Wayfair Product Manager Interview Guide
Detailed, specific guidance on the Wayfair Product Manager interview process - with a breakdown of different stages and interview questions asked at each stage
The role of a Wayfair Product Manager
Product management is a career that involves creating and marketing products with the main aim of raising revenue, earnings, and profit margins. A product manager is in charge of evaluating business conditions, supervising product creation, and deciding the functionality of their product. One factor that makes a PM's work more complex is the amount of decision-making involved in the process. The interviews are challenging as they explore a broad range of topics and have a variety of questions.
The interview guide below will take you through the process of interviewing for a Product Manager at Wayfair, presenting you with a range of tips and practice questions to help you stand out.
Wayfair Product Manager Interview Guide
The interview process begins with an online application or with the assistance of a recruiter. If you are chosen, you will be contacted within a week. During the process, you will go through the following stages:
- Application review
- Phone-screen interview
- On-site interview (currently virtual)
Application Process at Wayfair
Wayfair is looking for candidates that are enthusiastic about e-commerce and building agile operating processes that can drive their company and elevate client, supplier, and employee experience. For more information on similar roles, check out the Airbnb Product Manager and eBay Product Manager guides. Wayfair prefers candidates with expertise working on cross-functional or software projects, as well as with vast databases and the potential to work on many complex projects at the same time. This collaborative approach is also emphasized at Microsoft.
Once you are done with the online application, you will receive an email confirming acceptance of your submission, along with a rundown of the next steps. A member of their recruiting team will review your application and contact you if you are going ahead with your application or not.
Relevant Guides
Wayfair PM - Round 1
Overview
If you are invited to participate in an interview, a link will be sent from GoodTime, Wayfair's interview scheduling platform to pick your preferred date and time. The first round is a virtual interview on Google Meet. After the interview, you will be informed by an email whether you are going forward. Notable points:
- The interview will be conducted by a hiring manager
- The interview will be almost 30 mins long
- The focus will be on behavioral questions
What the interviewer will assess
- Strong communication, problem resolution and implementation capabilities.
- Organizational strategies.
- Customer-centered nature and relationship management with colleagues.
- Ability to adopt decisions in given uncertainty and to draw conclusions.
These skills are equally important for similar roles at Capital One and Intuit.
Tips
- Behavior questions are basic questions influenced by the core skills to which all employees of Wayfair are evaluated. They include team building and culture, innovation and outcomes, analytical thinking, and communication and persuasion. You must prepare thoroughly for these questions if you're looking to become a product manager.
- Be prepared to provide examples of how from your knowledge you have shown their core skills.
- Try to use the SAR form when addressing the questions. SAR is a structured way to respond to behavioral-based questions by discussing the Situation, Action, and Result of the situation you are describing.
- Study and research Wayfair. The background history of the brand, the business work culture and competing companies. Interviewers will search in the interview for your indulgence, therefore prepare a few questions beforehand.
Interview Questions
- Do you have any experience with business software evaluation and replacement?
- Do you have a sprint team leadership background in product management and/or integrations?
- Are you well balanced in a cross-functional environment?
- List a moment where a product vision was demonstrated by you and provide the objectives of the organization in the product roadmap.
- Do you have previous experience in the maintenance and improvement of application systems?
Wayfair PM - Round 2
Overview
The second and final interview is, for now, virtually conducted through Google Meet. Wayfair invites you to do a virtual tour even though they are not holding personal interviews at the company's office in Boston, MA in the current situation. If you proceed with your candidacy, you will be informed via email. The interview is conducted by the recruiting team along with an existing PM.
Quite challenging for most applicants, the second interview is known at Wayfair as the Case Study Interview. The case interview consists of a business question for which you are required to conduct an in-depth analysis and work together with the interviewer to find a solution. This round typically takes 30-45 mins. Case interviews put you in a hypothetical business scenario in which you need to make a recommendation by using data and facts. The business problems that you’ll be asked in a Wayfair case study interview are likely some real challenges that Wayfair faces today.
You can also learn about the interview processes at similarly levelled companies such as Pinterest and Spotify.
What the interviewer will assess
- Numerical and verbal reasoning.
- Calculation of growth metrics for e-commerce.
- Ability to recognize possible risks and quantify them.
- Strong corporate ease.
Tips
- You will need to analyze the performances of the categories, address the factors that influence the company and finally propose implementations to expand the category and drive long-term business success.
- This interview evaluates if you understand how as a business, Wayfair can approach, analyze and grow. They can provide you with a business scenario for a certain type of way to learn how to deal with a problem first hand. Therefore, keep your case study game strong.
- Provide relevant and practical responses, rather than widespread generalizations. This gives the interviewer a good understanding of your knowledge and does not give the impression that you are beating around the bush.
- Be ready to dig further into questions that test you. The interviewer will not be fulfilled with a brief response but would want you to demonstrate your expertise in the field.
Interview Questions
- How can Wayfair enhance its profits?
- How should Wayfair react to a new emerging competitor?
- What changes will you make or program to the transaction services of Wayfair?? What basic transaction are we talking about in this program that Wayfair can use help?
- Should Wayfair consider acquiring or collaborating with any company?
- In September this year, Wayfair experienced a 10% rise in internet traffic compared to September of last year. What can be some potential explanations for this increase?
- Wayfair has three types of shipping which are used to provide consumers with goods. The shipping prices for one of those approaches are under consideration. What is the effect of this price change on profits?
- In order to boost revenue over the next holidays, Wayfair intends to give consumers promotional discount coupons. What are the advantages and disadvantages? How long should the promotion last?
- Tell me about your EDI experiences. Can you talk about your experience with other software systems in more detail?
- How can Wayfair get back clients with previously negative experiences?
- How would you calculate how many sofas are sold in the USA?
- Wayfair has released a promotional code for consumers who will receive discounts on their purchases over two weeks. The use of this promotional code, however, was much lower than expected by Wayfair. What could have caused this?
- How would you decide when to run a priced promotion?
- Is Commerce tools a shopping cart application or an order management system?
- What particular aspects were you checking when you did A/B testing? (Speed & volume transaction)
- Two separate customer catalogs are designed by Wayfair. One catalog costs $0.50, has a length of 50 pages, a conversion rate of 5 percent and the average customer converted has $315. The second $0.95 is $100, and a converted customer costs $300. To make the same profit as the first catalog, what should be the conversion rate of the second catalog?
- What is a typical day like at your current job?
- Tell me some cross-functional skills that you currently possess or work with.
- Is there a project that did not go as planned for you? If so, can you discuss the issues and how you overcame them?
- Assume you work at Wayfair and we plan to begin transporting freight across the ocean in containers from our suppliers outside of North America and stocking them at our warehouse in the United States. Is it possible to monitor the visibility of our supply chain?
- What kinds of stuff do you think we can develop or expand on if Wayfair builds a program to monitor internal visibility?
Hiring and Decision Process
Your application information and interview reviews will be reviewed to decide whether you will be offered a position. All applicants, regardless of offer status, are notified by email regarding the final decision. You will typically receive the mail within a week.