As a Product Leader, a big part of your job will be building your team. Sometimes it's because the company is growing and other times the trigger is someone leaving. Either way, it's an opportunity to find a great Product Manager who will add value to your organization.
If you're looking to hire a product manager, it's important to know what to look for in order to find the best fit for your team. In this post, we'll outline five steps that will help you interview a product manager and assess whether they are the right fit for your company. Keep in mind that the best product managers are not only great with strategy and planning, but also excel at execution, so be sure to ask questions that will help you gauge these skills as well. Thanks for reading!
1) Know your goals: Define what kind of Product Manager you are looking for such as their level of experience, their knowledge of the space, their technical skills, their growth experience, their management skills, etc. and establish a scorecard to assess each candidate in a standardized fashion. Iterate on it over time as you see which qualities you might have been over indexing for or others you forgot to highlight.
2) Ensure the right people are involved: Product Managers will interface and collaborate with engineering, design, marketing, support, sales, legal and other teams. Round out the interview loop with representatives from key stakeholder groups who you will want buy-in from. This will allow you to have different perspectives on the candidates, generate goodwill internally, and set the PM up for success. Have the outline of the interview stages available to provide to the candidate if they want to know what the next steps are.
3) Divide and conquer: Don't make the candidate answer the same question over and over again, it makes your team look unprofessional and undesirable. Inform each interviewer of the part of the ideal profile you want them to evaluate and share some sample questions with them for assisting in screening. A full set of questions around skills and experience is available here, but please adjust them to your company. Try and encourage people to start questions with "Tell me about a time when..." AND "What would you do if..." to encourage open ended responses and allow for people without the perfect experience but the right mindset to explain what they would do in similar scenarios. Also, add some fun questions in like "Teach me something" or "What blog/podcast really caught your attention recently?" to let them show their personality too.
4) Provide an IN PERSON Case Study: There has been a movement towards case studies over the past few years, and it's great to see someone in action, but steer clear of a few things. First, DON'T use your own company as an example; it's unfair to ask for free consulting. Second, DO have it be a LIVE experience, so you see how the person works and aren't allowing them to have unlimited time and resources to get the project done. What you're looking for here is the PM's ability to problem solve, realized when assumptions are being made, and collaboratively ask questions to get to the best answers. Provide a board enough case study but one that can be solved in an hour or so. This will be a big time commitment, so it should be reserved for top candidates.
5) Know perfection doesn't exist: It's great to have goals for what the ideal candidate should have, but nearly all of the time you'll have to compromise on some of your "requirements". Treat it like a product and figure out which qualifications you listed are actually "Nice to Haves" and prioritize accordingly. Remember that if someone already has everything you need they'll probably get bored pretty quickly because there isn't much for them to learn and then it'll be back to recruiting time for you. It's better to hire someone who is hungry for knowledge and growth than someone complacent.
Hiring a product manager role can be daunting, but if you go in prepared with solid goals and the right strategy, you'll set yourself up for success. Remember to set your interview goals, ensure the interview panel is composed of people who will inform your decision, be selective of who will ask different questions, provide an IN PERSON case study so they can demonstrate their skills, and don't strive for perfection because it doesn't exist.
You've got this! Now I want to hear from you. What are some of your favorite interview questions?
Hi! I’m Tami, the founder of The Product Leader Coach where I work with product leaders and teams to realize their potential by focusing on their strengths.
If you enjoyed this post, I am available for product leadership coaching or team training. Learn more about my services and upcoming children’s book.