- Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time? …
- What are your achievements? …
- Once the savings have been delivered what comes next? …
- If you can’t deliver any more margin savings then what value do you deliver? …
- Finally – do you have any questions?
I was asked to give a talk to a group of CTOs recently. Going into the interview, they asked four questions:
I tried to push past some of the more obvious answers and below are the notes I wrote for myself going into the session.
POLICE OFFICER Interview Questions And Answers! (A CORE COMPETENCY Tutorial!)
Example: “I believe it’s important to get to know our target market so we can create products that appeal to them. In my last role as chief product officer at XYZ Company, I worked with the marketing team to survey our customers about their preferences for certain features in our software. We used this information to make changes to our existing software and develop new products that better suited our customers’ needs.”
Example: “I think it’s important for a chief product officer to be involved in all aspects of the business, including customer service. I would start by listening to customers’ concerns and complaints to find out what they like about our products and services and what they don’t like. Then, I’d use that information to create a plan for improving customer service. For example, if many customers are calling us with questions about shipping times, we could hire more employees to work in our call center.”
Example: “In my last role as chief product officer for a software company, I had to decide whether or not we should continue developing one of our products. The product was already in its third iteration, but it wasn’t selling well. We were spending a lot of money on development costs, so I decided to hold a meeting with all of the stakeholders involved—including marketing, sales and customer service—to discuss the pros and cons of continuing to develop the product.
Example: “I’ve worked with several different product development methodologies throughout my career, but I find Agile to be the most effective for my team’s needs. It allows us to work on smaller projects that we can complete within a short period of time. This helps me stay organized and ensures that my team members are able to meet their deadlines. Additionally, it gives us the opportunity to get feedback from our customers early in the process so we can make changes before launching new products.”
Another important skill is problem-solving. A chief product officer needs to be able to solve problems quickly and efficiently. This could include finding solutions to technical issues or figuring out ways to increase revenue from products. Finally, a chief product officer should have strong leadership skills. They need to be able to lead teams of developers, designers and other employees.”
Top Chief Product Officer(CPO) Interview Questions and Answers [2022]
This question helps the interviewer to understand how genuinely you are interested in the company and its products. It indicates you have done some analysis of the organization. So, describe the functional areas of business and their major products in your answer.
Example: I’m familiar with your business and have tried one of your products. It was a finance application that helped me keep track of my expenses and stay organized. I also liked its latest update, which offers smooth performance and personalized suggestions.
What are the ingredients for a strong product organization (prod-eng-design)?
First, I want to talk about shared goals. Do not, not, not create separate OKRs. I’m not talking about maintenance items like keeping 99.9% uptime. I’m talking about goals — the things we are chasing.
This takes getting together at the leadership level, throwing all the goals and challenges on the table, and working it out together. For example, at Meetup, our code maintenance “surface area” was 5-10 times bigger than the code we were working on at any point in time to deliver new customer value. Our teams had ambitious OKRs trying to create new value for customers and the business, but they also had maintenance responsibilities. When a maintenance issue arose, it derailed the team from their goals. Something had to give somewhere. This wasn’t Yvette’s problem (our CTO) or my problem (as CPO) — we had to solve it together. We needed to pick the least worst option of how to balance these competing issues, and then together sell our CEO on our path forward.
Second, help create strong guardrails for the teams. This means a strong and well-understood company strategy, which allows you to push decision making down and out to the edges, and coherent working principles and values. And engineering, design and PM can’t just focus on their own culture to the exclusion of the others, but work to build understanding, appreciation and empathy.
Oh and one more opinion on this topic — as a general rule, I believe in escalation paths not giving decision-making “ownership” to a specific person. Everyone on a team is entitled to ask questions and challenge a decision. If there is a fundamental disagreement on a team which they can’t resolve, they should escalate it up a level — not for the next level to make the decision necessarily, but for that level to help them make the decision. At Meetup, I said, if your team is stuck, you have to pull in a VP – any VP in product, engineering, or design. I trusted all of the VPs to look at the bigger picture and help the team make a small call.
All this starts at the top. If the executives walk the talk, people will follow. If there is tension between the leaders, people know and the teams will be wary of each other.
A good CPO and a good CTO will make better decisions together. They will see each other’s blind spots. The real issue, as an exec, is whether you have a quality partner whom you can trust. Do you have the kind of relationship where you can push each other while respecting and appreciating each other’s strengths?
I’ve run both product and engineering multiple times in my career, and have known engineering leaders who could successfully run product and design. There are times when it’s useful to have everything report to one person, but I would always rather have a strong partner. Granted, I would rather have no partner than a weak partner, but the best is a strong partner.
I’ve got 4 initial responses to that:
- First, don’t try to build the perfect system. There is no such thing. We’re constantly rebuilding our systems every few years. Accept it. (No, I’m not saying build crap) This ties into the need for everyone to stay aware of which decisions (business, technical, whatever) are one-way doors versus two-way doors.
- Second, and this one is really tactical but I swear it’s one of the biggest killers of team pace, if you get confused about what you are building and why, stop coding and ask. And you would think that would slow down the team, breaking flow and all that, but the real time and energy killer is unwinding all the work an engineer did when they made the wrong assumptions. It’s irritating to break flow, but necessary.
‘What didn’t you get a chance to include on your résumé?’
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson explains in his new book “The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership,” that he isnt a fan of the traditional job interview, reports Business Insiders Richard Feloni.
“Obviously a good CV is important, but if you were going to hire by what they say about themselves on paper, you wouldnt need to waste time on an interview,” Branson writes. Thats why he likes to ask: What didnt you get a chance to include on your résumé?
FAQ
How do I prepare for a customer service officer interview?
- What is customer service? …
- What does good customer service mean to you? …
- Why do you think you’d be a good fit with our company? …
- Why do you want to work in customer service? …
- Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult customer, and how you handled it.
What questions are asked in VP Round?
- What is your work ethic?
- How well do you work with others?
- Are you a leader or follower?
- Can you work under pressure?
- Describe a difficult problem and how you dealt with it.
What questions should I ask a CPO?
- How well do you manage supplier risk?
- Is your organisation still bogged down by manual processes?
- What’s the adoption rate of procurement solutions in your organisation?
- How data-driven is your decision-making?
- How much do you know about external labor across your organisation?
