Yup. And this is what can if the candidate doesn't ask a proper clarification question in the beginning :) We've all been in situations where people have different understandings of what needs to be done or what issues a team or product is dealing with
I think the assumption that the increase in TH-cam shares is a positive sign is flawed. You are excluding the fact that there may be cases that this sudden increase over the last one month might also be either due to a. fraudulent actions such as site getting hacked or gaming the system by fake profiles being created for increasing engagement for a particular content creator, b. increase in shares (which is increase in engagement on platform) impacts other metrics such as average time spent watching a video which might have a higher priority i.e. objective of content consumption might be much more important than increase engagement among TH-cam users, OR c. there might be an impact in how the shares is calculated due to some modification in the reporting tool (i.e. false positive result). Also, while listing the metrics, it is important to understand what was the objective of the Mobile Team introducing the feature. A number of features introduced or modification made would be inline with the mission but there might be different objectives at any point in time. For example, TH-cam's mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world as well as listen, share and build communities through stories. But the short term goal might be to increase engagement and the objective might be to increase shares by 2%. Moving from Mission to Metrics directly might not be the right approach. Whereas understanding what the objective is and then setting up metrics to check whether the objective is achieved is paramount.
Thanks for the feedback Nillesh. I agree with your comment around TH-cam Shares increase might not be a positive sign. Ideally, the candidate asks a question that helps them determine if there is fraud or not. And it might have been that the reason the shares are down is that there is less fraud. They could have continued digging deeper after realizing the drop is because of a change. Regarding your second point, yes metrics in relation to the objective matter. I'm curious to know how you think this would have changed the approach in your opinion?
security threat is a super rare event that can be easily discounted especially for youtube. fake profiles - well aren't they still users and potential consumers of ads? reporting tool - well technical bug..doesn't that negate the premise that the shares are 'actually increasing'? even if bugs are one-off cases
For these types of questions, is the person being interviewed supposed to figure out why the statistic changed by asking the interviewer a series of questions until they find the answer? As in, this is a question that has a right answer and the goal is to find it? Or is the person being interviewed just supposed to share how they would approach this situation? As in "first I would check here, then I would check this, then I would look at that data etc"
I want to know what is the niche? The people who are sharing this video. Where are they living? What topics are the users most interested in? I will dig on the SEO. Video optimization, using tags and others.. Does the increase due to the advertisement? Is it any changes in the TH-cam app that causes the change? How about the competitors? At that period is anything that went wrong with our competitors’apps? Is that increase improved our users base, revenues? I will review feedback from users, metrics from analytics such as hourly watch, region, number of videos… Then I will work with my team in the direction to keep improving our user satisfaction , use that niche as a sample and implement the tactics to other markets
Great question. Here are couple ideas: - trending events resulting in more engagement with the platform (e.g. elections, covid 19, etc) - changes in other products (e.g. facebook making it harder for the users to share link to their videos in 3rd party platforms)
Wasn't this supposed to be a trade-off question rather than a debugging question. (Shares are up but most like other engagement would have gone down -likes/comments etc)
Thanks for the question. It depends on where you'd like to take it with your clarification questions but I would say it's more of a problem solving question.
oh my goodness, for the longest time I assumed the question was that the share price had gone up :D
Yup. And this is what can if the candidate doesn't ask a proper clarification question in the beginning :) We've all been in situations where people have different understandings of what needs to be done or what issues a team or product is dealing with
Same here😂
Very nice breakdown and structured approach. Hoping to see some more content.
Thanks Ashishek. Glad to hear you find it useful!
Thanks so much for posting this awesome mock interview! Would love to see similar video content for other product management questions.
Thanks for the positive feedback. Glad to hear you found it valuable.
The Breakdown of the issue was very interesting, and Structured. Shows a lot of in-depth Thinking
Thanks for the note milan. Appreciate it.
I think the assumption that the increase in TH-cam shares is a positive sign is flawed. You are excluding the fact that there may be cases that this sudden increase over the last one month might also be either due to a. fraudulent actions such as site getting hacked or gaming the system by fake profiles being created for increasing engagement for a particular content creator, b. increase in shares (which is increase in engagement on platform) impacts other metrics such as average time spent watching a video which might have a higher priority i.e. objective of content consumption might be much more important than increase engagement among TH-cam users, OR c. there might be an impact in how the shares is calculated due to some modification in the reporting tool (i.e. false positive result).
Also, while listing the metrics, it is important to understand what was the objective of the Mobile Team introducing the feature. A number of features introduced or modification made would be inline with the mission but there might be different objectives at any point in time. For example, TH-cam's mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world as well as listen, share and build communities through stories. But the short term goal might be to increase engagement and the objective might be to increase shares by 2%. Moving from Mission to Metrics directly might not be the right approach. Whereas understanding what the objective is and then setting up metrics to check whether the objective is achieved is paramount.
Thanks for the feedback Nillesh. I agree with your comment around TH-cam Shares increase might not be a positive sign. Ideally, the candidate asks a question that helps them determine if there is fraud or not. And it might have been that the reason the shares are down is that there is less fraud. They could have continued digging deeper after realizing the drop is because of a change.
Regarding your second point, yes metrics in relation to the objective matter. I'm curious to know how you think this would have changed the approach in your opinion?
security threat is a super rare event that can be easily discounted especially for youtube.
fake profiles - well aren't they still users and potential consumers of ads?
reporting tool - well technical bug..doesn't that negate the premise that the shares are 'actually increasing'? even if bugs are one-off cases
For these types of questions, is the person being interviewed supposed to figure out why the statistic changed by asking the interviewer a series of questions until they find the answer? As in, this is a question that has a right answer and the goal is to find it? Or is the person being interviewed just supposed to share how they would approach this situation? As in "first I would check here, then I would check this, then I would look at that data etc"
I want to know what is the niche? The people who are sharing this video. Where are they living?
What topics are the users most interested in?
I will dig on the SEO. Video optimization, using tags and others..
Does the increase due to the advertisement?
Is it any changes in the TH-cam app that causes the change?
How about the competitors? At that period is anything that went wrong with our competitors’apps?
Is that increase improved our users base, revenues?
I will review feedback from users, metrics from analytics such as hourly watch, region, number of videos…
Then I will work with my team in
the direction to keep improving our user satisfaction , use that niche as a sample and implement the tactics to other markets
Productive Video. Bijan one question - What are the external factors would have been considered for this.?
PESTEL ANALYSIS ?
Great question. Here are couple ideas:
- trending events resulting in more engagement with the platform (e.g. elections, covid 19, etc)
- changes in other products (e.g. facebook making it harder for the users to share link to their videos in 3rd party platforms)
@@ProductManagementExercises Yes Bijan.. Agreed.. Thank you.
Wasn't this supposed to be a trade-off question rather than a debugging question. (Shares are up but most like other engagement would have gone down -likes/comments etc)
Thanks for the question. It depends on where you'd like to take it with your clarification questions but I would say it's more of a problem solving question.
Found his answer very slow, rudimentary and bland. No brainwaves. Most of it was generic.
Thank you for the feedback Abshishek. Appreciate it:)