Day 4 - Product Design Question 2
Practice product design questions with us...
Hello learners!
Welcome to the 4th day of the series 30 Days of PM Interview by Crework! Yesterday, we discussed the first exercise question for product design interviews. Today, we will practice one more.
But before we start, make sure you are subscribed to us. In case you are not, subscribe to us right now and complete the challenge.
Imagine you're a PM ✨
Your practice question for today is:
Design a LinkedIn for blue collar workers. (Asked in Microsoft Interview)
Now, before we move on to “how should we approach it” part, I want you to try it. Come on, pause here for a while, bring a notebook and pen and try this question.
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First step: Ask clarifying question
Before we start, I have some questions and assumptions I want to validate.
By blue collar workers, I am assuming we are targeting professionals involved in manual work and who are paid hourly or daily wage, for example - plumbers, electricians, construction workers etc. Is that correct?
And these are the questions I have:
Why is LinkedIn expanding to blue collar workers? What is the current percentage of blue collar workers on LinkedIn?
Am I building this as a PM in LinkedIn or for some other company who wants to enter this market?
Is it something we plan to build within the existing LinkedIn app or as a separate app?
Is there a particular geography we are targeting for the launch?
Are there any resources constraints? What is the launch window for this product?
You can ask other questions that might clarify the situation for you. Ask anything that you think might help you get context.
But, don’t ask too many questions. 2-3 meaningful and well thought questions are good enough to give you the right context.
Second step: Take some time to think about it
This is very important. Try to absorb the information you just got. Don’t jump to conclusions or the first ‘solution’, try to understand the problems first.
Third step: Identify the goals and personas
Now, in this step, you are supposed to share whatever you are thinking with the interviewer so that they know the direction you are taking. I am assuming that we are building this for LinkedIn as a PM.
Generally, this is how it goes:
LinkedIn’s mission is to help people build meaningful professional connections & help them be more productive & successful. So building a network for blue collar workers aligns well with the goal of the company.
We will build this product for blue collar workers right now only. There can be sub-segments in the segment, but the overall problems will remain the same for them.
Some details about how blue collar jobs work:
Most of the blue collar workers get work through friends, references or a contracting agency (middle men).
They don't use resume.
They work on shifts ( night shits and day shifts) and get paid hourly.
Some jobs need specialized skills and training
Most of jobs are labor intensive so the employers might prefer younger and fitter person.
These users are not tech savvy, they prefer more face to face interaction cause they work on site away from computers at work.
Fourth step: Identifying problems and coming up with solutions
Some pain points these users face:
Difficulty in finding new jobs
Not knowing how to market themselves or the benefits of marketing themself
Difficulty in learning new skills and not knowing what is best to learn and which skill is in demand
Tech is too complicated to understand
Solution:
As most of our user base is not tech savvy and might not own computers, but they will have access to smartphones. So, our solution needs to be an app or inside the LinkedIn app.
This app should have:
A simple way for employers to post job requirements.
A feed of available blue collar contract based jobs. Job seekers can search for postings based on their requirement like shift, type of job and apply to these jobs through the feed.
A user profile to display the contact information, work experiences, skills, recommendations from past employers.
The job seekers will be matched into particular job postings based on their profile and get recommendations of jobs they should apply too.
A section for users to select the skills they want to learn and career path they want to take. Based on this, we can recommend them skills they should learn to reach their goals.
For MVP, we can proceed with the first 4 features as a separate app from LinkedIn as the target audience is very different from the current users.
The UI has to be simple. Its important to remember that these people do a lot of physical labor and might be using the app after a long tiring day. They will not be patient to read long articles or long job requirement description. So UI should make information easy to consume.
Metrics to track for success:
Monthly Active Users (MAU)
Total number of users
%age of activated users - Users who create a profile
Number of job applications
Number of users who got a job
This was an example of how you can approach a product design question asked in a PM interview. There can be multiple ways of approaching the same problem, and there is no “right” answer. The interviewer wants to assess your ability to think and come up with a solution. The real answer is the process you use to come up with your solution.
I would love to see the solution you came up with. Please share it with us on twitter or reply to this mail.
Day 4 - Completed ✅
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