Microsoft PM interview (questions, process, prep)

Microsoft product manager interviews are difficult. With a PM applicant success rate of about 0.35%, you’ll have to stand out from the pack in order to receive an offer.

That’s where we come in. We’ve collected 201 Microsoft PM interview questions from Glassdoor, categorized them, and added a step by step preparation plan to help you maximize your chances of success.

Note that some Microsoft product management positions fall under the job title of “program manager.” For extra clarification on the job title and responsibilities of the role you’re applying for, we recommend consulting with your recruiter.

Let’s get started.

• Process and timeline
• Example questions
• Preparation tips

Click here to practice with Microsoft ex-interviewers

1. Interview process and timeline ↑

What's the Microsoft PM interview process and timeline? On average it takes four to eight weeks to get an offer, but it can sometimes take longer.

The Microsoft PM interview steps:

1. Resume, cover letter, and referrals
2. Phone screen (one interview)
3. On-site (four to five interviews)
4. Hiring committee review
5. You get an offer!

Note: if you are interviewing for a product leadership position (VP, Director, Group PM), learn more about the process and how to prepare here.

1.1 What interviews to expect

First, it's important that you understand the different stages of your interview process with Microsoft. Here is what you can expect:

• Resume and cover letter screening / employee referral
• Phone screen: one interview
• On-site: four to five interviews

Resume and cover letter screening

First, recruiters will look at your resume and assess if your experience matches the open position. This is the most competitive step in the process, as millions of candidates do not make it past this stage.

You can use this free guide to help tailor your resume to the position you’re targeting. 

And if you’re looking for expert feedback, you can also get input from our team of ex-FAANG recruiters, who will cover what achievements to focus on (or ignore), how to fine tune your bullet points, and more.

Phone screen

Next, the Microsoft interview process starts with an HR recruiter call. The objective of this conversation is to understand more about your background and to confirm that you've got a chance of getting the job at all. You can expect behavioral questions such as, "Tell me about yourself," "Why Microsoft?" or, "Tell me about a product or feature you launched from start to finish." And you should also be prepared for a couple questions around general product thinking like, “What’s your favorite Microsoft product and how would you improve it?”

On-site

If you get past this HR screen the recruiter will then organize on-site interviews. You'll typically spend a full day at one of Microsoft’s offices and participate in four to five interviews. Each interview will last about 45 to 60mins and be a one-on-one with a mix of other folks from the PM team. In most cases you will be interviewed by your future PM peers, a senior PM, and a senior executive who is likely the hiring manager leading your recruitment. You can expect a lot of behavioral questions (more on that below), but there will be plenty of technical, design, strategy, estimation, analysis, and puzzle questions as well.

1.2 What happens behind the scenes

Your recruiter is leading the process and taking you from one stage to the next. Here's what happens at each of the stages described above:

• After the phone screen, your recruiter decides to move you to the on-site interviews or not, depending on how well you've done in relation to the criteria provided to them by the hiring manager.
• During the on-site, interviewers will make recommendation notes to hire you or not, and each interviewer will be able to see all the notes from previous interviews.
• If recommended by the majority, at the end of the day you’ll be invited to what Microsoft commonly calls the “as appropriate” interview (given it is only scheduled if you have enough positive recommendations at that point). This interview is an opportunity to ask intelligent questions about the organization and show off your passion for Microsoft, the department, and the industry.
• If the majority of all interviewers recommend you, the hiring team will make you an offer usually within a week.

It's also important to note that recruiters and people who refer you have little influence on the overall process. They can help you get an interview at the beginning but that's about it.

1.3 How many PMs does Microsoft hire every year?

At this point you might be wondering what your chances are. The good news is that Microsoft hires an increasing number of engineers and PMs every year.

Using the number of employees listed in Microsoft’s annual reports, data available from LinkedIn, and industry averages, we estimate that the number of PMs at Microsoft grew from about 5,200 to 11,900 between 2007 and 2021. At the time of writing this article, Microsoft hires roughly 1,000 PMs per year.

Note: the total number of employees at Microsoft decreased in 2010, 2015, and 2016, which explains the dip you can see in the number of PMs at the company for these years.

Microsoft needs more and more PMs every year, which might lead you to believe that getting hired isn't that hard. But this actually isn't the case. Microsoft received 2m applications in 2018 across all its departments, but only ended up hiring 7k employees in the same year. The success rate is therefore 0.35%, and the company is one of the toughest employers to break into in the world.

The good news is that cracking PM interviews is actually really manageable once you know how to prepare. So, let's take a look at the different types of questions Microsoft will ask you.

For extra help, take a look at our list of top 10 PM interview tips.

2. Example questions ↑

The main difficulty with PM interviews at Microsoft is that you will be asked a wide range of questions. We've grouped them in five buckets and analyzed how frequently they were asked by Microsoft interviewers using questions reported by former candidates on Glassdoor.com.

Here are the results of our analysis:

1. Behavioral questions (46%)
2. Design questions (28%)
3. Strategy questions (15%)
4. Technical questions (8%)
5. Other questions (3%)

Let's step through each type of question, discuss why Microsoft asks these questions, and take a look at a few examples in each category.

2.1 Behavioral questions (46%)

As in most interview processes you'll need to answer behavioral interview questions. Microsoft places a heavy emphasis in this area, and the questions asked tend to fall into three categories:

• your motivation to work at Microsoft and as a PM
• your past experiences
• your understanding of what good PMs do and don't do

These questions aren't particularly hard compared to some of the others listed in this article and are sometimes overlooked by candidates. It's worth spending time to prepare answers for them to build a small edge against other applicants.

For more information, check out our article on how to answer behavioral interview questions, which focuses primarily on Facebook behavioral questions but can be applied to any company.

2.2 Design questions (28%)

A core task for PMs is to help design new product features and improve existing ones. It's therefore not surprising that design questions are a part of Microsoft PM interviews.

These questions assess your customer empathy, creativity, and ability to use a structured approach to design products. Here are a few questions Microsoft has asked in the past. For more information check out our articles on how to answer product design questions, product improvement questions and the favorite product question in PM interviews.

2.3 Strategy questions (15%)

PMs are responsible for setting the product vision and roadmap to deliver it. In other words, they're in charge of product strategy.

In your interviews you'll therefore be given strategic questions to discuss with your interviewer. These questions assess if you're comfortable thinking about the wide range of aspects good PMs need to take into account when making product decisions. This includes competition, pricing, marketing, time to market, etc.

Thinking through all these aspects requires creativity and a structured approach. For more information, check out our article on how to answer strategy interview questions.

2.4 Technical questions (8%)

Microsoft expects a fair amount of technical knowledge from candidates. Microsoft PMs tend to be more technical than average, usually having a degree in computer science or significant previous experience with software and engineering.

As a consequence, you'll typically need to answer a few technical questions during your interview process. As you can see below these questions are not a test of coding expertise in a particular language. They are centered on whether or not you understand and can offer simple explanations of certain technical concepts — especially algorithms.

For more information, check out our article on how to answer technical interview questions.

2.5 Other questions (3%)

Good PMs are critical thinkers and can make confident and swift decisions. Making these decisions often requires analytical and estimation skills which Microsoft will test you on in the recruiting process.

• Analysis questions: These questions test how well you work with available data. A good PM can identify the correct KPIs for a product and use them to deliver results.
• Estimation questions: In estimation questions, interviewers don't care so much about whether you get to the right answer or not. What they are really interested in is how you think through the problem and how comfortable you are making assumptions and simple calculations.
• Puzzle questions: Microsoft interviewers also like to ask puzzle questions. They are testing your general knowledge of math and scientific concepts, as well as your ability to deal with seemingly impossible problems by thinking outside the box.

For more information, check out our articles on how to answer metric questions and estimation questions in PM interviews.

3. Preparation tips ↑

Now that you know what questions to expect, let's focus on preparation. 

Below, you’ll find links to free resources and four introductory steps to help you prepare for your Microsoft PM interviews.

3.1 Deep dive into the product / organization

As you've probably figured out from the example questions listed above, you can't become a PM at Microsoft without being familiar with the company's products and its organization. You'll therefore need to do some homework before your interviews.

Here are some resources to help you get started with this:

• Microsoft annual report (by Microsoft)
• Microsoft strategy teardown (by CB Insights)
• Microsoft vision and mission analysis (by Panmore Institute)

3.2 Learn a consistent method for answering PM interview questions

As mentioned previously, Microsoft will ask you questions that fall into certain categories like behavioral, design, strategy, estimation, and metric questions. Approaching each question with a predefined method will enable you to build strong interview habits.

Then, when it comes time for your interviews, these habits will reduce your stress and help you to make a great impression.

If you’re just looking for a jumping-off point, you can start learning about the different question types you’ll need to master in the following blog articles:

• Behavioral questions
• Product design questions
• Product improvement questions
• Favorite product question
• Strategy questions
• Metric questions
• Technical questions
• Estimation questions
• Prioritization questions

Once you understand how to answer each question type, you also need to be able to communicate your answers clearly, under the pressure of interview conditions. That’s where practice comes into play.

3.3 Practice by yourself or with peers

In our experience, practicing by yourself is a great way to prepare for PM interviews. You can start practicing alone, asking and answering questions out loud, to help you get a feel for the different types of PM interview questions. It will help you perfect your step-by-step approach for each question type. And it also gives you time to correct your early mistakes.

You can find free practice questions on articles like this one or on YouTube.

If you have friends or peers who can do mock interviews with you, that's a great option too. This can be especially helpful if your friend has experience with PM interviews, or is at least familiar with the process.

3.4 Practice with experienced PM interviewers

Finally, you should also try to practice product manager mock interviews with expert ex-interviewers, as they’ll be able to give you much more accurate feedback than friends and peers. 

If you know a Product Manager who can help you, that's fantastic! But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can practice 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from leading tech companies like Microsoft. Learn more and start scheduling sessions today. 

Keep reading: product manager interview articles