Team sandwiches are a bonus
What to look for when hiring a Product Manager
I often get asked what to look for in hiring Product Managers. My high level framework is simple. There’s more nuance below the surface and I’m constantly adjusting how I approach hiring because it is an imperfect science. But if a candidate has these three traits, you are on the right track.
And what do sandwichs have to do with anything? Read on, my friend…
1) Product Insight
Arguably the most important capability in a Product Manager is the ability to think critically about the intersection of a problem, a product, and a user. Can a person look at a problem, envision a product solution, and empathize with the user of that solution. Importantly, a good PM should be able to come at this intersection from any of the three directions. They should be able to look at not just a raw problem, but also products or customers. Importantly, a good PM doesn’t just point out problems but can hypothesize solutions.
There are many online resources about thinking like a PM, but at its simplest ask a candidate to come at one or more scenarios from the 3 directions (problem, user, product) above. You’ll learn a lot about how the person thinks.
2) Communication
If an engineer’s core measure of productivity is code, a PMs may be communication. That’s because as a PM you are ‘quarterbacking’ functional teams to deliver the product. Different stages and types of product call for different types of communication. If you are working on blue sky consumer products, you may need a PM who is great at selling a vision. If you are working with enterprise customers, you may want a PM who can communicate stats, trends, and customer insights in a succinct way. If you have a highly technical product, you will need a PM who can connect with stakeholders at a technical depth more than someone who can wax poetic about vision. An in-the-weeds technical person and design focused person can both be great PMs but probably for different products and teams.
Think about the communication that is most important for your product, the stakeholders and audiences they will work with, and index on candidates that talk that language.
3) Execution
While productivity can be measured in communication, success is measured in execution. A product manager moves the ball forward. Product insight and communication skills alone are not enough. A good product manager gets stuff done. They aren’t strategists, consultants, or analysts. They like to get their hands dirty and build stuff. They are also often impatient. This can make them annoying and misunderstood at times, but on average leads to results.
If you are interviewing for execution, throw out a blocking scenario and see how the candidate reacts. Do they come up with a list of things they would personally DO to unblock? If what’s blocking is an engineer working through lunch, does the PM offer to go get a sandwich? It’s a silly example to make a point — great PMs can operate at both a strategic and a tactical level. They are not above doing whatever is needed to ship.
Do you want a Project Manager or a Product Manager?
A product manager’s mission is to get the right product or feature out the door AND make it a success. This requires a balance between speed of execution and sweating both the strategy and the details.
While the semantics of job titles vary between companies, I’ll make a contrast between a ‘project manager’ and a ‘product manager’. A project manager’s success can be measured in moving a PROJECT along, while a product manager is measured by moving a PRODUCT along. What do I mean by that? I don’t necessarily hold a project manager accountable for the PRODUCT’s ultimate success as long as the PROJECT’s milestones are met.
That’s not enough for a product manager. A PM is accountable for both the milestones as well as the success of the product. Shipping a bad product isn’t a success. Shipping a (perhaps imperfect) product, observing usage, improving, and driving key metrics up is. That also means you need to give the PM enough agency to make the product success. If you want to hire someone to blindly execute on your vision, maybe a product manager isn’t what you are looking for.
What about you? What do you look for in PMs? What works well for you and your company?
And yes, PMs are about more than just getting sandwiches.
