Describe a time when you gathered and analyzed data to drive a business decision on behalf of yourself, your team, your organization, or a client. Walk your interviewer through the situation, the process you used, the decision you made, and the results of your choice.

Be sure to keep your answer relatable. Answers that are too specific or technical may be difficult for your interviewer to understand. I work frequently with clients who hold work with technical and complex data sets. In these cases, I encourage them to reach for a metaphor that can be used to help their interviewer understand the situation properly.

I am a senior product manager. One of the main responsibilities of my role is to analyze the market opportunity for the products my teams and I partner to develop. We are currently working on developing a portal that will allow the retail vendors we work with to promote directly to our users without having to partner with our marketing team to develop campaign materials. I felt the product would reduce costs for our company and our retailer partners. It also had the potential to allow the marketing firms of our partners to quickly develop and release unique campaigns in line with their brand requirements.

The first data element I worked to analyze was the total addressable market. This represents the total dollar amount currently spent on the type of product I am analyzing. I also worked to understand projections for growth within the product sector. The future TAM can be even more important when analyzing a product that will take time to develop and release.

I then estimated the portion of the total market share that the product we were considering would be able to represent. For instance, some of our retail partners do not have their own in-house marketing team and were unlikely to use the new service. I provided a range that allows for unforeseen changes in the retail market and shifts in my company's ability to quickly release value-add features.

The combination of these data elements helped me to understand the space similar solutions currently occupy within the market, the potential for growth, and the level of effort required to attract additional retailers in the future. My analysis showed the project had a high probability of profitability and I was able to confidently recommend that we move forward with development.