This is your practical rubric to determine how you, as a candidate, perform in the Product Ideation round. Are you either a Strong Hire, Hire, Low-Confidence Hire, or No Hire.

1) Clarification & Scope: Ability to reduce ambiguity and restate the goal plainly.

• ✅ Clear definitions, explicit assumptions, quick alignment on success with the interviewer.
• ❌ Jumping to features without clarifying or stating any supporting metrics

2) Metrics & Goal Alignment: Choosing a meaningful north star plus secondary metrics that tie to the business goal.

• ✅ Precise primary metric; a set of metrics that links to your north star.
• ❌ Vague metrics or not mentioning the full funnel metrics

3) Product Breadth: Generating a range of ideas (at least 7-8)

• ✅ ~7–8 distinct ideas covering multiple steps of the funnel
• ❌ <= 5 ideas, unrelated to the funnel drop-offs

4) Product Depth: How well the top ideas are explained and whether they are creative and can move the metric.

• ✅ Creative ideas, clearly explained (what changes, for whom, where in funnel, which metric, why)
• ❌ Non-detailed ideas, very high level showing no depth.

5) Prioritization: After coming up with all these ideas, having the ability to prioritize the one with a clear framework. We like to use : Impact × Effort × Confidence to prioritize.

• ✅ Clearly explain why your idea should be prioritized accounting for expected impact on the North Start metric, effort on engineer side, and your confidence level.
• ❌ Picking an idea without accounting for any impact on the metric, or effort required from the engineering to build

If you execute these 5 areas well, you’re likely to get a Strong Hire. Gaps in one or max 2 areas often move the decision to Hire or Low-Confidence Hire (i.e., requires coaching). Significant deficiencies across 3 areas typically lead to a No Hire.