A Product Manager at Mars plays a pivotal role in driving digital transformation across one of the world's largest and most successful family-owned businesses. Operating within diverse segments—ranging from Petcare and Snacking to Food and multi-sales platforms—product leaders at Mars do not just manage software. You will design, scale, and optimize digital products that directly impact millions of consumers, veterinary clinics, retail partners, and global supply chains.

The complexity of this role stems from the sheer scale of the organization. Whether you are managing internal enterprise tools built on platforms like ServiceNow, optimizing global supply chain logistics, or building direct-to-consumer digital experiences, your work will bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and real-world business outcomes. You will collaborate with global, cross-functional teams to build solutions that improve operational efficiency, elevate associate experiences, and drive sustainable business growth.

Ultimately, being a Product Manager at Mars requires a unique blend of technical acumen, strategic foresight, and exceptional stakeholder management. You will navigate a highly matrixed organization, translating complex business requirements into clear product roadmaps. This is an opportunity to own products that have a tangible, global footprint, making your influence felt from manufacturing plants to the hands of the end consumer.

To help you prepare effectively, we have compiled representative questions based on real interview experiences at Mars. These questions are grouped into key categories to help you identify patterns and structure your preparation.

Platform & Domain Expertise

These questions evaluate your technical familiarity with enterprise systems and your ability to manage product lifecycles on complex, third-party platforms.

• How do you approach product management when building solutions on enterprise platforms like ServiceNow?
• Describe a time when you had to integrate a legacy system with a modern digital platform. What challenges did you face, and how did you resolve them?

Succeeding in the Mars interview process requires a balanced preparation strategy that addresses both your technical capabilities and your collaborative leadership style. You must demonstrate that you can think like a business owner while executing like a technologist.

Platform & Domain Acumen – You must show a deep understanding of the specific platforms and technologies relevant to the team you are joining. At Mars, many internal product roles heavily leverage enterprise platforms like ServiceNow. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to configure, scale, and drive value from these ecosystems rather than just building custom code from scratch.

Cross-Functional Collaboration – Mars operates as a highly collaborative, matrixed organization. You will be evaluated on your ability to partner effectively with engineering, design, data science, and business operations. Be ready to demonstrate how you foster psychological safety, align diverse incentives, and translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.

Structured Problem Solving – When faced with ambiguous business challenges, you must demonstrate a structured, user-centric approach to problem-solving. Interviewers look for your ability to break down complex problems, identify root customer pain points, define clear success metrics, and make data-driven prioritization decisions.

Cultural Alignment & Values – Mars is a value-driven organization guided by its Five Principles: Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency, and Freedom. You should weave these principles into your behavioral answers, demonstrating a commitment to long-term value creation, collaborative partnerships, and ethical decision-making.

The interview process for a Product Manager at Mars is designed to evaluate both your technical execution skills and your ability to collaborate in a global matrixed environment. While the exact steps can vary slightly by location and team, candidates typically undergo a multi-stage evaluation process that balances automated screening with deep, human-to-human interaction.

The journey often begins with an initial screening stage, which may include an automated video assessment where you record video responses to a series of pre-set questions. This is followed by a live conversation with a recruiter or Product Owner to align on your background and platform experience. From there, you will enter a rigorous series of cross-functional interviews. This stage typically involves four or more separate conversations with the hiring manager's manager, peer product managers, engineering leads, and key business stakeholders. This comprehensive loop ensures you gain a clear understanding of the teams you will support and collaborate with daily.

The final stage of the process often features a practical take-home exercise or case study, which you will present back to the hiring manager and select team members. This exercise is highly practical, focusing on real-world scenarios you would encounter on the job. It serves as an excellent opportunity to showcase your structured thinking, domain knowledge, and communication style in a simulated work environment.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression of the interview stages you will navigate. Candidates should use this roadmap to pace their preparation, ensuring they focus on high-level behavioral alignment in the early stages before diving deep into technical and case-study preparation for the panel and final rounds. Note that localized roles or specific platform teams may adjust the number of cross-functional interviews based on stakeholder availability.

To stand out during the interview loop, you must understand the core competencies Mars interviewers focus on. Below is a detailed breakdown of the primary evaluation areas.

Enterprise Platform Management

For many Product Manager roles, particularly those supporting internal operations or business enablement, deep familiarity with enterprise software ecosystems is a critical differentiator. Mars relies heavily on platforms like ServiceNow to streamline workflows, manage services, and drive organizational efficiency.

Be ready to go over:

• Out-of-the-Box vs. Customization – How to evaluate when to use standard platform features versus when to build custom configurations to meet unique business needs.
• Platform Architecture & Integrations – Understanding how enterprise platforms connect with other legacy systems, APIs, and data warehouses across the company.
• User Adoption and Training – Strategies for rolling out platform updates globally and ensuring high adoption rates among thousands of internal associates.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-instance architecture, platform governance models, and managing automated upgrade paths for enterprise SaaS.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would design a product roadmap for a global service desk migration on the ServiceNow platform."
• "How do you handle a situation where a business unit demands a highly customized workflow that threatens the upgradability of the core platform?"

Stakeholder Management & Influence

Operating successfully at Mars requires navigating a complex matrix of global business units, local market teams, and centralized technology groups. You must demonstrate that you can build trust and drive alignment without direct reporting authority.

Be ready to go over:

• Managing Competing Priorities – How you handle situations where different global regions or business segments have conflicting product requirements.
• Translating Tech to Business – Your approach to explaining complex technical constraints or platform limitations to non-technical business executives.
• Conflict Resolution – Real examples of how you navigated disagreements between engineering teams and business sponsors regarding scope or timelines.

Example scenarios:

• "Describe a time when you had to convince a senior business leader to delay a feature launch in order to pay down technical debt."
• "How do you build alignment when two highly influential stakeholders have completely opposite views on the direction of your product?"

Product Execution & Case Presentation

The final stages of the interview will heavily test your hands-on product management skills through a practical take-home exercise. You will be asked to analyze a business problem, propose a product solution, and present your recommendations.

Be ready to go over:

• Problem Definition & Scope – How you narrow down a broad, ambiguous prompt into a concrete problem statement.
• Roadmapping & Prioritization – Your framework for prioritizing features (e.g., RICE, MoSCoW) and structuring a multi-phase release plan.
• Success Metrics & KPIs – Defining clear, measurable business and user metrics to track the performance of your proposed solution.

Example scenarios:

• "Based on the take-home prompt provided, present your recommended product strategy to improve supply chain visibility for our global petcare segment."
• "How would you measure the return on investment (ROI) of the digital solution you have proposed in your case study?"

As a Product Manager at Mars, your daily work will sit at the intersection of business strategy, technology execution, and user experience. You will be responsible for defining the "why" and "what" of your product, while empowering your engineering partners to determine the "how."

Your primary responsibility will be owning the product lifecycle from conception through launch and continuous optimization. This includes conducting user research, defining product requirements, managing a prioritized backlog, and writing clear user stories. You will lead agile ceremonies, coordinate sprint planning, and work closely with scrum masters and engineering leads to ensure high-quality, timely delivery of features.

Collaboration is a core pillar of this role. You will spend a significant portion of your time aligning with cross-functional partners across the globe. You will work with business analysts to map processes, UX designers to create intuitive interfaces, and change management teams to ensure smooth product rollouts. Additionally, you will be responsible for communicating product updates, milestones, and performance metrics to senior leadership, acting as the primary champion for your product's value proposition.