Hilabs

Role: Associate Product Manager (APM)

College: IIT BHU Varanasi

Interview Date: Campus Placements, Session 2021-2022 (post published Oct 16, 2022)

Interview Type: On-Campus Placements

Result: Selected

Difficulty: Not Specified (varied, guesstimate was easy)

Rounds: At least 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Data Science, Product Design, Guesstimates, Behavioral

Experience:

This candidate, an APM at HiLabs, shared their experience from campus placements at IIT BHU Varanasi for the APM role. Resume shortlisting required a background in Product and Data Analysis/Science and a CGPA ≥ 7.5.

Round 1: Data Science Round
This round, taken by a Data Scientist, started with "Tell me about yourself." Despite being a PM profile, it focused heavily on Data Science questions. The interviewer asked about projects, internships, and various algorithms like K-Nearest Neighbors, K-Means Clustering, Deep Learning, ANN, and Random Forest. Statistics and general machine learning concepts were also covered. Towards the end, a guesstimate question was asked: "Calculate the number of iPhone users in India," which was considered easy.

Round 2: Product Manager Round
This round was conducted by a Product Manager. The interviewer reviewed the candidate's product deck and asked them to explain their understanding of the problem statement and the rationale behind their proposed solution. The interviewer seemed impressed with the candidate's analytical questions and quick generation of three solutions to a problem.

Round 3: Director of Product & Delivery Round
This was the longest round, taken by the Director of Product & Delivery. It began with a discussion about the candidate's previous interview experiences and feedback received. A product design question was posed: "Flipkart wants to add floral commerce on its platform. Tell us about the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy, Product Design setup, and value chain for product delivery." The candidate also discussed how this would integrate with the current Flipkart app. The interviewer looked for structured thinking with data skills and product sense.