How a Pandemic-Inspired Idea Could Revolutionize Growth at Facebook
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Preparing the interview
Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
Um, OK. So thinking about how you prepped for this interview. What is the most surprising thing you've learned about this company? And their growth methodologies.
CANDIDATE
OK, um. So in preparing for this interview, one of the most surprising things was a lot of Like growth best practices are based off of what uh the Facebook team has been doing over like the past decade or so. Uh, so what I mean by that is in my day to day when I'm trying to think about how to dissect the problem I'm seeing at work, um, I'm going to the various blog authors and trying to read about, OK, um, how they've approached this problem in previous times and more often than not, they're referencing. Uh, literature or insights that have been, uh, driven up by the Facebook team.
INTERVIEWER
OK, but that, that's not really specific as to what you've learned though.
CANDIDATE
Um, and specific to like, um, OK. Um, Got it so specific to um. The team, OK, give me a moment.
INTERVIEWER
Less about the team and just more about tactics, strategies, etc. What's the most surprising thing you've learned, right?
CANDIDATE
Mhm.
INTERVIEWER
In in terms of how they're, you know, executing.
CANDIDATE
Um, Yeah, so I guess the, the hard part is around being surprised, um. Uh, because from what I've gathered, um, doing my research in preparation for this interview, um, I've learned that the Facebook team is, uh, running experiment experiments continuously to figure out, um, how to affect the relevant growth lever, um, whether that's, um, engagement or acquisition, um. But I, I see that as pretty typical in terms of um a typical like growth growth manager position. OK, well, let me,
Interviewer Insight
[note: This is not a sufficient level of detail or depth expected for a role at Facebook. There was literally almost nothing insightful presented by the candidate here.]
INTERVIEWER
let me try changing the question around a little bit. It, it would not be uncommon for an interview like this to be asked for an interesting idea, uh, that you had about, uh, how to grow our customer base. So I'm, I'm curious what interesting ideas you would want to try or talk about, uh, that you've, that you've concocted as, as prepping for a role as a growth manager. Um, what's, what's your one best idea?
CANDIDATE
Got it. Um, so, something that I've noticed during the pandemic is, um, we're spending a lot more time online, we're on Zoom meetings often. Um, however, there's still that feeling of not being connected, and I know Facebook's, uh, mission is to connect people, uh, create more connectedness within the world, um, and Just looking at what other platforms have done. So for example, with Netflix, you can watch a movie with a friend, um, and I know Facebook is, uh, released rooms, which has allowed people to like hang out in different rooms, um, but I think something that would be interesting is being able to like read an article with a friend or read a book with a friend. So bringing the idea of book clubs into Facebook and what that would solve for is, um, looking, solving an issue for uh A group of users that perhaps aren't currently using Facebook or perhaps uh currently aren't uh. Doing that respective behavior of, you know, having a book club in an online form.
Interviewer Insight
[note: it's good that the candidate had an answer ready to go. Bonus points for clearly articulating the company mission. This demonstrates that the candidate is taking the process seriously and that they have put effort into preparing.]
CANDIDATE
Um, so when I go through my newsfeed, I think You know, people are sharing these articles, um, but there's not a lot of discourse around what's actually happening. Um, so, social reading to me seems like a way to Um, be able to get on the same page with. Uh, the people that you're discussing the respective article around, and it would less be about like shouting, uh, Opinions back and forth. Yeah.
Interviewer Insight
[note: there are quite a few issues from a product point of view that are clear misses here in terms of connecting the dots on things that aren't happening, what are unmet customer needs, and what customers actually want. Without at least attempting to connect those dots for the interviewer the candidate is leaving open to subjectivity the analysis and judgement of their idea.]
CANDIDATE
Got it. Um, so related to releasing this feature, um, so the first thing that I wanna solve for is. Um, Engagement with the Facebook platform. So I believe that what I would, the data that I would look at is seeing, looking at my cohort of users who are less active on Facebook, um now versus let's say, um. versus historical times, um, and see if releasing this feature would improve the engagement with the platform so um. Um, I don't know, I'm getting stuck. um, OK, so give me a moment. Sure, take your time. Software engagement. OK, so, taking a step back, um, this idea of social reading, I believe, will, um, Solve for Uh, user churn and churn is happening as users are going through their respective news feed. They're not seeing, uh. They're not seeing content that's um. We're just seeing content that's around like shouting a specific point of view and not uh true discourse or like Socratic seminars. So what I'd like to see through uh releasing this social reading feature is an improvement in engagement, a reduction in churn, and the way I would measure that is looking at um. The specific group of users that are having this feature deployed to them, seeing if their engagement with the Facebook platform increases. Um, so during a normal week are they coming back to the platform more than once, um, is, as we look at, um, retention over time, are they, um, is there less turn for the group of users that, um, have this. Um, Feature enabled for them and then also. I guess it's what I would try and measure is like general sentiment or around like the Uh, language used when people are sharing posts on Facebook and see is that sentiment. Just, um, more around likes, like single, like likes and uh reactions, or is there, are we seeing an increase of um posts that are coming that are like longer than something like, let's say 30 characters, and to me that would show an increase in Socratic discussion.
Interviewer Insight
[note during the interview: there was very little presented that gave the impression that this was a well thought through answer. Couldn't speak to the customer type at all.]
Interviewer Insight
[note: The candidate is optimizing for engagement, but failed to note that their metric going into this discussion was closely tied to engagement. People aren't reading articles and shouting at each other. Would a feature like this change that? Would they shout more? How would the engagement metric need to be adjusted to handle sentiment?]
CANDIDATE
Um, is this actually solving a problem? Uh,
INTERVIEWER
sure, that is, that is one,
CANDIDATE
uh. Um, and how many users are actually facing this problem. I, I think those are the two most important questions. Um, and yeah, I guess the reason that idea came to mind is as I was preparing for this interview, going back to your original question, I was going through my newsfeed, and I was asking myself, well, how come I'm using Facebook less than I used to when I was, uh, say, in college. Um, and I was going through some of my old groups, um, specifically like for classes, and we were talking. I thought there was like a lot of discussion around happenings that happened in class, but when I go through my feed now, there's just these single posts that are being shared and that may have like one or two reactions, but there's no um. I was just trying to mention, uh, discourse or comments that caused me to be engaged with the platform.
INTERVIEWER
OK. Just as a freebie, I would offer to you that you should ask if this has been tried before.
CANDIDATE
So this, OK.
INTERVIEWER
Uh, because it has many times and it never works. Web 2.0, Web 1.0, there's always been some somebody who wanted to do social reading, social commenting, sharing this, and that, it never works. It never ever works. Uh, it devolves into exactly what you think it would devolve into. Um.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
The first stop on the path to Customer Obsession is having a clear picture in the mind of who the customer actually is. The candidate fell victim to the problem of many product managers which is to solve a problem they have without first identifying if the problem they have is something that is likely to be a widely held issue. Compounding this issue was a lack of discussion around the customer needs which would be met by developing this new feature. The candidate gets points for having done some research on the company and mapping their presented solution to the role.