Thin supply, fat promises

A product case question from a product manager interview, set at TidyTask, a fictional home services company.

The question

Skills this case tests

A starting metric tree

Completion rate = completed jobs ÷ booked jobs; split the change into booking mix and completion within each booking type

How to approach this case

First, confirm the definition of completion and check what happened to total bookings and total completed jobs over the same six weeks. A falling rate can come from more bookings as well as worse service. Then split completion into booking mix and completion within each kind of booking, category and time of day. Find who cancels, the customer or the service partner, and why. Ask what changed on the demand side, such as campaigns and pricing, and on the supply and matching side, such as how jobs get assigned. Use another city as a comparison. Since this is a marketplace question, check capacity hour by hour, not only total partner count. A strong close fixes the balance of supply and demand, judges growth spend by customers who come back, and names guardrails for partners and customers.

The full method for mixed diagnose-and-decide questions · A worked example answer

After the mock interview you get scores on five skills, what to fix with quotes from your answers, and the ideal path for this case.