Strategy question
What could have Google done in March 2020 to help with the PPEs issue when Covid was intense?
- Strategy
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Strategic creativity under a real historical crisis, using the company's actual capabilities rather than implausible ones.
How to approach it
- Ground in the real context: in March 2020, PPE like masks, gowns, and ventilators was in acute, hard-to-verify shortage.
- Identify Google's real assets: Search, Maps, Cloud, and its Google.org grant relationships, not manufacturing.
- Propose using Search and Maps to solve discovery: a verified PPE-supply locator surfacing hospital needs to manufacturers and donors.
- Propose Cloud and data tools to match manufacturers repurposing lines, like apparel companies, with hospitals in need.
- Acknowledge Google's real, limited role: convening and information, not becoming a PPE manufacturer itself.
- Define success as fewer hospitals reporting critical PPE shortages in tracked regions.
What a strong answer includes
- Anchors the proposal in what Google is actually good at, information and logistics matching, instead of suggesting Google manufacture PPE.
- References Google.org's real COVID-19 relief fund as grounding.
- Notes the realistic complication of donation and verification fraud risk in a crisis.
Common mistakes
- Suggesting Google build ventilators or PPE itself, ignoring its actual capabilities.
- No acknowledgment of verification or fraud risk in an urgent donation-matching system.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you verify a hospital's reported shortage is real?
- What would you measure in week one to know this is working?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop