This is the prompt we would share with candidates. As you will see, it's relatively short (less than one page).

We made it short on purpose. Part of the expectation is that the candidate would do some thinking, build ideas and their own opinions, and determine what they think is important. This exercise is meant to simulate the kinds of ambiguous product strategy questions a PM would face in this role. We felt that giving too much information would mess with that experience.

In our org, the hiring manager wrote the prompt and a rough scorecard. In this case, it was a combination of me and the Director of Activation. We collaborated on it, using something I had written earlier for her interview. These sorts of simulations are often derivative work and evolve over time.

At this point, the hiring manager was ultimately responsible for the process. However, over time, we had a PM whose partial job was also to drive interviewing. We also got to the point -- later on -- where we had a couple of simulations with clear scorecards.

A lot of growth PMs are focused on small experiments. At this moment at Slack, we really wanted to hire someone that could do bigger product thinking. So, we wanted to make sure that the candidate guidance emphasized that we wanted to see bigger bets instead of a roadmap of smaller ideas.

Eventually, we started sharing the Slack standard template with candidates in case they wanted to use our design style.

It was important to put some sort of time boundary on the exercise.

Fareed Mosavat

When hiring a new Senior Product Manager for Onboarding at Slack, we used this hiring simulation exercise to help better understand how candidates would perform in the role.

👋 We’re Slack. We give teams superpowers by enabling all their communication in one place.

🚀 We’re the fastest-growing B2B app ever.

🎩 Our magic number is 2000 messages. The value of slack is seen through messaging and by 2000 the whole team has seen the value.

📉A larger portion of teams are being created on mobile but these mobile teams are less likely to be successful (and send 2000 messages).

⚒ We need to figure out what’s holding these mobile users back and update our onboarding experience to ensure they are successful.

🥇Luckily, we’re the best in the world at delivering simple, delightful, effective onboarding experiences that make customers successful.

We have tried smaller improvements that address low-hanging fruit, but none of them have worked well enough. Now, we feel like it’s time to take a bigger swing. What big, creative bets would you take, and why?

 that walks through your thought process and recommendations. The presentation should be able to stand alone, but you can expect to present it to us as part of your interview. The 60 minute interview will consist of two parts:

30 minutes where you will introduce yourself and present your recommendations

You have 48 hours to complete this exercise, but we expect you spend about 

We are much more interested in your process and approach than we are in any right answer.

After you send your presentation, the hiring manager will review it and decide if you will be invited for an onsite day, which would include an interview around this exercise plus a few more 1-on-1 interviews.

Hiring simulation for a Senior Product Manager, Onboarding role at Slack

Take Home Exercise Instructions

Sign up to see more