Apple is the most innovative, sexy, and most valuable company in the world. For lots of people, joining Apple as a part of Managers' kind of dream come true. Not only to pay the highest, but also to welcome the coolest product and everybody loves. However, Apple makes the interview process very challenging, difficult, and secretive. They literally have the interviewee to sign the NDA, not telling anybody what the interview questions look like. That's why there's very limited information out there. However, I have collected lots of insider information with Apple and also through the public internet to demystify the interview process of Apple product management. Specifically, I will go over 28 product management interview questions in Apple, including behavioral, product design, product strategy, technical, and product solving. And make sure to stay until the end of this video where I talk about the AI product strategy for Apple and how to answer those interview questions. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a director of product and feature in Forbes. I've helped hundreds of people land their dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startups and continue to get promoted as a product leader. In this channel, we cover tech trends and product management free training. Like and subscribe and check out our new video every Tuesday. More than half of Apple's interview questions is a behavioral-based question. For example, question number one. Watch your management style. How do you motivate the team? What would you say your strengths are for this role? Why Apple? How would you build your knowledge on something you've never done or worked on before? All those questions make sure to use 3x2 framework, which means you need to get to the point. We usually recommend people to use 3-body point and each body point has two sentences with a summary upfront and explanation, so that you have six sentences give an overview regarding your input, how you specifically manage a team, motivate other people. On top of that, Apple also like to ask you situational-based questions that specific to your past job or your future job. They're going to ask you questions like this. Question number five. Expand the time when you have to do x. Question number six. Walk me through your resume. Question number seven. How many projects have you worked on? Question number eight. What inspire you to reach your full potential? Question number nine. Why are you leaving your current job? Question number 10. Tell me about yourself in 30 seconds. And those questions look like it's just a storytelling questions or general overview of your past experience. However, once you give a specific example, they like to dive deeper, really deep. For example, when you give an overview of different project you work on, it's going to pick one of the most difficult project and dive in and have you tell more about specific capabilities you'll be used in your new job and how it's going to be translated for your past job. So get ready for those deep dive questions. Something different about Apple is that they like the answer short and concise. For example, tell me about yourself in 30 seconds. Then let's really going to push you to answer questions fast and impress them. I have a free training about how to tell yourself in 30 seconds during interview. You should watch a free training right here. I'm also going to link it in the description of the video so that you can have an in-depth understanding of the framework. Apple also like to ask you questions regarding challenges and accomplishment. For example, question number 11, tell me something challenging about your career. Question number 12, what's the most proud accomplishments of your career? When you answer this question, you really need to make sure that this sounds extremely challenging. This also sounds huge accomplishment. Okay, because they're going to compare you with other candidate. So make sure to give them the most proud moment in your past career and give them the biggest accomplishment you have ever done. We recommend everybody to have outstanding answers by using numbers to show the scope of work to make it bigger scope so that it sounds more impressive during the interview. I invent a specific framework to answer those very challenging questions. It's called Grail Framework. It stands for G, get to the point. R, rationale. Why is it such a big accomplishment? A stands for actions, and I stands for impact, and then you end with L stands for the learning from those challenging situation. You can learn the specific examples how you use this framework to answer tell me a time when you failed in this video right here and so that you can write very specific outstanding answer for challenging questions like Apple. Apple is also very big on product design. They're gonna ask you lots of product design questions. However, the differences between Apple product design and Google meta product design is that Apple is very proud of its own product and they know their own product inside out. So they're gonna test your knowledge about their product and see how you can improve something they believe is so amazing almost perfect. For example, question number 13, what's your favorite Apple product? How would you improve it? Question number 14, design a voice assistant product for kids. Question number 15, what features would you like to see to add to Apple Maps? Question number 16, what is one of the features on your phone that you can improve? Question number 17, design a classical music product for Apple music. When you answer this type of interview questions, I recommend everybody to use Modify Circles Framework. Now, let me emphasize Modify. Modify Circles Framework means that you need to break down the framework into two-sided marketplace. For example, Apple Music has a listener also has creators because both side of marketplace need to be very balanced in order to create ecosystem so grows the product together. I also recommend everybody do not jump to the final conclusion regarding how would you improve specific product but you should explore different kind of customer pain point customer segmentations before you actually go talk about the feature. Most interviewers have failed in the first two minutes because they didn't explore the customer segmentation two-sided marketplace. So that's a typical mistake all of you guys need to avoid. I have a free training on my YouTube channel where I talk about how use a two-sided marketplace framework to answer those perfect product design interview questions. You should check out this video right here. This is best product design interview answers ever you can find so far. I'm also going to link it in the description of this video. In the Apple product management interview it's also going to ask you lots of technical questions. Surprise! Not really. I literally have students who are MBA join Apple they are not technical at all but I also have students who are extremely technical getting PhD and joining Apple. So really depends on the type of team you'll be joined they're gonna ask you different type of technical questions. But if you do join certain type of technical teams it's going to ask you questions like this. Question number 18. What would you do with data? Question number 19. Use a whiteboard to teach me something work related. Question number 20. Develop an algorithm that can detect if a stream is a pattern drawn. Question number 21. Describe shell sort and its advantage and disadvantage. Question number 22. Describe the three different index and describe the parameters of each. In what situation would you want to use one over the other? Those kind of technical questions that really blew my mind. It's really technical and to be frank I may not be able to answer any of those questions because I'm not expert in those coding aspect. However, I want you guys to understand if you interview Apple for self-driving car for Apple you need to understand self-driving car architecture inside out. If you join iCloud department yes you do need to understand different kind of cloud infrastructures such as containers, serverless compute. So understand what kind of team you'll be joined you will have an easier time to answer those technical questions and prepare ahead of time. But regardless of what kind of technical product you'll be building in Apple I recommend everybody study system design and using the system thinking methodology to break down very complicated challenging questions instead of dive into all the deep dive technical challenges because you need to show your start process first through some design and then break down different scenarios and gives in the technical answers. For people with business background such as MBA and you still want to join companies like Apple I recommend everybody to take some basic technical courses such as 101 courses for AI 101 courses for software architecture and those is going to help you brush up your knowledge and being able to join Apple working on more customer facing type of product such as iPhone. I have collected the top 10 entry level technical classes for all the product manager who doesn't know how to code you can download the link of the 10 different courses in the description of this video I'm going to also link it in this website as well. The next interview question for Apple product managers is product strategy. This is testing your strategy thinking and how to build roadmap for two years, three years and five years and even 10 years. It's also going to test out if you're able to use product strategy into a day to day work. Let's check out these questions. Question 23, what's more important? Fixing the customer's problem or creating a good customer experience. Question 24, our engineering team are pretty used to deploying X methodology. What's your opinion of this? Have you used them in the past? Question number 25, what is your favorite tool to manage wireframe process and why? Question 26, what is one assumption of Apple do you have? When you answer these strategy questions there is no specific right or wrong answer however this process cast your thinking methodology. For example, what is more important? Fixing the bugs or creating better customer experience. Regardless which one you choose it is wrong because it depends on the specific situation and depends on the type of product and how urgent those customer issues are. So therefore when you answer those questions really make sure that you break them down into different scenarios and give them different examples so that you have laid out different framework when answering those questions. What's one assumption you have about Apple? There's no right or wrong answer either but your answer is going to show how long-term strategic are you thinking about. For example, I highly recommend everybody to use Gucci framework to think about all the product strategy questions and actually run the Gucci framework for all the Apple product before you even walk into any interview. What is Gucci framework? It stands for Go Admission, Unmanned Customer Needs, Customer Segmentation, Competition and Integrated Ecosystem. Let's say if you interview for Apple Maps you need to think about what are the competitors for the unmanned customer needs for Apple Maps what kind of integrated ecosystems Apple has around Apple Maps. So after you thought about what would you do as a product manager for Apple Maps using the Gucci framework and then regardless how they ask with different kind of strategies around Apple Maps it would be much easier for you to answer those questions during the interview. I made a specific video about how to use Gucci framework to answer the product strategy interview questions. You check out this video right here and also I'm gonna link it in the description of this video. Apple also loves to ask you any problem solving questions such as question 27. There's an assembly line and all of a sudden it stopped working. No one is around. How would you handle it? When you answer this question you must use the root cause analysis framework which I usually recommend our students to use CPT framework which means you analyze all the process of any existing assembly line and understand what different factors is going to make it break. It is a customer, it's a product itself with technology issue or it's any external issue. And then it's easier to solve the specific problem solving cases during a live interview with Apple. Now here comes the bonus question, question 28. What would Apple do in the space of AI? I believe this is going to be one of the most asked interview questions in the upcoming interview because all the rights of AI everybody is hiring AI product managers out there and Apple has announced that they're going to introduce more AI features for the upcoming new cell phones, new product, new voice assistant out there. So this will be a very typical question within Apple's managed interview in the future. When you answer the AI strategy questions you must use the Qushi framework I just mentioned above but still think about very big idea. For example, to talk about the user segmentation in terms of individual users, enterprise customers and also developers in the AI space. And then your answer will be three times bigger scope compared with any other candidate out there. You should also check out more AI product management playlists on my YouTube channel as well. Before you walk into any Apple AI product management interview make sure to understand the entire latest development of AI. They're going to ask you your opinion regarding what kind of key factors that you will consider for AI products such as AI governments, ethics issue, large data modeling, large language models and also key concept you must understand before you walk into any AI product management interview with Apple. When you're preparing for your upcoming interviews with Apple, Amazon, Google, all those tier one companies make sure to use all the latest interview questions database so that you're prepared before you even walk into interview and know what kind of questions they'll be asking you. So make sure to go to this website and download the 50 interview questions database in fan companies and use them to practice and make sure you stand out from all the competition. I'm also going to link it in the description of this video. The first step passing any kind of first on interview questions is actually 50% of those interview question and Apple is about behavior interview questions. So therefore make sure to watch the next video where I tell you how to use the grill framework to answer what tell me a time when you failed and improve your behavior interview questions. If you like any free tips we provide today make sure to like, share and comment and subscribe. This is Dr. Nancy Lee from pmaccelerator.io and we'll see you in my next video right here.