Profile of Web Product Manager is of high responsibility. For this profile there should be a proper procedure for selection. During interviews for the profile of Web Product Manager, Product Owner, Process Owner there should be various rounds of interview that should be conducted each by one or two interviewers who are expert in their field. Various rounds (mostly technical) would include:
- Internet Knowledge
- Designing and Usability
- Requirement Analysis
- Development
- Website Management and DNS
- Promotion
- Website Analysis
- Strategy Formation and Decision analysis
Internet Knowledge
A good knowledge and interest in Internet is required for this profile. It is all based on web and internet activities and a candidate must be internet geek and should have the advance knowledge of internet. Questions that can be asked in Internet Knowledge round can include:
- Do you know Internet?
- What is internet?
- How much you rate yourself in terms of knowledge you have about Internet?
- For how many years you have been doing internet?
- How many hours a day you do internet?
- What are your hobbies?
- If you don’t have anything to do, then what you do?
- If you don’t have internet what you do?
- Scope, your imagination, your thoughts about future of Internet?
- What is Internet penetration in your country?
- Have you worked on websites earlier?
- How many websites you have worked upon earlier?
- Do you have your own websites?
- What are the latest updates in Internet World?
- What is your Email Address? And why this Email Address?
- On how many websites you think you have an account?
- Asking Questions on various Internet terms?
- Asking about various types of websites like Email, Social Networking, Free Domain name, Free web hosting, Social bookmarking along with their features, Blogs, Support forums.
- What are blogs?
- What are forums?
- What is microblogging.
Designing and Usability
Designing and usability is another important factor for a website. If a website doesn’t have a good look and right alignment, arrangement of content and links then you won’t have repeat users and bounce rate will be high.
- What all you know about web designing.
- Ask about knowledge of Web designing tools.
- Do you know about Frontpage and Dreaweaver? Have you used these tools?
- What things to keep in mind while web designing?
- Some issues you have faced in web implementation of your design.
- What is CSS Sprite? How to implement it. Pros and Cons of it.
- What should be the maximum number of images to be used on page.
- How to best render an image?
- What is Flash file?
- Should be use Flash Files?
Requirement Gathering and Analysis
Requirement documentation is an important step and should be done before executing a project. With a requirement document prepared at the start of a new project or before implementation of a new feature or for some changes (minor and major) in a website, proves to be very handy and useful during the execution. It gives a path to follow and details out dependencies that it may have on other module, projects etc. Following questions can be asked:
- What is requirement Gathering? How we do it?
- What is requirement Analysis?
- Are there some tools available for it?
- Have you earlier does requirement gathering and analysis?
- How you do Requirement Gathering – for a new project and for a existing project.
- What are entities?
- Who are stake holders?
- What is DFD?
Development
Expertise is not necessary in development, but if one knows it then it is an additional advantage. Though, development is an important aspect whether it is for a website or for some external application development environment, knowledge of it would be good as well. Do take care that he knows the language in which project is or is going to be executed.
Also, check analytical skills during development session. Questions that can be asked are:
- What you understand by Web Development?
- Have you done Web Development?
- In which languages we can develop a website?
- What is the latest version of this language.
- Which languages you know?
- How many years of work experience you have in Web Development?
- How many websites you have developed?
- Have you developed website for your own use too?
- What all you have developed?
- Show some of your development work?
- On what tools you have develop like Frontpage, Dreamweaver etc.
- Do you use Notepad or some other editor. Which editors you have worked on.
- Give some logic to develop and write a code. Some basic could be: Writing a program for Palindrome, Fibonacci Series etc.
- Where you can get support for this language.
- What is a CMS?
- What are various CMS you know?
- What is the difference between a CMS and a website?
- Which is better – CMS or a Website?
- Which CMS you have worked upon as a developer?
- Which CMS you have worked upon as a user?
- What are Apps?
- What is a Gadget?
- What is a Widget?
- What is API? What is full-form of API. Where we can use it.
- Name some sites which offers API.
- Have you worked on some API. If yes, then which API.
- Have you create an API?
Website Management and DNS
Websites are created by designers and Developers, but managed by product owners and product managers. They should know in & outs and basics of website management and DNS control. Ask them the following questions on website management:
- What do you understand by Website Management?
- What activities you will do as a Web Product Manager?
- What is DNS?
- What are various DNS records. Explain them.
- What is a Domain Name? What all you know about domain names?
- Have you hosted a domain name before?
- What are popular websites which offer domain names?
- What are TLDs. Name some popular TLDs. What are CCTLDs. Name some CCTLDs.
- What is www in www.domainname.com
- What are addon domains, parked domains, sub-domains.
- What is Web Hosting? What you understand by Web Hosting?
- What type of Control Panels you have used.
- Which servers you have worked upon for Web Hosting.
- Have you hosted a website yourself. If yes, then on what kind of server?
- Have you moved a hosting from one server to another. What things should be kept in mind.
- How various files should be rendered. (Should they be put on same server or on different servers)
- Tell me about .htaccess
Online Promotion
We can get more visitors through various techniques including SEO, SMO, SEM, online promotion, offline promotions, contests and using social media. These techniques are important and should be known to a product manager.
- What do you understand by Online Promotion?
- What all we do in Online Promotion?
- What is on-page and off-page. What is the difference between the two.
- What is SEO, SMO, SEM?
- What is Social Bookmarking.
- What is Social Networking. How you can use it for promotion.
- What other than SEO, SMO, SEM techniques we can do online promotion with?
- What is Article Submission, Directory Submissions, RSS/Feed Submission.
- Names some sites on Social Networking, Bookmarking, Submissions.
- Tell me about Alexa, Compete.com What are they?
- What is Alexa rank. How Alexa calculate rankings.
- What is Google Page Rank. How Google Page ranks are calculated.
- What we should do in on-page SEO?
- What we should do in off-page SEO?
- What are White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques?
- What are meta tags?
- What should be the optimum length of Page Title?
- What should be the optimum length of Meta Description?
- What should be the optimum length of Meta Keywords?
- What are canonical URLs? What is use of them.
- Difference between http://kunals.com and http://kunals.com/index.php from SEO point of view.
- How many H1, H2 etc. tags we should have on page.
- What are XML and HTML Sitemaps. Difference between the two.
Website Analysis
Analysing website is a must and finding why your web property is performing well and sometimes not well is the important factor. Ask about the following aspects”
- What do you understand by Web Analysis?
- What are various Tools available? Name some free available tools.
- Have you heard about Speed Test, Google Analytics, Google Webmasters Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Page Speed. Explain.
- What are stats tools. What is Website Analyzer. What is AW stats.
- What is Google Web Optimizer.
- What is Google Adwords?
- What is Google Adsense?
- What is Google DFP?
Strategy Formation and Decision Analysis
After finding the issues, analysing the trends it is important to take decisions. Give the candidate some case to solve and know how they will handle it.
- Provide them with a critical situation and ask them how they will do it and steps they will take.
- Explain them two tasks and tell about the importance and resources available. Ask them to draft an execution plan.
This interview kit is not only important for the interviewer or company but also for the candidates. Candidates should go through these questions and learn them and do them practically to get better hand-on experience on them.
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