Describing your high school years and the experiences that shaped you
Company: Shopify
Role: Product Manager
Category: Behavioral & Leadership
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
In a product manager interview at Shopify, the interviewer asks a personal question: what was high school like for you? Answer it as you would in the interview.
```hint Find the thread
Instead of a timeline of those years, pick one or two experiences that explain how you make choices or what drives you today.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Is this one stop in a chronological walk through your life, or a stand-alone question, and roughly how long should the answer take?
- Is the interviewer more interested in what you did during those years (classes, activities, jobs) or in how you thought and changed?
- How much personal detail is appropriate if those years involved hardship, such as family responsibilities or a move to a new country?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- An honest picture of those years built around one or two concrete moments rather than a list of grades or awards.
- Choices the candidate made, what they pursued, avoided or started, and the reasons behind them.
- A clear connection between traits formed then and how the candidate works as a product manager now.
- Self-awareness, including what they would do differently, without oversharing or rehearsed modesty.
- Brevity that leaves openings for the interviewer to probe.
### Follow-up Questions
- Which decision from those years would you make differently today, and why?
- Who influenced you most during that time, and where does that influence show up in your work?
- What did people around you misunderstand about you at that age?
Overview: A Shopify product manager behavioral question asking the candidate what high school was like for them. It tests self-awareness, the ability to choose one formative experience and tell it briefly, and whether the candidate can connect choices made in those years to how they work and decide today.
