Operational Production Manager Interview Questions & Answers:

1. How you can decide what to build?

This to me is the heart of product management. You may have said a lot of great things, but if you don't have a great answer to this question, we are done. There are lots of good answers. But I'm looking for a mix of things. First and foremost, have you put thought into this. If you just ramble off an unrelated list of things, we are done. Second, I want to understand how you balance all the competing inputs: user feedback, business needs, the CEO's pet feature, engineering favorites, time to build, cost, market needs, and so on.
This is a great question for gauging how well someone understands the business context in which they work and the market in which their product sits. It's also a good measure of critical thinking. If you want to move on to an in-person interview, you better nail this one.

2. how you interact with customers/users?

If we've gotten this far and you haven't talked about being the voice of the customer, getting out and talking to users, doing any type of user research, I'm already concerned. This is your last chance to convince me you can be the voice of the customer.
"I once interviewed someone who worked at a company that thought user research was a waste of time. She had zero budget and worked in an Agile environment. She struggled to get requirements out ahead of her engineers. And yet, when I asked her this question she told me all of these constraints. But she didn't stop there. She was working on a shopping mobile app and she told me about how during her lunch break she went to her local mall and asked people to try it out. It didn't cost anything. It didn't take very much time. It wasn't perfect. But it was much better than nothing. Be that person. Find a way."

3. Do you like to support/coach the other company staff?

Yes, I like to support/coach other company staff, such as R&D, sales, support/service, and financial/logistic departments.

4. How you can demonstrate that you can manage products?

When answering this question you also have the opportunity to briefly touch on a previous area/question that you may have felt you didn't answer too well - however you have to be brief, no detract in any way shape or form from the original question and ensure you don't give the impression that you are laboring any particular point or trying to get one up on the interviewer. For example if you where previously asked about stakeholder management and you didn't feel that you gave a full and impressive answer - then touch on your experience on stakeholder management while speaking about a project you have worked on.

5. How you answer about that project you have run or a product you have managed through its life cycle?

☛ Demonstrate that you have a practical experience in the product development process.
☛ That you have considered the user by developing a product that utilizes technology to solve a problem and therefore meets the customer's needs.
☛ That you are able to lead with-out-authority by matrix managing a cross functional team of multi-disciplined professionals.

6. How do production managers keep up with technology?

There are many ways to do this. Books, articles, blogs, extension courses, experiment with the technologies or write software on your own, spend more time with your engineers, ask them about the technology topics they are exploring and tag along.

7. What is production life-cycle management?

Product life cycle management is the process of managing the entire life cycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. Therefore it is important that the product manager believes and supports the processes that the company has implemented.

8. As a production manager how you cope with stress?

It's important that a product manager recognizes the symptoms of stress learn how to cope with stress and have in place successful techniques for managing stress and be able to manage projects and/or product development in such a way as to reduce stress.

9. How do you handle stress as production manager?

Stress can be a killer and every Product Manager and Project Mangers would have experienced during the course of their career.
Remember we are all human beings - admit that you do get stressed` and turn what some may see as a negative into a positive by demonstrating ways you've handled stress in the past and therefore showing that you can handle it if you where hired for the job in question.

10. How do production managers handle success?

First I would Celebrate with the team of course.
As the product manager I'd have the over view of all activities but the analyse will be designed to get into the detail.