4 Tips For Take-Home Product Manager Assignments

Tips for attempting take-home product manager assignments:
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1. Market-sizing assignments

- Total Addressable market questions usually seek a $ value unless stated otherwise.
- Know the difference between TAM, SAM, SOM & know which one is being asked for
- If past data is given, use bottom-up: find out average value per transaction and multiply by customer population
- Use top-down by seeking industry research e.g. Gartner

2. Prioritization assignments

- Model your answer around a framework like RICE
- Produce a matrix to rate features across the framework's parameters.
- When prioritizing defects, work with importance/severity/urgency model


3. Spec development assignment

- Set a clear outline: Goal, Sucess Criteria, User Stories, Journey, Design, Tracking, Messaging etc.
- Unpack primary flows but always acknowledge edge cases
- Invest most time on crisp wireframes with any decent tool. Clickable prototypes are better. Hiring managers love visualizations.
- Complex logic? Flowchart it.
- Email/SMS trigger? Work hard on copy.
- Always document assumptions.

4. Product Analysis assignment

- Break down using AARRR framework if possible
- Contrast with competition to identify gaps
- Use SEO tools
- Tie recommendations with a business/product metric