Help Scout is a remote-first company, dedicated to creating exceptional support software for over 12,000 customer-centric businesses worldwide. With a team of 160 employees across 80+ cities, Help Scout emphasizes a diverse and inclusive culture that fosters innovation and authenticity. As a Certified B Corporation, the company is committed to sustainable and inclusive practices.

In the role of a Product Manager at Help Scout, you'll lead cross-functional teams to design solutions that deeply resonate with customers. You will leverage both qualitative and quantitative research to understand customer problems, create personas, and develop product briefs. If you're passionate about human-centered design and thriving in a remote environment, this guide will help you prepare for the interview process to join this dynamic team. Visit Interview Query for more insights and preparation tips.

Submitting Your Application

The first step is to submit a compelling application that reflects your technical skills and interest in joining Help Scout as a Product Manager. Whether you were contacted by a Help Scout recruiter or have taken the initiative yourself, carefully review the job description and tailor your CV according to the prerequisites.

Tailoring your CV may include identifying specific keywords that the hiring manager might use to filter resumes and crafting a targeted cover letter. Furthermore, don’t forget to highlight relevant skills and mention your work experiences.

Recruiter/Hiring Manager Call Screening

If your CV happens to be among the shortlisted few, a recruiter from Help Scout's Talent Acquisition Team will make contact and verify key details like your experiences and skill level. Behavioral questions may also be a part of the screening process.

In some cases, the Help Scout Product Manager hiring manager stays present during the screening round to answer your queries about the role and the company itself. They may also indulge in surface-level technical and behavioral discussions.

The whole recruiter call should take about 30 minutes.

Technical Virtual Interview

Successfully navigating the recruiter round will present you with an invitation for the technical screening round. Technical screening for the Help Scout Product Manager role usually is conducted through virtual means, including video conference and screen sharing. Questions in this 1-hour long interview stage may revolve around Help Scout’s design methodologies, product synthesis frameworks, and customer research approaches.

Questions around qualitative and quantitative research, personas, journey maps, and interview breakdowns may be incorporated. Your proficiency in leveraging product synthesis frameworks to create clear insights may also be assessed during this round.

Depending on the seniority of the position, case studies and similar real-scenario problems may also be assigned.

Onsite Interview Rounds

Followed by a second recruiter call outlining the next stage, you’ll be invited to attend the onsite interview loop. Multiple interview rounds, varying with the role, will be conducted virtually since Help Scout is a remote-first company. Your technical prowess, including design thinking and product management capabilities, will be evaluated against the finalized candidates throughout these interviews.

If you were assigned take-home exercises, a presentation round may also await you during the onsite interview for the Product Manager role at Help Scout.

Quick Tips For Help Scout Product Manager Interviews

Here are a few tips for acing your Help Scout interview:

• Understand Help Scout's Culture: Help Scout values human-centred design, autonomous teams, and customer-focused solutions. Make sure you reflect this approach in your answers.
• Display Emotional Intelligence: As a Product Manager, you're expected to foster psychological safety within the team. Demonstrate your skills in collaboration and facilitation through your past experiences.
• Be Data-Driven: Help Scout stresses the importance of qualitative and quantitative research. Brush up on your skills and be prepared to discuss examples of how you've used data to drive product decisions.

Typically, interviews at Help Scout vary by role and team, but commonly Product Manager interviews follow a fairly standardized process across these question topics.

• How would you set up an A/B test for button color and position changes? A team wants to A/B test changes in a sign-up funnel, such as changing a button from red to blue and/or moving it from the top to the bottom of the page. How would you set up this test?

• Would you suspect anything unusual about an A/B test with 20 variants and one significant result? Your manager ran an A/B test with 20 different variants and found one significant result. Would you think there was anything fishy about the results?

• Why might the average number of comments per user decrease despite user growth? A social media company launched in a new city and saw a slow decrease in the average number of comments per user from January to March, despite consistent user growth. What are some reasons for this decrease, and what metrics would you look into?

• What metrics would you use to determine the value of marketing channels for Mode? Given all the different marketing channels and their respective costs at Mode, a company selling B2B analytics dashboards, what metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?

• How would you find the mouse in a 4x4 grid using the fewest scans? You have a 4x4 grid with a mouse trapped in one of the cells. You can "scan" subsets of cells to know if the mouse is within that subset. How would you figure out where the mouse is using the fewest number of scans?

• Write a function called find_bigrams to return a list of all bigrams in a sentence or paragraph. Write a function called find_bigrams that takes a sentence or paragraph of strings and returns a list of all its bigrams in order. A bigram is a pair of consecutive words.

• Write a query to get the last transaction for each day from a table of bank transactions. Given a table of bank transactions with columns id, transaction_value, and created_at, write a query to get the last transaction for each day. The output should include the id, datetime, and transaction amount, ordered by datetime.

• Write a function find_change to find the minimum number of coins for a given amount of change. Write a function find_change to find the minimum number of coins that make up the given amount of change cents. Assume we only have coins of value 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents.

• Write a function to simulate drawing balls from a jar based on their counts. Write a function to simulate drawing balls from a jar. The colors of the balls are stored in a list named jar, with corresponding counts of the balls stored in the same index in a list called n_balls.

• Write a function calculate_rmse to calculate the root mean squared error of a regression model. Write a function calculate_rmse to calculate the root mean squared error of a regression model. The function should take in two lists, one that represents the predictions y_pred and another with the target values y_true.

• What is the expected number of good ads rated by different types of raters?
• Suppose we have 100 raters each rating one ad independently. What's the expected number of good ads?
• Now suppose we have 1 rater rating 100 ads. What's the expected number of good ads?

• Suppose we have 1 ad, rated as bad. What's the probability the rater was lazy?

• Write a function to simulate coin tosses with a given probability of heads. Create a function that takes the number of tosses and the probability of heads as input and returns a list of randomly generated results ('H' for heads, 'T' for tails).

Example 1: python tosses = 5 probability_of_heads = 0.6 Output: python coin_toss(tosses, probability_of_heads) -> ['H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T']

Example 2: python tosses = 3 probability_of_heads = 0.2 Output: python coin_toss(tosses, probability_of_heads) -> ['T', 'T', 'T']

• Write a function to calculate the sample variance of a list of integers. Create a function that takes a list of integers and returns the sample variance, rounded to 2 decimal places.

Example: python test_list = [6, 7, 3, 9, 10, 15] Output: python get_variance(test_list) -> 13.89

• What is the probability of rolling at least one 3 with dice?
• What's the probability of rolling at least one 3 with 2 dice?

• What's the probability of rolling at least one 3 given (N) dice?

• What is the probability of finding an item on Amazon's website given its availability in warehouses? Given that the probability of item X being available at warehouse A is 0.6 and at warehouse B is 0.8, what is the probability that item X would be found on Amazon's website?

• What kind of model did the co-worker develop for loan approval? Your co-worker developed a model that takes customer inputs and returns if a loan should be given or not. What type of model is this?

• How would you compare two credit risk models for predicting loan defaults? Given that personal loans are monthly installments, how would you measure the difference between two credit risk models within a timeframe?

• What metrics would you track to measure the success of a new credit risk model? What specific metrics would you use to evaluate the performance and success of a new credit risk model?

• What metrics would you use to track the accuracy and validity of a spam classifier model? Assume you have built a V1 of a spam classifier for emails. What metrics would you use to track its accuracy and validity?

• What are the key differences between classification models and regression models? Explain the main differences between classification models and regression models.

• When would you use a bagging algorithm versus a boosting algorithm? Compare two machine learning algorithms. In which case would you use a bagging algorithm versus a boosting algorithm? Provide an example of the tradeoffs between the two.

• What happens when you run logistic regression on perfectly linearly separable data? You are given a dataset of perfectly linearly separable data. What would happen when you run logistic regression?

What is the average salary for a Product Manager at Help Scout?

Q: Where is Help Scout located and which countries are eligible for remote positions? Help Scout is a fully remote company with employees all around the world. Currently, we can only hire in the following locations: United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and United Kingdom.

Q: What is the main focus of the Product Manager role at Help Scout? As a Product Manager at Help Scout, you'll lead your team in deeply understanding customer problems through qualitative and quantitative research. Your responsibilities include creating insightful product briefs, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and ensuring the successful launch of quality solutions that provide significant value to our customers and the business.

Q: What kind of work environment can I expect at Help Scout? Help Scout fosters a remote-first culture with a high emphasis on diversity, inclusion, and psychological safety. Our teams are autonomous, allowing you to collaborate closely with engineering and design teams, learn from our customers, and build products that they love. Additionally, we support flexible work hours that overlap with core communication windows.

Q: What are some key benefits offered by Help Scout? Help Scout offers a competitive salary, comprehensive health and dental insurance, long-term/short-term disability insurance, flexible vacation, sabbatical after four years, paid parental leave, 401k with 1% match, personal development stipend, quarterly bonuses, and a home office setup stipend.

Q: How can I best prepare for an interview with Help Scout? To prepare for an interview with Help Scout, research the company’s values, products, and culture. Practice common interview questions and review your skills in product management, qualitative and quantitative research, and human-centred design. Don’t forget to check Interview Query to get tips and practice questions tailored for product management roles.

If you want more insights about the company, check out our main Help Scout Interview Guide, where we have covered many interview questions that could be asked. We’ve also created interview guides for other roles, such as software engineer and data analyst, where you can learn more about Help Scout’s interview process for different positions.

At Interview Query, we empower you to unlock your interview prowess with a comprehensive toolkit, equipping you with the knowledge, confidence, and strategic guidance to conquer every Help Scout product manager interview question and challenge.

You can check out all our company interview guides for better preparation, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Good luck with your interview!