Daily Surprises and Unexpected Self-Discoveries in Product Management — #3. A useful interview question

Last week I spent building shelves for the wardrobe in the master bedroom. My wife had a design in mind she shared with me and I promised to help. Nothing too difficult, if you grew up with a drill and woodwork experience. I am a 36 year old guy who has never really done anything of this sort as a child, teenager and younger adult. Never had a need to until we moved into our house a year ago.

Since then I have done some drilling, hanging, construction work as we are renovating the home. Nevertheless, I am slow, messy and often enough I have to redo things.

I did get the shelves done. I had to measure, cut wooden boards, place drywall anchors in a number of spots, drill holes and then install L-shaped connectors between the boards. It took me an entire weekend and in the process I discovered that I know one more question I want to ask prospective product owners, product managers during their interview.

Here is the question:

Think about something you have done/built for the first time in your life and what you have learnt about that work and yourself in the process

It sounds simple but I believe the answer will expose a lot about a person. It will show if they try new things and what’s their motivation for trying something new, if they complete work they start, how they approach work they have not done before, how they experience stress and how they operate under stress.

I did learn more about myself in the process. For one, I was surprised I entered a flow state where time slowed down and I was hyper focused on the task at hand without any distractions. I also realized that the point of making estimates for first time things is not to predict when I am done but to understand what I was not taking into consideration and how naive I was about the process.