Table of contents
1.
Introduction
2.
About The Job
3.
What is the Role of Product Manager at Microsoft?👩🏻‍💻
4.
Skills Required🤹
5.
Benefits and Perks
6.
Roadmap for Product Manager at Microsoft 📈
7.
How to Win the Introductory Call With the Hiring Manager?
7.1.
15 Microsoft Product Manager Interview Questions
7.2.
How to Answer Microsoft Interview Questions?
8.
How to Win the Technical and Behavioural Round With Team Members and Stakeholders?
9.
Salary of Product Manager💸
10.
Frequently Asked Questions
10.1.
What are the 3 major areas of product management?
10.2.
What's it like being a product manager?
10.3.
Microsoft hires how many PMs?
10.4.
What are the main three product management areas?
10.5.
Do you need to know coding to manage products?
11.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Product Manager at Microsoft

Career growth poll
Do you think IIT Guwahati certified course can help you in your career?

Introduction

So you want to be a Product Manager at  Microsoft? You are at the right place :) 

Microsoft is well known as the largest software maker in the world and is one of the best places to work. Building tech solutions that have an impact on billions of people worldwide gives you the chance to learn in a highly competitive environment and to improve your skill sets.

Product Manager at Microsoft

 Microsoft offers equitable employment opportunities. Without regard to age, ancestry, colour, family or medical leave, gender identity or expression, national origin, physical or mental disability, race, religion, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances, all qualified applicants will be given consideration for employment.

We will go over everything you most probably need to know in this article to get the job role of Product Manager at Microsoft.

Hold on to the very end of this article.😇

About The Job

A product manager describes what success looks like for a product, pinpoints the consumer need and bigger corporate goals that a product will fulfill, and rallies a team to make that vision a reality.

About the job

Throughout the entire product lifecycle, product managers (PMs) build cooperation and promote development. 

In order to define features and realize product vision from product creation and planning through development, release, and end of life, PMs often leverage their backgrounds in technology and business areas.

What is the Role of Product Manager at Microsoft?👩🏻‍💻

The individual who works as Product Manager at Microsoft oversees, develops, advocates for, and manages Microsoft's product development processes from beginning to end. 

Microsoft product managers provide support and guidance in all matters related to Microsoft's products.

Candidates for the Product Manager role should be interested in defining roadmaps, own regional sales/marketing relationships, driving messaging direction, determining price, assists with supply chain issues.

 The main responsibilities of the Microsoft Product Manager at Microsoft role are: 

  • Managing connections with more than a dozen partners exclusively with Microsoft products. Additionally developing a lot of new partners throughout the process.
     
  • Managing the placement and designs of many product concepts. This comprises forecasting, branding, branding concepts, product placement, and testing of products. The launch dates of every product owned have been a 100% success.
     
  • Managing all partner royalty reporting. Plus, coordinate QBR, communicating forecasting, roadmaps, contracts, special projects, and ideas for future growth.
     
  • Managing legal contracts and amendments related to licensing Agreements, technical requirements, and branding. Update all the documents that our partners would need.
     
  • Taking the initiative to lead the projects and managing other teams to complete projects on schedule.
     

There are various job openings and internships at Microsoft. To know more have a look over these links- Job opportunities at Microsoft and  Internship Program at Microsoft.

Skills Required🤹

Skills Required for Product Managers at Microsoft are:

  • 5+ years of experience in product management (some, like Product Manager – Platform and Extensibility role, 10+ years required).
     
  • Strong technical background.
     
  • Excellent collaboration skills, especially with engineers.
     
  • Experience with SaaS product management in the previous. A bachelor's degree (or higher) in computer science, engineering, or a related field.
     
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
     
  • The ability to formulate big problem statements, offer alternative technical approaches, and build optimal solutions.
     

Note: Depending on the project's nature, the skills needed may vary.

Benefits and Perks

Perks are the additional benefits provided by an employer to their employees as an expression of care. The most valuable perks provided to Microsoft employees are listed below.

Care for Employees

Some of the benefits of being in Microsoft are-

🧑‍⚕️ Industry-leading healthcare

💸🤑Savings and investments

🎗️Giving programs

📚Educational resources

👪Maternity and paternity leave

🧑🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏽Opportunities to network and connect

💲Discounts on products and services

⌚Generous time away
 

The benefits/perks listed above may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

Check out Microsoft Interview Experience to learn about their hiring process.

Roadmap for Product Manager at Microsoft 📈

Everything starts with preparation. In this section, we will discuss the complete roadmap to achieve the goal.🎯

It will help you put the efforts in the right direction and remain consistent throughout the preparation. 

Roadmap for Product Manager at Microsoft

The steps below are typical for Microsoft's product manager hiring process:

  1. Call with the hiring manager as an introductory call.
  2. A round on technical and behavioural with the team and stakeholders.
  3. The offer.
     

From beginning to end, the process normally takes five weeks to two months.
 

You can also find this article very useful during your preparation - Microsoft Recruitment Process.

How to Win the Introductory Call With the Hiring Manager?

Interview

In most companies, the first and second rounds of interviews are primarily focusing on commonly asked questions like:

  • What is your greatest strength?
  • Why do you want to work here?
  • Tell about yourself.

15 Microsoft Product Manager Interview Questions

Technical skills alone won't get you past any interviews. Planning, strategy, and how you (YES, YOU!) drive the interview are additional important factors. It is undoubtedly a skill that needs to be mastered.

Keep Practicing

From any interview preparation story, consider the following teachings:

  • Start by reading up on the company you are interviewing for. You'll benefit a lot from it, I promise!
     
  • Then, try to find people who work in that domain on LinkedIn and other sites, and try to learn about their work, kind of projects, technologies, etc. This is a crucial step to do. You can see that by doing this, you can target your preparation and increase your chances of cracking in the interview.
     
  • Practice more and more test series and problems.
     
  • Do check out these links for better preparation- Problem ListsInterview BundleProduct based Company Course and Contests.
     
  • There are plenty of free technical resources that you can refer to if you want to learn more about specific coding skills such as-data-structures-and-algorithmsjava-data-structures-and-algorithmsguided-paths and data-analytics.

    Also watch this video to improve your programming logic-


To prepare well you can also follow this link-  Microsoft Preparation Guide.


In the first and second rounds of the Microsoft Product Manager interview, be ready to respond to questions like these:
 

  1. Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a manager or a team member.
     
  2. Which mobile applications do you often use, and why?
     
  3. Tell me about a time when you had to change your working style.
     
  4. Explain a product that you supervised from idea to launch.
     
  5. Describe a time when you had to drive change.
     
  6. Pick a product you already own and describe a feature you like about it.
     
  7. How do you decide which features to set priorities?
     
  8. What differentiates C++ and Java from each other?
     
  9. Tell me about a time when something didn't go according to plan. What did it teach you, exactly?
     
  10. What one product feature would totally change the DevOps/GitOps landscape?
     
  11. Which is preferable for a car dash screen: a touchscreen or traditional dials and knobs?
     
  12. Explain clearly the architecture of your current or previous product.
     
  13. Which area of our business would you divest from?
     
  14. To a non-technical person, describe recursion.
     
  15. Tell us about your experiences with Agile frameworks.
interview

Hey Ninja! No need to worry! We are here for your help at each and every step. Do follow these links to crack the exam as well as interview Competitive ProgrammingAptitude, and Interview Questions.

How to Answer Microsoft Interview Questions?

Fortunately, Microsoft has also given job seekers some tips on how to get ready for interviews. They suggest learning more about the company, its products, and its position in the tech and software industries. 

Their core competencies—Collaboration, Drive for results, Customer focus, Influencing for impact, Judgement, and Adaptability—should be familiar to you, and you should be ready to discuss how you've demonstrated them in previous roles. With their corporate values, be ready to follow.

Answering the questions

Microsoft suggests being genuine, expressing your thought process, and using the STAR(Situation, Task, Action, and Result) method when answering questions during the interview. Microsoft also encourages candidates to bring questions they may have about the role and the company.

For more knowledge, you can also visit this link Microsoft Coding Interview Questions.

How to Win the Technical and Behavioural Round With Team Members and Stakeholders?

The technical knowledge will be addressed in these interviews, much like in the previous round. Additional situational and product design questions will be asked of you. 

How to Win the Technical and Behavioural Round With Team Members and Stakeholders

To help you prepare, here are 9 examples of Microsoft interview questions:
 

  1. Consider the benefits and drawbacks of building a super app, which includes all of the major B2C features, such as e-commerce, food ordering, hotel, and cab booking, chat, holiday planning, gaming, med ordering, and service booking.
     
  2. Design a product that helps job seekers easily and quickly create resumes and find the jobs that best suit their skills.
     
  3. How would you be designing a phone for a child under the age of five?
     
  4. Design an API for payment integration with third parties.
     
  5. Design loyalty reward programs for a search engine that goes up against Google and Bing.
     
  6. Develop your GTM strategy to bring in a million new Android users for Bing.
     
  7. Create a radio alarm clock for the upcoming generations.
     
  8. How could a drive-through be made more effective?
     
  9. How would you create a playlist for a party?
     

The interviewer will be assessing your problem-solving and critical thinking abilities with these questions, so be sure to thoroughly describe each step of your thought process and ask for any necessary visuals.

The choice will ultimately be made by the Microsoft hiring team after this round. Lucky you!

Salary of Product Manager💸

As of the year 2022, the following factors will determine the salary for a fresher in the role of Product Manager at Microsoft:

  • A Product Manager at Microsoft earns an average salary of Rs. 30,69,989 per year.
     
  • A Product Manager at Microsoft can expect to make an average total salary of Rs. 31,53,232 per year after bonuses and other compensation.

(The salary ranges mentioned above may change according to the company.)

Now, You are all set to go 🚀

Now it’s time for questions.🤓

FAQs

To apply for this job follow this link- Product Manager.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 3 major areas of product management?

Product discovery, Product Planning, and Product Development are the three primary areas of focus for product management.

What's it like being a product manager?

A Product Manager's Day Includes Time for Analysis, Research, and Strategic Planning. Make time for the other critical aspects of your day as a product manager when you aren't interacting with stakeholders.

Microsoft hires how many PMs?

Few companies can match the tremendous impact a product career at Microsoft can provide with billions of users across its suite of products. Microsoft recruits between 400 and 500 PMs annually across a number of offices in the United States, but they also get a huge amount of applications.

What are the main three product management areas?

It specifies Product discovery, Product Planning, and Product Development as the three main areas of focus for product management.

Do you need to know coding to manage products?

It's a widespread misperception that product managers must be proficient programmers. Although it's not always necessary, it can help you get a job in this field. In other words, it will be to your advantage if you know how to code.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extensively discussed the job role of Product Manager at Microsoft. In this blog, we’ve explored the Roles and Responsibilities, Preparation Strategies, and road map to your dream job at Microsoft. 

We hope that this article has helped you enhance your knowledge. 
 

To know more about the job opportunities at Microsoft, the ways to get into Microsoft, or different profiles, you can check out these articles: 
 

If you want to learn more, check out these links below:

Coding Ninja

 

Refer to our guided paths on Coding Ninjas Studio to learn more about DSACompetitive ProgrammingC++, JavaScript, System Design, etc. Enrol in our courses and refer to the mock test and problems available, Take a look at the Top 150 Interview Puzzlesinterview experiences and interview bundle for placement preparations.

Do upvote our blog to help other ninjas grow.

Happy Learning!

Live masterclass