Metrics question

Friend requests are down by 10%. Evaluate why.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Structured root-cause evaluation for a drop in a core social growth metric.

Quantify the drop: confirm the timeframe and whether it is global or specific to a platform, region, or user segment.
Segment by user tenure: new users versus long-tenured users, since request behavior differs sharply by network maturity.
Check for a recent product change: a redesign of the discovery surface, added friction, or a new privacy default limiting visibility.
Check for external factors: seasonal patterns or a broader decline in new user growth feeding fewer requests.
Compare against related metrics: are acceptances also down proportionally, or just requests sent, pointing to different causes.
Propose next steps based on the most likely cause, such as reverting a discovery surface change or investigating a privacy default.

Segments by user tenure specifically, since new users almost entirely drive this metric's volume, a key structural insight.
Distinguishes requests sent from requests accepted, since these moving differently point to very different root causes.
Considers privacy default changes as a plausible cause, showing awareness of a common real driver.
Separates seasonal explanations from product-caused ones before proposing a fix.

Treating all users as one segment despite tenure being a major structural driver.
Not distinguishing requests sent from requests accepted.
Jumping to a fix without checking for seasonal or new-user-growth explanations first.

How would you determine if this is driven by fewer new users rather than existing user behavior?
What would you do if the drop was concentrated among long-tenured users specifically?
How would you validate that a specific product change caused this?