Test tasks for product manager job applicants

The practice of assigning test tasks—also known as product manager challenges, cases, or take-home projects—to product manager job applicants has recently become as common as it is for designer or developer roles. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this practice, these test tasks are often misused and can lead to candidates being taken advantage of.

Below are a few reasons why it’s often a good idea to think twice before agreeing to such test assignments. (At the end of this article, you'll find real examples of test tasks given by companies like Uber, Zendesk, Evernote, and others.)

1. It’s almost impossible to distinguish a genuine test assignment from a company “fishing” for free ideas. In many cases, these tasks are directly related to the company’s actual business challenges, and some companies exploit this by effectively getting free labor from eager applicants.
   
   

2. Companies severely underestimate the amount of effort required to complete these tasks. What they claim will take “3–4 hours” can easily turn into 3–4 full days of work (or even more). A half-hearted submission won’t get you the job, but delivering a thorough, high-quality result demands an unreasonable amount of unpaid work.
   
   

3. Take-home tasks are not reliable indicators of on-the-job performance. A candidate working on a homework assignment has virtually unlimited resources—friends, the internet, experts, nights, weekends—conditions which rarely reflect real workplace constraints, where decisions often have to be made on the spot with limited time and resources.
   
   

What to Do Instead?

1. Pay candidates for their time. This is the fair approach if you want to keep using test tasks in your hiring process. Hire a candidate for a day or two – they will do their best work and won’t feel taken advantage of.
   
   

2. Use scenario-based exercises during the interview. Present a couple of in-depth scenarios with follow-up questions (preferably not directly related to your own company—use examples from Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., assuming you’re not hiring for those companies). Having candidates think on their feet about challenging situations during an interview can be even more valuable than a take-home test.
   
   

Evernote Product Manager Challenge

This assignment is designed to better understand how you would work through a standard problem that Evernote’s product managers face every day. Select any Evernote product on any platform (but be specific). Write one paragraph describing a change you’d make to the product that would increase its first-week user retention. Then write a brief outline of the process you’d follow from the initial idea through to release, describing how you would implement this change.

Babbel Product Manager Assignment

This exercise is designed to get a sense of how you approach product development and how you communicate your ideas to an audience. There is no right or wrong answer. Completing this assessment will give us insight into your thought process for improving products.

To get started, please pick one digital product you are familiar with from one of these fields:

• Any kind of learning (it doesn’t have to be a language learning product; you could choose Babbel itself, but that’s not required).
  
  

• Personal improvement (for example, a health or productivity app).
  
  

Task 1: Suggest a feature to improve your chosen product. Describe the vision for this feature and how you would measure its success.

Task 2: Develop a user story map for your feature that includes a release roadmap, and create a detailed user flow covering the features of the first release.

Task 3: Pick three user stories from your story map that you would implement first, and write BDD-styled detailed specifications for them (as if you were preparing these stories for grooming with a development team).

Intercom Take-Home Test

This is a short exercise that gives us an opportunity to see broadly how you think about product management, why things are built, and how you approach defining problems. We believe this should take less than 3 hours to complete.

Part 1: A New Intercom Competitor

Imagine you are starting your own company and are intrigued by the amount of activity in the market that Intercom competes in (e.g. customer communication, marketing, support, product research).

As a starting point, look at Intercom, Mixpanel, Urban Airship, Customer.io, Appboy, Sailthru, Reamaze, Kahuna, HelpScout, HelpShift, Olark, Zopim, Zendesk, and any other businesses in this space. Look for opportunities and gaps. Think about what problems these companies are trying to solve and how those problems could be addressed differently.

Please give us a paragraph or two on each of the questions below (feel free to communicate your answers in a format other than plain text if you prefer):

• What problem would you choose to solve for your new company?
  
  

• What product would you design and build?
  
  

• Assuming unlimited resources, what immediate team would you hire to get a first version launched?
  
  

• What would your project plan look like at a high level? How many stages would it have, and how long would each stage take?
  
  

• How would you measure whether that first version was a success?
  
  

Part 2: Software That Excites You

Looking at all the apps you use, which one or two do you think are incredibly well-designed? What is it about them that makes these apps a step above all the others you use?

Uber Mobile App Health PM Exercise

Our goal is to see how you think and tackle problems, so we recommend that you demonstrate the same level of quality that you would in your actual job. Feel free to work in whichever medium(s) you are most comfortable with—just ensure that everyone reviewing it can clearly understand your thought process.

We’d like to emphasize that this should be a free-standing product document, so please clearly outline your assumptions and thought process. You won’t get a chance to present or verbally explain it.

Take-home tips: Having seen a lot of these take-home projects, we find that written documents (as opposed to PowerPoint slides) tend to allow for much more thorough exploration. The key is that your submission should be written so that anyone can review it and understand your thought process. Typically, these exercises end up being about 3–4 pages in a document format. Please feel free to include wireframes, mock-ups, etc. The intended audience for this exercise is your colleagues in Product and Engineering.

We also recommend thinking deeply from a customer perspective. The rider’s perspective is likely more intuitive for most people, but keep in mind that our drivers are equally (if not more) important.

Our team’s mission is that “our mobile apps are as reliable as running water,” and we accomplish this by driving mobile app health via business and engineering metrics while remaining truly customer-obsessed. We are the go-to team that brings visibility to metrics and provides fast, actionable feedback to engineers, PMs, and operations across 400+ cities by focusing end-to-end on prevention, detection, mitigation, and resolution.

We work with a multitude of signals (for example: crashes, network performance, app performance, etc.) and data at massive scale throughout the release cycle and in production. Our success will be determined by creating scalable platforms and experiences across multiple dimensions: SDKs, monitoring, alerting, ticketing, reporting, data visualization, etc.

For this exercise, please focus on Crash Management as an area of opportunity for the team.

• Roadmap & Metrics: How would you go about creating a product roadmap with a focus on app stability? What set of features would you implement to meet your objectives, and why? (Uber’s primary metrics are trips, revenue, and new riders.) Show how you can quantify the impact of the features you outline.
  
  

• Customer Centricity: Who are your customers? How will you prioritize among your customers’ requests?
  
  

• Product Design: Pick one of your ideas, define the problem and the resulting goals. Then propose a detailed solution. We’re looking to see how you communicate your ideas in an actionable format for a team to build.
  
  

Additional notes:

• Feel free to choose any medium to share your thoughts (e.g. Google Doc or slide deck).
  
  

• Please don’t exceed 10 pages or 30 slides. Be specific and thorough with your recommendations.
  
  

• Note that we are interested in your approach, passion, and thought process in addition to your recommendations and conclusions.
  
  

Twitch Writing Sample for Product Manager

As a first step, we would like to request a writing sample. The prompt is as follows:

"The drive to make more creators successful on our platform is continuous. However, we have a complicated ecosystem of first- and third-party offerings and a myriad of different kinds of creators. What is the right strategy for Twitch to win in this space? What measure of success would you suggest? Why should or shouldn’t Twitch pursue this?"

Please write a narrative (typically 2–6 pages) that demonstrates your critical thinking and analysis in response to the prompt above.

Busbud PM Challenge

You are the Senior PM of Web (Desktop & Mobile Web) at Busbud. You know that over 60% of our overall traffic comes via the mobile website, so it is very important to the company.

A user is looking to buy a one-way bus ticket from Madrid to Barcelona on the mobile website. After a Google search for “bus toronto new york,” they land on this page.

Questions:

1. If your only goal is to increase mobile app downloads for Busbud’s iOS and Android apps, describe two key changes you would make to the mobile web route page (or any subsequent screen in the purchase flow). (Note: The user must still be able to easily purchase a ticket using the mobile web, and your changes should not materially harm current mobile web conversion rates.)
   
   

2. If your only goal is to increase conversion rate to maximize ticket sales on the mobile web, describe two key changes you would make to the same flow.
   
   

3. Now assume both goals are equally important (increasing mobile app downloads and mobile web conversion rate). Discuss any trade-offs you would make between your proposed changes above, if any. (Assume that travelers have varied preferences: some prefer apps while others prefer mobile web.)
   
   

Zendesk Product Manager Design Exercise

Familiarize yourself with Zendesk’s multi-product administrative functions by creating a multi-product account. Create a new Support trial, and then create Chat and Talk trials from within this Support account.

Evaluate in detail the current multi-product administrative experience and suggest improvements. Explain how you’d validate and prioritize these suggestions.

As you detail improvements to the multi-product experience, you may want to consider the following:

• How are new product trials created and linked to existing products?
  
  

• What steps are part of the onboarding process?
  
  

• How do admins manage users across multiple products?
  
  

Deliverable: Provide a document detailing your analysis of the multi-product administrative experience. If you suggest UI improvements, low-fidelity mockups are perfectly acceptable for this exercise – we are more interested in getting clear insight into your proposed customer experience.

360dialog Product Manager Challenge

Answer the following questions, and feel free to include mock-ups, screenshots, or any other visual aids you feel are necessary. You may present your work in any format you prefer.

360dialog offers in-app advertising to its customers. One of the advertising products is an incentivized offer wall. Users are presented with a list of offers that they can complete (e.g. fill out a survey or install an app) in exchange for a virtual reward in the app (e.g. 50 game coins). The user then gains access to premium content without spending money.

1. Assuming the offers shown to the user are currently in completely random order, how would you improve the offer wall’s performance by introducing a new ranking algorithm to determine the offer order more optimally?
   
   

2. How would you measure the results, and how would you define success for the new algorithm (i.e. what level of improvement would you expect)?
   
   

3. Design an API that returns all the necessary information for the app developer to render the offer wall, so it can be adapted to their app’s design.
   
   

N26 Product Manager Case

We want to implement vouchers (e.g. gift cards like Amazon vouchers) and special deals (e.g. supermarket promotions) into our product in a way that creates sustainable value for our users as well as for our business, as we explore a potential new revenue stream.

Please create a few slides outlining your concept and approach for how you would implement vouchers into the N26 mobile app in a smart way. Include a short project plan and the major KPIs you would consider. You can include wireframes, but it’s not required.

Thinkific Assignment

For this assignment, please choose a favorite software product that you currently use and write a spec for a new feature you’d like to see developed. Since we don’t have any existing user data, assume you are the only user of this product (if you do have user insights or data for the product you’ve chosen, feel free to use them!).

Some examples of details you might include:

• Why this feature?
  
  

• How does it work?
  
  

• What are the launch plans?
  
  

• How will you measure success?
  
  

… and anything else you think is important! The write-up should be under two pages and shouldn’t take you more than an hour to complete.

We’ve intentionally left the prompt a little vague, because we want to see your full range of creativity. We just ask that you state any assumptions you’ve made when writing the spec so we can understand your thought process.

Yammer Product Manager Homework

Answer the following questions, and feel free to include mock-ups, screenshots, or any other visual aids you feel are necessary.

Instagram Stories

In August 2016, Instagram released Stories.

1. What do you think Instagram’s hypothesis was for building this feature, and what metrics do you think they used to measure results? How do you think they defined success before they launched it?
   
   

2. Based on your hypothesis and the metrics from the first question, let’s assume the feature was not a success. What would that tell you, and what would you do next?
   
   

3. Now let’s assume Stories was a success. What are two or three ways Instagram could build on the success of this feature? For each idea, explain what your goals would be and describe the trade-offs you’d consider before building that feature. If you could build only one of your ideas, which one would it be and why? What would that feature look like? (Include rough mocks or sketches if possible.)
   
   

Veeva Design Exercise

Part 1: Improve Document Templates

The document templates functionality is only minimally complete. It currently consists only of files, not metadata. There isn’t an easy way to tell which templates are used frequently and which aren’t used at all. They are difficult to find, and there isn’t an approval process within Vault. How would you improve this feature?

We know that the vast majority of users import files from their desktop into a particular document type. That would probably remain the primary way documents are added even if the template functionality were more robust. However, the current limitations of templates are likely keeping their adoption below its potential level.

Some of the feedback we have received includes:

• Need to create and manage templates like regular documents (requested by at least 8 customers).
  
  

• Need an approval process for templates (requested by at least 4 customers).
  
  

• Ability to track where a template is used (e.g. seeing which documents use which templates — requested by at least 5 customers).
  
  

Plan on creating a PowerPoint deck describing the key problem(s) to solve, the key concepts introduced in your solution, the proposed screen changes (you can use simple drawing tools like those in PowerPoint or Balsamiq, or whatever your favorite tool is), and a sample user flow. Feel free to include any other items related to your solution as well.

Part 2: Observations about Vault

Pick up to three things in Vault that you would improve to make it a better solution. Why did you choose those three? At a summary level, what would your proposed solutions be? These can be simple changes or more complex enhancements.

Pocket Gems Product Exercise

1. Ad Stuff (1 hr): These questions are to make sure you know what you’re getting into.
   
   a) Play Episode (a mobile storytelling game) and read a few chapters. Let’s say we’d like to show 2–3 ads per chapter immediately after a user spends a pass.
   i) Propose a detailed design of what the user sees and when.
   ii) What are some of the pros and cons of your design from a user perspective? What about from a revenue perspective?
   
   b) What other apps integrate video ads well? Why? (Please cite references and share screenshots if necessary.)
   
   c) What do you think our eCPM is? Are we making our money by CPI or CPM?
   
   d) What kind of advertiser do you think would want to advertise on Episode? What are their KPIs?
   
   e) Page 45 of Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends report suggests that there’s a large mobile advertising opportunity. What has been stopping advertisers from spending their money on mobile so far?
   
   f) What excites you about what’s new (or coming soon) in ad tech? What should we do immediately?
   
   

2. Analytics (1 hr): For the following questions, please download the Excel data file provided in the prompt (the Sessions tab contains all player sessions recorded for this game from 8/1/2014 to 11/1/2014, and the IAPs tab contains all in-app purchase data for these players over the same period).
   
   a) From these datasets, what key metrics would you monitor on an ongoing basis to gauge the game’s health?
   
   b) For each of these metrics, create a graph showing how the metric changed over the three-month period included in the dataset.
   
   c) Based on these graphs, what observations do you have about how these metrics fluctuated or changed over time?
   
   d) What are some potential causes of the changes or fluctuations you identified in (c)?
   
   e) Hint: You may find it useful to create a PivotTable for your analysis (see Microsoft’s guide on creating a PivotTable for reference).
   
   

News360 Product Manager Test Project

Studies show that around 50% of medical patients don’t adhere to their prescribed medication therapies—they forget to take doses, use the wrong dosage, etc. This obviously has a very negative impact on the efficacy of their treatment.

You’ve decided to tackle this problem by designing a platform to help doctors and patients manage medication prescriptions. The basic idea is:

• An iPad app for doctors to issue prescriptions to their patients and track patient adherence.
  
  

• A smartphone app for patients that reminds them to take the proper medication on time (with the correct dosage) and records their compliance with these reminders.
  
  

In version 1.0, you’re limiting the apps to the most common use cases, but still providing full core functionality. Your go-to-market strategy is to market both directly to consumers and to healthcare providers.

• List the set of user stories required to describe the functionality of the platform.
  
  

• Create wireframes for the main screens of the patient app. (Any format is acceptable; feel free to make additional assumptions about the requirements as long as you document them.)
  
  

EA (Electronic Arts) Mobile Product Manager Quantitative Task

Question 1: Modeling
You are a Product Manager for a hit mobile free-to-play game, responsible for projecting how a new feature will perform. Please use Excel to create a projection model for this feature with the following assumptions:

• The feature will be active for one month (30 days).
  
  

• The game is a city-building title.
  
  

• No need to include any costs.
  
  

• Use the following numbers for Low, Medium, and High cases:
  
  

Scenario

DARPU (Daily Average Revenue Per User)

Daily Spender Conversion

Low

$0.10

0.3%

Medium

$0.15

0.7%

High

$0.20

1.1%

The model should include Low, Medium, and High case scenarios. You can use your best-guess numbers for any additional factors you deem relevant. Explain all the assumptions you use. (Also, please create a PowerPoint presentation to answer questions 2–5.)

Question 2: Live Game Operation – Data Analysis
You are the PM for a live game. Develop a report on the provided data sample. Provide an overview of trends and a method for tracking sales of individual items. After analyzing the data, include a summary slide of your findings in your presentation. (Please send the completed data sample Excel file along with your PowerPoint.)

Helpful hints:

• Double-click on the data sample image/file to open the Excel sheet.
  
  

• Complete the data in the “Raw Data” tab as needed.
  
  

• Create a PivotTable to help analyze sales trends.
  
  

• Charts are wonderful.
  
  

Question 3: Game Teardown
The candidate is asked to create a PowerPoint presentation analyzing a top App Store game, showcasing their critical thinking, free-to-play design knowledge, and overall thought process.

1. Provide a brief overview and evaluate the key features of one of the following titles: Clash of Clans, Gummy Drop, or Tsum Tsum.
   
   

2. How does this game acquire, engage, and monetize users?
   
   

3. How does this game formulate and reinforce long-term play behaviors? Think about your experience playing the game and how these aspects entice you to play longer per session, return to the game, and make purchases. Provide a detailed example of what you feel motivates players to delve deeper into the game and why.
   
   

4. Feature Design: Recommend a feature that you would implement to drive a specific KPI that you believe the game should improve.
   
   

5. GaaS Design: Recommend a live event you would create for the game to help drive engagement and monetization. Discuss how this event would work and how it would drive engagement and monetization. Be prepared to discuss how you would increase the ROI on the time and resources required to develop this feature.
   
   

Question 4: Live Game Operations – Acquisition & Monetization
Your city-builder game is struggling. Please address the following scenarios with 2–3 recommendations for each:

• (A) Installs have been steadily trending down. What levers would you explore to increase installs? (Include both marketing initiatives and in-game changes.)
  
  

• (B) You observe that once a user makes two or more purchases, they are significantly more likely to continue spending. However, the majority of users who spend only make one purchase. What would you do to encourage one-time spenders to make a second purchase?
  
  

Question 5: Pricing
You need to come up with a pricing scheme for your mobile city-building game’s virtual currency (coins). The current currency packs available are:

Pack Size

Price

Quantity of Coins

Small Pack

$1

10 coins

Medium Pack

$2

20 coins

Large Pack

$5

50 coins

Is this a good pricing scheme? If not, how would you improve it?

Conclusion

While test tasks for product manager roles can offer valuable insights into a candidate’s thinking, creativity, and problem-solving ability, they are often misused—leading to unrealistic expectations, unpaid labor, and unreliable evaluation outcomes. Companies should strive for more respectful and effective hiring practices, such as paid trials or in-depth scenario-based interviews. Candidates, in turn, should be mindful of the time investment and evaluate whether the assignment offers a fair and transparent reflection of the actual job. A thoughtful, balanced approach benefits both sides—and ultimately leads to stronger, more equitable teams.