I'm A PM. Why Do I Need To Know Technical Things?

Why you might get tested on your technical knowledge in an interview

You’re not happy with your current role, so you start looking around for new opportunities.

You find an interesting company with an exciting product going through some growth.

You submit your application which leads to an initial conversation with the Talent Manager.

It’s all going great and you’re invited in for an interview with the Head of Product.

You seem to hit it off and you’ve given a great overview of your work history and your favourite products.

Then you’re asked;

“We’re going to introduce a new product search. What are the technical team going to need to build?”

You stop. You’ve been asked about “building something”. Not about customer needs, data, A/B tests, or CLV. What are they building? That’s a bit technical.

Do you freeze?

When recruiting for PM roles, recruiters don’t expect you to know the actual code that’s going to be written in order to deliver the feature, but they do expect you to understand the elements that are involved and how they work together.

You need to be “semi-technical”.

The question what does “semi-technical” look like?

Read on …