Lewis C. Lin’s book Decode and Conquer is an essential book that all aspiring product managers must-read. Lots of insightful stuff as to how you can leverage the frameworks created by Lewis and craft neat and crisp answers during a product management interview.
In my opinion Product Management is one of the hottest jobs out there and you need to do everything you can to stand out. This book itself is pretty popular and reading it will push you to think creatively like a PM when you look at daily life products or companies.
The title gives it all out: Answers to Product Management interviews’ questions, but I believe that concepts and base fundamentals should be even applied to our daily tasks and problems.
It is worth mentioning that it gives a plethora of different example PM interview questions like "Design a new iPad app for Google Spreadsheet" complete with extremely strong sample answers.
What's great about Decode & Conquer?
It functions as a great introduction to product management philosophies and interview approaches using custom frameworks
The book also offers a dialogue style format for the answers to the example questions - which will help you get an initial feel for how these conversations might go in the interview. Trust me it won't be nerve-wracking anymore!
It highlights how product managers are expected to be highly rigorous in their approach and offer unique insights that few can produce - both in their day to day role and also in the answers recited in interviews.
A quick glance at what all it reveals from an industry insider lense 🤔
Frameworks for tackling product design and metrics questions, including the CIRCLES Method, AARM Method, and DIGS Method.
Biggest mistakes PM candidates make at the interview
Decode what interviewers are looking for, why they're looking for it, and how to deliver it.
Answers to the most important PM interview questions
Strategies and articulation on how to go about acing the PM interview
It has it all, from getting critical, analytical, strategic thinking and up to vision building, let me tell you what all intrigued me and kept me hooked all this while!
I loved the module on suggested ways to design products, features, experiences applications, or webpages, on critiquing existing designs of popular services, apps, or pages.
He strategizes chapters on trade-offs, new market entry, CEO-level issues, and creating vision. Ideas here can spawn a portfolio of questions that you can articulate to ask during interviews.
All the mentioned approaches and methodologies in the book will just help you attain familiarity and If you'd want to tiptoe your way into PM interviews, then D&C is the one!
Looking forward to the future, the possibilities are endless. What's foremost is that this book does make a good attempt to catalog the suite of contemporary questions that seems to punctuate today’s sought-after product manager interviews at technology/startup firms. For that very reason, this is definitely a great read & a good buy!
Written By: Areeb Sanadi & Kashish Pahwa