These are real presentations I built for real interview processes. For each one I'm sharing the prompt I was given, what I made, how it went, and what I'd do differently. Decks, research, and notes are all downloadable. More on my take on take-homes, live sessions, and free product consulting below.
Senior PM, a role I accepted. Required a two-hour take-home brief, five remote rounds, a full-day onsite at HQ. Includes the actual prompt, the comparative analysis approach, RICE prioritization, and pressure to accept the offer.
A take-home for a Group AI PM role. The "hypothetical" case was Choose Texas Power, one of their actual brands. I sent the recommendation. Then I sent the letter asking them not to use it.
Five rounds for a greenfield PM role. Recruiter, hiring manager, three-back-to-back onsite, and a final with the CTO. I built a prototype to show the team my thinking on how the role could grow. Did not advance.
A recruiter screen and three one-hour rounds with the hiring manager for an Amex Digital Labs PM role. I built an interactive prototype between rounds. The hiring manager used it as a scoping artifact in our final conversation. Then the role was paused.
A cautionary tale about a 45-minute "product call" with the founder turned into a live strategy session on their actual app's actual funnel. I provided strong recommendations and they ghosted.
A take-home case study and onsite workshop for Senior PM, PayTax. Centerpiece is a user interview with a Virginia small business owner who handles garnishments by hand.
A panel exercise for Senior PM, International & Enterprise that included how to evaluate a customer feature request and applied to a real ingestion-roadmap question. The bar was set too high.
I prefer take-homes. They give me time to think, which is where the actual work happens. Live product-sense exercises are the format I like least. On-the-spot thinking isn't reliable, and the quality suffers for it. If a process has me pick between a live product sense and a take-home, I'll pick the take-home every time.
What I don't like is being asked to think like an insider when I'm not one. Expecting a candidate to walk in with verified customer voices, internal data, or a real read on a team's strategy is asking for theater. The candidates who pretend it can are the ones I'd trust least.
Workshops I'm fine with. They can be the strongest round in a process, but only if two things are true: the team actually engages, and the right people are in the room. A "collaborative" workshop where nobody collaborates is a presentation with witnesses, and the feedback it produces is going to be off. The Justworks entry is the long version of that argument.
What I won't be quiet about is being ghosted after a session where I provided real use cases on a real problem the company is facing. Especially when I know the work was good. I've emailed companies after the fact asking them not to use what I produced. I'd do that again.