Guides
Practice the real work
These guides help you prepare for roles the modern way — by doing the actual work, not rehearsing answers. Each one covers a way to practice real work and turn it into evidence of skill: job-simulation interviews, product-manager practice, and building a portfolio from the work you produce.
How to prepare for a job simulation (work-sample) interview
What job simulation and work-sample interviews actually test, why employers use them, and a step-by-step way to prepare: practice the real work of the role, not interview answers.
Read the guide →Practice for a product manager interview by doing the real work
Why rehearsing frameworks and mock answers is losing power in product manager interviews, and how to prepare by producing real PM artifacts — specs, prioritization calls, metric investigations — instead.
Read the guide →How to build a product management portfolio with no experience
You don’t need a PM title to build a PM portfolio — you need evidence of PM work. What counts, how to structure each piece around decisions rather than polish, and where the work can come from.
Read the guide →Frequently asked questions
What is a job simulation or work-sample interview?
It is an assessment that has you do the actual work of a role rather than talk about it — producing the deliverables the job requires, often inside a working environment with people to consult and materials to dig through. What it observes is how you work, not only what you turn in.
What is the best way to prepare for one?
Practice the real work of the role, not interview questions. Rehearse producing the deliverables the job requires under realistic conditions — incomplete information, time pressure, other people to consult — and then review how you worked, not just what you produced.
How do I practice for a product manager interview?
Spend most of your prep doing real PM work — writing specs, making prioritization calls under constraints, investigating a metric drop — rather than memorizing frameworks. PM interviews increasingly test how you actually work, so let your answers draw on work you have genuinely done.
Can I build a product management portfolio without PM experience?
Yes. You do not need a PM title to build a PM portfolio — you need evidence of PM work. Produce real artifacts for realistic scenarios (a spec, a prioritization memo with genuine tradeoffs, a teardown that ends in a decision) and present each with the reasoning behind it, because the reasoning, not the polish, is what a hiring manager judges.
How can I practice these skills for free?
You can self-simulate: take a real job description, turn its responsibilities into concrete deliverables, and produce them under a time limit. Or use a purpose-built environment — Levvy turns any pasted job description into a private practice challenge inside a simulated company, free for candidates, and you keep the deliverables you produce.
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