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User Flow Whiteboard Teardown

Growth & Marketing

What it tests

Depth of product intuition and ability to find growth opportunities inside an existing user journey

Format

  1. 1Candidate is given a product (could be the hiring company's or a well-known app) and asked to draw the full user flow from acquisition to retention on a whiteboard
  2. 2They must annotate each step with: the user's goal, the drop-off risk, and the growth mechanic (if any) currently in place
  3. 3Interviewer then picks two steps and asks: 'What experiment would you run here, and what metric would move?'
  4. 4Candidate must propose a specific hypothesis with a measurable outcome — not just a feature idea

What to look for

  • Is the flow accurate and complete, or do they skip activation and jump straight to virality?
  • Do their annotations show user empathy — or just funnel metrics disconnected from real behavior?
  • Are the proposed experiments precise (e.g. 'reduce time-to-value in onboarding from 4 steps to 2') or vague ('improve UX')?
  • Can they connect a product change to a specific business metric — and explain the causal chain?

Adaptation guide

Use your own product flow for the exercise. For candidates without product background, allow them to choose a product they use daily instead.

Full description

Format:

  1. Candidate is given a product (could be the hiring company's or a well-known app) and asked to draw the full user flow from acquisition to retention on a whiteboard
  2. They must annotate each step with: the user's goal, the drop-off risk, and the growth mechanic (if any) currently in place
  3. Interviewer then picks two steps and asks: "What experiment would you run here, and what metric would move?"
  4. Candidate must propose a specific hypothesis with a measurable outcome — not just a feature idea

Time: 45 minutes

What to look for:

  • Is the flow accurate and complete, or do they skip activation and jump straight to virality?
  • Do their annotations show user empathy — or just funnel metrics disconnected from real behavior?
  • Are the proposed experiments precise (e.g. "reduce time-to-value in onboarding from 4 steps to 2") or vague ("improve UX")?
  • Can they connect a product change to a specific business metric — and explain the causal chain?

Adaptation: Use your own product flow for the exercise. For candidates without product background, allow them to choose a product they use daily instead.