Behavioral question
What is your product management approach? How do you set goals?
- American Express
- Behavioral
- Easy
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Articulation of a coherent, repeatable PM working philosophy, grounded in one concrete example.
How to approach it
- State your overall approach briefly: start from user and business problems, not solutions, and validate before building.
- Describe how you set goals: tie every initiative to a measurable outcome, like OKRs, linked to a clear business objective.
- Give a concrete example: a real goal you set, how you broke it into a metric tree, and how you tracked progress.
- Describe how you balance top-down company priorities with bottom-up user insight when setting goals.
- Note how you revisit goals: regular check-ins and willingness to adjust if data shows the goal or approach is wrong.
- Keep the philosophy grounded in one concrete example rather than staying abstract.
What a strong answer includes
- Grounds an abstract philosophy in one specific, real goal-setting example with numbers.
- Shows a structured method, OKRs or a metric tree, rather than an ad hoc 'I just try to make good decisions.'
- Demonstrates willingness to revisit and adjust goals based on new data, showing flexibility over rigid execution.
Common mistakes
- Staying entirely abstract with no concrete example of an actual goal set and tracked.
- Describing goal-setting as purely top-down with no user-insight input.
Likely follow-up questions
- How do you handle a goal that turns out to be wrong halfway through?
- How do you balance short-term goals against long-term strategy?
More behavioral questions
- Have you ever disagreed with your Engineering counterparts? What did you do when a build decision was made that did not align with the original vision you had?American Express · Behavioral · Medium
- What is one career failure you faced? How did you deal with it?American Express · Behavioral · Medium
- Describe a time when you faced an obstacle during a build. How did you ensure you were still able to hit your milestones? Did you have to break down feature requests?American Express · Behavioral · Medium
- What do you do when you get a vague feature request?American Express · Behavioral · Easy
- If the legal team reached to you with a difficult request, what is your method for tackling it?American Express · Behavioral · Easy
- What was the biggest challenge you experienced from working with banks? How did you go about convincing them?American Express · Behavioral · Easy
More questions from American Express
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 13: Lead the room: staff moves, forward-deployed PM, and the portfolio
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop