Cracking the PM Interview

Cracking the PM Interview argues that PM interviews feel random because product management is misunderstood and inconsistent across companies—but the interview process itself follows patterns you can master. If you learn what each company values, craft a clear personal pitch, research products deeply, and practice the major question categories with structured frameworks, you can replace anxiety with repeatable performance.

The heart of the book is this: interviews reward candidates who demonstrate the real PM skill blend—user empathy, analytical thinking, business judgment, and influence without authority—while communicating clearly under pressure. Your resume must showcase measurable impact at a glance. Your behavioral stories must be concise and structured. Your product and strategy answers must balance users, feasibility, and business outcomes. Your estimation and case work must show disciplined reasoning, not lucky guessing.

When you prepare this way, you aren’t hoping to “get lucky” in interviews. You’re proving you can do the job—using the same structured thinking you’ll need once you’re the PM responsible for shipping great products.

Gayle Laakmann McDowell is a well-known career development and interview preparation expert in the tech industry. She founded and leads CareerCup, a platform focused on helping candidates prepare for competitive technical and product interviews. Her professional background includes software engineering roles at major technology companies, and she has authored multiple widely used interview-prep books, including Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the PM Interview. She holds degrees in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Wharton, and she draws on both hiring insight and coaching experience to make interview processes more understandable and navigable.