall impressive stuff
Glad you liked it!
With this interview now I realised that PM is like Crime investigation officer.
A true learning experience for me. Will remember "always have a good conversation" rather than thinking what will the other person think .
Thanks a lot .
The interviewee has become the interviewer. 😇
😂 So true'
Great content as always! Me being from a tech background, I think it's always better to start checking out issues on the tech side (be it web/app ui/ux or backend APIs not working or server's down) as tech is more error prone than non-tech (because of it's own problems). If there's no issue there, then we surely have other places where we might think that this would have caused the issue. But the way this lady approached is really commendable!
A framework which I think might work
T technical issues
R region
O other features
P other products
I is the decline for overall industry
C cannibalization
Cannibalization? What
Elaborate 🧐🧐
@@speednorm Cannibalisation means introducing a new product that takes away customer base of your older product. Think cars, If BMW says that in a month they are launching a New model, customers might not book for existing model and wait for the new model. That would mean your customers booking current model declines when in fact your new model just cannibalised the existing old one.
Hey Stephen, I'm just a couple of videos into your channel, but I can sense you have very strong judging(evaluation) skills. The up-speaking thing which you brought up really striked me, I tend to do it almost all the time, like in my peer conversations, group discussions. Learnt something today! Thanks!
This is really interesting, didn't expect to stumble upon something like this but very satisfied that I did. As a UX Designer this actually helps me expand the way I normally think of products. You'll got a new subscriber! Keep it up :D
th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html
This is what good bosses should show their pm's to get the right mind set going instead of listening to some bs they think is appropriate.
th-cam.com/video/V5SPBgNnhMw/w-d-xo.html
wow this is a fantastic initiative, brilliant idea, interviews is where 95% dont make it, thanks for creating this
Glad you enjoyed it! Hope you can subscribe to see more videos like this!
Personally, after thinking about external things that can affect it, I would have gone straight to ask questions about bugs and stuff because 15% is a huge huge drop. Definitely the goal is to identify the problem but also efficiency matters in real life. She killed it anyway.
She forgot to mention any fall in traffic. At the end of the day, Add to CART is a function of Traffic too. If customers are not visiting Product detail page only, then the drop is expected.
Indeed, traffic + no. of sign ups could have been probed in as well.
One might miss out on a lot of aspects in the real world interviews and hence there are multiple ways to answer the solve the same case. Use this for inspiration and not replication to a real interview.
Check the customer comments on the playstore. Customers really know what and when they are facing the issue. Then you go with your relationship between software changes and where the impact is.
Great point
Well....It's a good point even I'ad also thought this But It's not possible in all the cases so U've to go with the Flow the way she went
Excellent, I was thinking of those exact same questions. Amazing mock interview. Thank you
I love your content. Has made me so much more motivated to shoot for the best in class APM programs out there.
That's so great to hear Harshal!
For the first time i got my approach right in my life as beginner, I was thinking the exact same way, just loved it
need more mock interviews relating to supply chain management and logistics
Such a clear, concise and well thought answer. I would not be able to pull something detailed like this off in the heat of the actual interview moment without having prepared or rehearsed it first.
We think so too!
Great way to drill down a problem holistic to micro level view. It's very helpful for me to apply it in my day to day job.
Application security is also a important aspect to consider. User app may be hacked that denied adding items to cart.
Really loved the thought process of her.
THanks a lot. Really great to see how we can approach a problem step by step and not be conclusive without getting the complete problem statement
This was really good but the actual PM interviews are really tough.. her probing and following a framework was good !! Still her following first principles was effective !!
Thanks Khanjan and Stephen. Excellent framework and thought process.
Glad you liked it!
I echo this sentiment as well.. I've really enjoyed these mock interviews you've put together Stephen and the interviewees are really great
All theory based answers, specially scenarios.
It was so impressive. She explained things so smootly.
There could be many reasons for the decline in the numbers which could be -
1) We need to find out the ratings of the products getting moved out of the cart
2) We need to compare the pricing of the product with the competitors
3)We can also check the behaviour of the customer if they have the behaviour of adding items in cart and removing them quite often
4) We need to analyse if those items which are removed from the cart were on sale or under the fresh item without any offer
5)We need to check if the delivery date for those products were for more days because of which the customers removed them from the cart
There could be more reasons if we do the detailed analysis on the data
The decline is overall 15%. I think it is better to focus on app experience than data analysis on product and ratings for this problem.
Thank you. These are really helpful insights for root cause analysis.
It was a great mock interview, thank you so much!
I like how she explained the structure of the answer, she did it so precisely - well done!
😅h
Best 26 minutes I spent today. Khanjan answered with a great level of confidence and good command of time and direction of analysis. Thanks for making these videos, Stephen!
Such great insights! Thank you guys - this was invaluable!
Why didn't she ask about traffic. If that had dropped, trickle-down would too
Great mock interview!
Learned a lot!
He is too nice for an interviewer. And the solution was also too easy.
I have given a few PM interviews, they are considerably harder (is there a decline in total number of app users, what are the ways to add to cart, is it across all the add to cart options, how is it 15% fall when all android additions to cart are not tracked, to just mention a few unanswered questions).
But this interview serves the purpose as a dumbed down version.
Brilliant 👍👍 I have seen many interview preparation video but this is best.
Amazing amazing amazing. The thinking process is so clear.
Great analysis done by Khanjan…a person who doesn’t know anything about pm will also get an idea related to pm from this session…what I have learned from this session is that you should think about internal issues like bug or something or is there any technical issue which might have caused this problem and another way is you can consider other factors like current market competitors,product efficiency etc
Very detailed way of showing how to approach a problem like a PM.
However, in reality, if there's a major update and something stops working - the first thing you do is to analyse if it's because of an update. Also, if it's ATC that doesn't work, there's so much rush to fix it, idk if any PM will have time to ask these questions. You lose millions while you're doing root cause analysis.
This approach would help someone who's coming onboard without any prior knowledge of the product and is given a job to dissect the issue.
I understand it's a hypothetical situation in the video with a purpose to make viewers learn. And it's done beautifully. So thank you for your efforts.
Start with Internal vs External factors. For internal, a very helpful framework here i think is 3P: Product, Place and Price. I would go in that order. What product segment is most affected? (GL comparison). Then, What place is most affected?(Geo impact). Then Have we raised the price of some GL or has competitor reduced the price of that GL? Campaign/promo all falls in this category.
It's good to showcase a small report starts with 5Y, Fish Bone, Pareto, CAPA by ending with FMEA...for better understanding of the causes in detail
RCAs are the most difficult to have a grip on. The flow is so crucial that an interviewer can mess you up around it. Could you pls upload more RCA mocks? Thanks.
Definitely- any special requests?
@@tryexponent system design using AWS services
Decline of Quality Control aspects and decline of customer satisfaction in a mobile app development company! @Exponent
@@tryexponent Decline of Quality Control aspects and decline of customer satisfaction in a mobile app development company!
Can you consider this as a case study and provide a detailed response or a video based on this aspect?
Nice case study, also answered very well.
Awesome mock interview! Kudos, these are rare gems.
I recall the similar analytics I did for smart app for my company, it was a design change whic saw a drop in NPS as well as printer setup experience. We used text mining on surveys to understand customer confusion. Finally the feedback was for app teams to do a proper A/B test. Would this be a viable option for this analysis?
Looks like Sonam Kapoor is a great Product Analyst as well.
Thanks for having this mock interview, this helped me crack the root cause analysis. You got one customer for your course.
Great to hear!
It's simply if you are loosing business, dig into your analytics and find out why!! Instead of asking questions each other. And then once you have why, !!!!!
Great tips!!, would love to watch more such videos and tips from you :)
Very nice and detailed root cause analysis was done by Khanjan. Appreciate the analytical probing she did during the interview. This Interview was really very helpful for me. Thanks Exponent team and Khanjan for sharing this video. :)
Thanks & Regards,
Pratik Naidu
great EXPLANATION AND ENJOYED EVERY BIT OF IT
very smooth like to see more of these and ux interviews too
Any sale or competition normally provide a reversal effect on retail growth. During sale events like BBD, GIS etc improves the competition traffic and conversion. A data point which a lot of ppl miss.
So it was a button, some obsession PMs have with button colors
That was really helpfull it give me a clear framework to work on product cases, I really appretiate the well structer video that you both made!
IMO if you’re seeing an issue like this with one platform and not others then I’d definitely look at internal factors first. Smells like a bug, config, or UX change induced issue to me. I’d eliminate that first and then look at external factors.
Even if you do find external factors, 99% of the time there won’t be a direct causal link to a specific issue, so you’d still need to check for the above internal issue anyways - might as well start with them first.
I found this mock interview an average one , in order to find the issue we should first do the Behavior Analytics of the customers -which include Funnel Analysis - Drop offs vs Existing users , then further micro segment base into demographic, technographic ,Product categories , Time taken from one step to another ,then after having numbers we should arrest that particular base segment through Aggressive marketing campaigns for win back , Also we should also see the Customer segment - an Low value , High Value or Mid Value then pushing aggressive offers according to the particular segment . Competitor analysis also comes to play in this
What do you mean by “arrest that particular base segment”
@@youngo.g.3642 arresting means by focusing on a particular segment and having customized products so that customers could winback or use
It could have also been an algorithmic update in the search or the recommendation part.
But since the drop was majorly for Android user's it was quite clear where to dig deeper.
most of the people add items to their carts because of what's the final price will be and how much EMI and Interest rate will be charged if they are going to buy and making their budget in their reach. And what are the offers applying to the product. Even though you mention it on product page they check again for Final price
And after that they compare which website is giving discounts or more emi options
I would have first checked the system and then moved to other scenarios because the things we directly control are what we should first check.
Well, so could be said about certain obvious external factors which are often expected, & can be glanced at quickly. Some external & internal factors could even be looked into simultaneously. But I do think just looking for the more apparant things is, as it sounds, easier.
1. Simple because of Corona now people are buying laptops ...and hence placing orders on it instead of mobile...😁😁
2. also, the full family is now together hence just one person is ordering on behalf of all. 😊
3. IOS customers are already rich and have laptops...also they like to use their expensive phones over laptops to show off 🤩
Khanjan is one of the subject that are migrating from FK to Amazon😀. She is answering from peesonal experience
if you can solve cases good enough to make it to the final round at McKinsey consulting, you can nail any PM interview
Really? I thought consulting interviews are just so so.
The other bug related problem could be that although someone would have added that particular item in the bag but a possibility could be that it won't be visible after a few days.
This could also be a reason for less number of additions to the bag which is indirect, even though inspite of addition it won't be counted as added as the item disappeared.
Question: how are we supposed to know whether the question’s answer should be a 3 minute response vs 30 minute? If the interviewer says, for example, “I’ll be asking a series of questions” then we’ve just spent 30 minutes answering one question. How should we avoid assuming that this is the only question the interviewer will ask?
Very Insightful! Could please do some mock interview on Pathways Program for Operations Management at Amazon.
This one's easy, this is the Karma of FlipKart's customer scare department finally catching up with it.
Way easier than coding interviews
I am interested to know if there is a training/roadmap available for Sales Account Managers to transition into the role of a Product Manager ?
Hey, you can come under guidance of experienced product leader then it's easy to transit into that role , I can help you , reply me back.
Stephen - My best video in last 6 months. Very thorough and hats off to the interviewee.
One question - In particular to this question, one small corner case could be to think from Seller's point of view. I mean what if Sellers have increased the prices of the products and could potential decrease the cart. Am I correct in my point? Please do answer...
This was a great case study. Really helped me understand/reach the why? of the problem. I'm not sure as to how much time was given to Khanjan to draw possible conclusions out of it! But it was exciting to see how she has broken down the problem by asking the interviewer the right questions to reach the root cause of the problem. However, most of the questions she asked was around quantitative aspect. She also lacked empathy towards the interviewer and could have maintained a little composure towards the interviewer. It felt like a banter after a while. She was courageous, but courage and empathy should go hand in hand.
Anyway, one of the way I would have approached this problem could have been on the qualitative front. Say, any major financial breakdown that has suddenly impacted the country, since the problem exists from past 3 days. A quick fall in the level of income or an insecurity around loosing their jobs could directly affect the demand. Which basically means less people going on the flipkart platform leads to less addition in the card which in turn leads to decline in % cart addition.
I know that here the solution has something to do with the tech issue but without even exploring both sides of the coins we should not reach to conclusions.
All said, I loved this case💐
Great thought...I think she mentioned in the beginning about these as uncontrollable factors. Let's say If there is a recession going on in the country, I would like to see how would you approach this one.
Perfect vedio for me. Need more vedio for RCA....
Not from a PM background but think if a fresh MBA grad were to tackle the same case, he/she would have gone the exact same way. I wonder if this is how PMs actually work at Indian tech companies. This is more of a consulting case interview.
Its difficult to figure out who is the interviewer , wonderful interview 👍
These are really helpful
My thought process would be:
1. Look towards internal factors first such as technical bugs with the Add to Cart option, a trial run to be done to understand if the add to cart event is being called or not. Also, simultaneously understand what exactly are the queries coming in for customers as in at what point they are stuck. Also look towards app upgrades and glitches arising because of it. Debug those...
2. If above mentioned don't give answers, go to external factors such competitor promotions, strategy, campaign analysis.
The way she approached the problem was really good, however i felt the set of checks that were mentioned doesn't really make sense to the problem being asked. When we look at the problem, the decline in cart addition is happening only for Mobile check-outs and not for Web check-outs which implies that we doesn't really need to care about external factors like new product launches & sales by external companies. This would be more to analyze the issues with mobile checkouts which could be due to internal factors. I might be wrong, but its just my point of view, but the set of checks mentioned were more general and can be applied to any set of problem.
That was the idea. In real life we do know a lot more about the problem and focus more on the finer details.
I really liked the conversation and the video
One thing I would also consider in the product is after thelatest update how many users are using the older version and new version, and is there a relation of this to the drop of cart checkout and also the factor of product declined in sales compared to older data to see what kinda user or product the add cart is droppped
Shouldn’t we ask if they decrease was previous week vs previous year or overall? Also, there could be heavy promotion on flipkart that could have increased the sales. Do we have similar promo?
Just wondering ,after the release update . Business Unit has to verify the change update has been deployed correctly on each platforms. 1st before going to production this should be verified. The issue supposed to addressed early stage in UAT.
Just jumped on the video. Are these questions related to Business intelligence and analytics?
Great mock interview!
Great video!!. Really helped to jot down the framework. One small Request though , can you upload video on how to make case studies and do we need ui/ux or product design and coding to become a product manager??
Thank you for the demo. I am sorry if it is a repetition, but my suggestion is on the technology front and that will be to check if this decline is coming from the android devices that have the Flipkart application already installed and are undergoing the upgrade or is it for the once who are downloading the upgraded application for the first time on their devices. Based on the category of the decline ratio of old to new users, we can analyze to figure out if the issue is in the upgrade itself or is it from the source from where the upgraded application is being downloaded. Would love to hear back.
Excellent initiative
Thanks !
Is there any change in the shopping cart flow? The question she asked at 9:51 should be the first question.
One more thing to check is if there is decline in sales of item , if no then it might be possible that customers are buying using buy now button and not using add to cart button
Shouldn't the first course of action been to see if there was any reduction in daily active users in these 3 days which might be connected to the reduced number of 'adding to the cart' actions. If this is true then next thing to check might be what caused the reduction in daily active users.
I agree.
Well......Why do u want to go with that what're u saying is Correct but Imo It'll just make the process more Comprehensive and It'll not add much value to it [ as per Your opi. you'll try to find out if there was any reduction in the Number of activer users let's say Yes there was a Consideble AMT of reduction in users and then U'll try to find out What was the reason behind it I mean Then U'll going through the factors what she did in the first place]She went from macro factros to the micro because it's seen the most of the time if something like this happens then the cause is lying in the macro level factors like Change in the preference ,Customers actions etc So It's always advisable to follow that hierarchy In order to come out at the Conclusion
if the reduction is only in app and not in web , should we check if the same customers match and if they are not same it's an issue with the app ?
we could have also considered the factor that what were the number of app updates recently to consider the level of impact.
That was great interview. I already noted down many points from here. I have one question, what if we stuck or not able to understand interviewee's questions. (I'm fresher).
Why were the external factors explored before the internal? If there was a promotion run by a competitor, the analysis would have stopped there and the problem with the app would have been missed.
This is same as a consultant solving some issue..so what is the difference between a consultant and a product manager ?
Thank you both! Question: At 18:30 she mentions that knowing the mobile device type to be Android would have helped her conclude that it's a bug. I'm curious, isn't a bug also a possibility with iPhone?