Meta program manager interview (questions, process, prep)

Your recruiter is leading the process and taking you from one stage to the next. Here's what happens behind the scenes:

• After the hiring manager interview, your interviewer submits their ratings and notes to the internal system. Your recruiter then reviews the feedback, and decides to move you to the onsite interview or not depending on how well you've done.
• After the onsite, the five interviewers will make a recommendation on hiring you or not and the recruiter compiles your "packet" (interview feedback, resume, referrals, etc.). If they think you can get the job, they will present your case at the next candidate review meeting.
• Candidate review meetings are used to assess all candidates who have recently finished their interview loops and are close to getting an offer. Your packet will be analyzed and possible concerns will be discussed. Your interviewers are invited to join your candidate review meeting, but will usually only attend if there's a strong disagreement in the grades you received (e.g. 2 no hires, 3 hires). If after discussions the team still can't agree on whether you should get an offer or not, you might be asked to do a follow-up interview to settle the debate. At the end of the candidate review meeting, a hire / no-hire recommendation is made for consideration by the hiring committee.
• The hiring committee includes senior leaders from across Meta. This step is usually a formality and the committee follows the recommendation of the candidate review meeting. The main focus is on fine-tuning the exact level and therefore compensation you will be offered.

It's also important to note that hiring managers 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.

2. Example questions

Now let's dive into more details on the four types of interviews you should be prepared for during your Meta program manager interviews. We'll address these roughly in their order of emphasis for program managers.

• Program sense
• Partnership
• Leadership
• Role specific / technical

In the below subsections, we've also compiled a selection of real Meta program manager interview questions, according to data from Glassdoor (*note: we've adjusted the phrasing of some questions to improve the grammar or readability). These are great example questions that you can use to start practicing for your interviews.

2.1 Program sense

Meta program managers design and execute programs from end-to-end, and it's important for them to have strong project management skills, like planning, working with others and unblocking situations when needed.

This is the part of the interview process where you need to show you think about programs in a comprehensive way (e.g. resources, risks, KPIs, etc.) and have a track record of executing perfectly. If you'd like to get a more general understanding of the questions that program managers are asked, you can also read our program manager interview guide.

Now here are a few example FB program sense questions from Glassdoor. Notice that you should be ready to answer hypothetical questions (e.g. How would you do XYZ), and behavioral questions (e.g. Tell me about a time you did XYZ).

2.2 Partnership

Meta program managers usually work in cross-functional teams with other engineers, product managers, PMMs, designers, data analysts, etc. They need to be able to communicate clearly, work with others efficiently, build trust and relationships, etc.

This is the part of the interview process where you really want to show that you are good at working with others and driving successful cross-functional collaboration. Be prepared to talk about situations where you've used influence to drive stakeholder alignment, engaged across multiple teams, etc.

Below you'll find a list of example partnership questions from Glassdoor. In addition to questions from Meta interview reports, we've also added a couple of questions from Google to provide additional practice materials (Google questions are marked at the end with asterisks).

2.3 Leadership

Meta program managers lead programs but don't have direct authority over most of the resources they work with. As a result, they need to be able to lead teams by influencing and motivating others, while also resolving conflicts, driving alignment, etc.

This interview will feel similar to the partnership interview but will focus more on pure leadership rather than your ability to work in a cross-functional environment.

We've compiled a list of example leadership questions below. In addition to leadership questions, we've also included several behavioral questions that you might get asked in any Meta interview (e.g. "What are your strengths and weaknesses?", "Why Meta?", etc.). All of the below questions were reported in Meta/Facebook interview reports on Glassdoor.

2.4 Role specific / technical

Meta program manager interviews tend to focus on the 3 areas we've just covered. However, you should also do your homework on the job description and any other details about the role that you can find.

You'll want to be prepared to speak knowledgeably about the functional area where you'd be working. If your role would be in a technical area, or if you'd be working closely with engineers, then your interviewers may also decide to ask you a few technical questions to evaluate your depth of knowledge and your ability to communicate about technical details.

We haven't listed specific example questions for this section because the questions would likely vary significantly role-to-role. However, if you'd like to get a sense for the type of technical questions that would be relevant to program managers, then you can look at the technical questions in our Meta TPM interview guide.

3. How to prepare

Now that you know what questions to expect, let's focus on how to prepare. Here are the four preparation steps we recommend, to help you get an offer as a Meta program manager. For extra tips, take a look at our guide to program manager interview prep.

3.1 Learn about Meta's culture

Most candidates fail to do this. But before investing tens of hours preparing for an interview at Meta, you should take some time to make sure it's actually the right company for you.

Meta is prestigious and it's therefore tempting to ignore that step completely. But in our experience, the prestige in itself won't make you happy day-to-day. It's the type of work and the people you work with that will.

If you know program managers, TPMs, engineers, or PMs who work at Meta or Facebook (or used to) it's a good idea to talk to them to understand what the culture is like. In addition, we would recommend reading about Meta's 6 core values and Facebook's hacker culture.

3.2 Practice by yourself

As mentioned above, you'll have four main types of interviews at Meta: program sense, partnership, leadership, and role-specific / technical.

For program sense interviews, we recommend starting with our program management primer, then diving into how Meta does program management. As a starting point, consider reading this blog post by Anand Parikh. Anand is a senior TPM at Meta, and although program management and technical program management (TPM) are not exactly the same, they have a lot of overlap at Meta. 

Another good step is to write out answers to the program sense questions we've listed above. You can also read our separate program manager interview guide in order to find additional example questions to practice with.

For partnership and leadership interviews, we recommend reading our leadership and people management primers, as well as learning our step-by-step method for answering behavioral questions. You can then use that method to craft answers for the questions we have listed above.

You should also make sure you're well prepared for role-specific questions, and you should learn as much information as you can about the role before your interviews. You can begin by doing online research, reaching out to connections in a similar role or area, and your recruiter may also be able to provide some additional information in advance. And if you'd like to study up on technical questions, you can practice with the examples in our TPM guide.

Finally, a great way to practice all these different types of questions is to interview yourself out loud. Play the role of both the candidate and the interviewer, asking questions and answering them, just like two people would in an interview. Trust us, this can have a huge impact on how well you communicate your answers.

3.3 Practice with peers

Practicing by yourself will only take you so far. One of the main challenges of program manager interviews is communicating your different stories in a way that's easy to understand. As a result, we strongly recommend practicing program manager interviews with a peer interviewing you. A great place to start is to practice with friends or family members if you can.

3.4 Practice with ex-interviewers

Practicing with peers can be a great help, and it's usually free. But at some point, you'll start noticing that the feedback you are getting from peers isn't helping you that much anymore. Once you reach that stage, we recommend practicing with ex-interviewers from top tech companies.

If you know a program manager or someone who has experience running interviews at Meta or another big tech company, then 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 Meta. Learn more and start scheduling sessions today.