By Remi · · 3 min read
How to remember useful examples from your work
You’ve worked on projects, solved problems, and helped your team get things done. Then you sit down to prepare for a product manager interview, and you can’t think of a single good example.
Start with one project you remember well. Look for a moment when you had to make a choice, work through a disagreement, or figure out why something wasn’t working. That gives you somewhere specific to begin.
Examples are fictional illustrations, not testimonials or Remi’s in-product prompts. Use your own experience and leave out confidential information.
In this guide
Start with questions you can actually answer
“What’s my biggest achievement?” can leave you staring at a blank page. Try these instead:
- When did a customer tell you something that changed your plan?
- What did you decide to leave out of a release, and why?
- When did you and an engineer or designer disagree about what to do?
- What shipped but didn’t work the way you expected?
- When did you spot a problem before the rest of the team noticed it?
- What kept coming up in support tickets or customer calls?
Write down whatever comes to mind. At this stage, a few rough notes are enough.
Use reminders from the work itself
If you’re still stuck, pick one project or a month you remember well. Think through the meetings, decisions, and people involved.
Your calendar, old notes, or a performance review you’re allowed to access may help. Look for moments when something changed: a deadline moved, a customer pushed back, or the team reconsidered a feature.
Keep confidential details out of your preparation notes. You only need a short summary in your own words.
A small moment can give you plenty to talk about
Imagine a PM whose first note is:
“Worked on onboarding.”
That’s broad enough to hide almost everything useful. After thinking back to customer calls, they remember:
“Customers kept asking whether they needed to invite their whole team during setup. I brought examples to the designer, and we agreed to make that step optional. In the next round of calls, the customers I spoke with got through it without asking for help.”
Now there’s a specific experience to explore. What did customers find confusing? Why make the step optional? Did anyone disagree? What did the PM do themselves?
This illustrative example starts with an everyday problem. The details give the person something concrete to discuss in an interview.
Capture the facts before writing the answer
For each experience you remember, jot down four things:
- What was happening? A sentence or two about the problem.
- What did you do? Your own part in the work.
- Why did you do it? What led you to that choice.
- What happened next? A result, feedback, or something you learned.
If you can’t remember a detail, mark it to check later. You don’t need to turn these notes into a polished STAR answer yet.
Try this for ten minutes
Choose one project and write down three moments when the plan changed.
For each, finish:
- “We originally planned to…”
- “Then we noticed…”
- “My part was…”
- “After that…”
Keep all three examples for now. You can choose which one fits an interview question once you have the details in front of you.
When you’re ready to develop one of those examples, bring your rough notes to Remi and develop your answer.
This guide covers past-experience PM interview preparation. Interview expectations vary by employer; additional product, analytical, or technical preparation may be needed.