Hiring Product managers

Skills block. Session 1

Hiring process & testing:

1. Hiring manager’s phone screen: screen for interest in company & domain
2. Panel interview (group or 1–2–1): assign each panel member a competency and tease out whether it’s present

3. Discover skills

What skills? PM must possess:
3.1. Synthesizing large amount of information and data points and being able to use that to right problems to solve [strategy]
- What do we need to do and build in these markets
- Competencies and things we need to build in order to win those markets
- How do I create a framework for a decision-making and prioritisation backed by a cohesive plan to win in the market

3.2. Using the curiosity, creativity, intuition to tell a compelling story what a winning solution might look like [product sense]

3.3. Inspire and influence your team to deliver the solution you come up with [leadership, communication]

3.4. Set up a right success metrics to ensure you know whether you made the impact you expected. Can you adapt and iterate to get it right? [analytics]

4. Collaborative working session / presentation

Example questions to ask: “How would you approach this job?” Opportunity to show how they think deeply about your product
For Growth Product Manager (GPL): “Sign up onboarding flow”, “Identify opportunities to improve the activation”

Types of Product managers (Product, Manager and Growth fit)
- PMs that great at early stage, but they don’t like the process, not into providing updates and statuses
- PMs that can’t handle the ambiguity of early stage, but they are good with processes

How to succeed as a Product Manager at the early days of the Product?

Key advise is to maintain your focus on a single product / problem. Framework deciding what the single product / problem focus is

1.1. Focus on the most acute pain point
Don’t go into trap: Lets also do this…Lets also do that…

1.2. Finding PMF means your target customers are using, buying and talking about your product

1.3. Then double down and scaling existing product for some time

ProTip: Horizontal product means 80% of your product will solve the problems of a target department users (sales for Calendly)

Source: 20Product