One of my friends is a newly minted Director of Product Management at a mid-stage startup in silicon valley. I met him for coffee yesterday and we were chatting about how his new job was going.
He has managed Engineering as well as Professional Services teams in the past, but this is his first time managing a Product Management team.
He told me he thought product manager interviews are easy to fake, and even unqualified candidates can easily fake a good performance during the interview. This got me thinking…
Majority of “Product Manager” Interviews I Went to Were Easy to Fake
During my career in product management, I’ve probably interviewed with about a dozen companies for the “Product Manager” position. Over the past 8 years, I’ve been hiring product managers as well.
Having been on both sides of the table, I have to agree with my friend. Almost every interview I had (as a candidate) for the product manager position were easy to fake. The questions were generic and were more the interviewer evaluating personality fit rather than testing for any specific skill-set or knowledge.
Tip I Borrowed from Engineering Interviews
On the other hand, most interviews for an engineer position are very specific and hard to fake. For example, when hiring a programmer, companies often give them a problem to solve and ask them to write code (or pseudo-code) during the interview.
Early in my career as the person hiring product managers, I adopted the same technique. I’ll give the Product Manager candidates a problem set and ask them to come up with short list of requirements, product positioning and UI wireframe – during the interview itself (approximately 90 minute interview).
It was surprising how many candidates with stellar resumes and excellent interview skills fell flat in this exercise. Equally surprising was how many candidates with average resumes and average interview skills shined during this exercise. I always hired the latter, not the former. The long-term results were quite good.
Tips for Interviewing Product Managers
Here then are my tips for your product manager interviews:
- Test for specific skills – such as the ability to create requirements, UI wireframes, product positioning, pricing, etc. Make it hard for a candidate to fake his way through the interview.
- While I’m a big believer in testing for specific skills, I’m not a big believer in “domain knowledge” or “industry specific” experience. I believe product managers with the right skill set can easily learn these in a short time.
- Ask for and thoroughly review the candidate’s portfolio – such as MRDs/PRDs, etc. Ask deep questions against her portfolio to understand her thought process.
I believe these tips can help you improve your success rate in hiring good product managers.
Like This Post? Get More by Email
3) Do not read this blog one sentence per day during your lunch break, while eating a
While this process is more thorough, I am not 100% sure it will accomplish the
objective of distinguishing an interviewee speaking from experience as opposed to second-hand knowledge.
Any MBA graduate from a good management school who has gone through preparation for case interviews for the Management Consulting industry would be able to “fake” his way through this process. The entire curriculum of the top 30 business schools in U.S. is comprised of case studies for class sessions as well as assignments/exams.
Most MBA students who go through this process and get offers as consultants do quite well in that career in spite of never have consulted before in their life. This despite the fact that management consulting is a much more in your face and deals with many, many more industries/products than the particular product management position and company you are interviewing for.
Saeed – Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I do agree with some of your points.
Overall though, my perspective is more along the lines of Roger’s – reason being:
* As Roger said, the “must have” domain knowledge is already present in most companies. This is true even in most startups.
* IMO, a lot of what most people consider “must have” domain knowledge is not really must have.
* Too much domain knowledge can harm rather than help, when it comes to truly innovating. What’s sometimes referred to as “empty mind” in Zen philosophy can be a huge advantage.
(Note to self: Make a post about the advantages of “Empty Mind”).
Concerning Saeed’s point about knowledge built up over time:
1. Some knowledge is important to have within the company so that the product manager and others can leverage it. But not all domain or industry knowledge is import for the product manager to possess.
2. Most companies already have people with the institutional and prior industry knowledge.
3. There is a risk that entrenched views in the industry limits innovative thinking, so it’s not as simple as, “if you can get both, you’re golden”.
One more point. It’s important to define what “domain knowledge” is.
It a broad mix of domain history, as well as product, customer, competitor, technology, trend, problem, and thought leader knowledge.
Some of this can be acquired quickly, but other knowledge is built up over months if not years.
Given two otherwise equal candidates, one with domain experience and one without, I’d hire the one with.
This is not to say that someone without domain knowledge couldn’t be effective but that if the choice is between the two, domain knowledge is a deciding factor.
Roger – I agree with you 100% on industry-specific experience.
In the last company I was at (mobile apps) – I built the PM team from scratch and hired more than a dozen team members, not a single one of whom had prior experience in mobile apps.
Our team did well, and played a vital role in the company growing a lot and going through a successful IPO.
—–
Excellent point about the importance of acquisition of market knowledge. In the short interview session Larry had, I can see the benefit of being handed requirements as it helps to more quickly observe a person in action.
I also like the fact that they gave him additional requirements half way through, it’s an even better simulation of a real-life project.
Michael, plus one on the point about industry experience. A good product manager by definition learns a domain quickly.
Larry, I like the fact that the company gave you an exercise instead of the usual fluffy, uninspired, largely irrelevant questions typically asked in an interview. Nevertheless, I would much rather have seen the exercise focus on gaining an understanding of the market rather than being handed the requirements on a platter and asked to prioritize.
Fundamentally, real product management is about acquisition and emergence of market knowledge. Product managers must have a talent for active listening and learning (acquisition), as well as the ability to synthesize new insights from raw data (emergence). Interviews should focus on these learning talents.
lmckeogh – Great example of a well-conducted interview session. Thanks for sharing.
While personality/culture fit is also important (especially at startups) – using that as the only criteria will lead to poor success rate in hiring PMs (or any other position I can think of).
Great points Micheal. As a PM going through this process, I find it slightly disheartening to go through an interview that is more of a personality test rather than a test of skills. I am not discounting a need for cultural fit, but companies should not be looking for a drinking buddy as much as someone who is going to get the job done.
I did have the fortunate experience to partake in an interesting experiment along these lines just yesterday. There were 2 obligatory panel sessions followed by a collaboration exercise. During this portion of the interview I was given a set of market must have’s, market exciter features, and a bunch of material to build the fictional product with the help of two others that I would potentially be working with. We were given 30 minutes to satisfy the market requirements, create product distinction, and meet the schedule with a working unit. As time unfolded additional market requirements came in as well that had to be dealt with (~18 minute point). The hiring manager ran and observed the exercise along with my performance. Finally, I was asked to give a 3 – 5 minute presentation on the product to the entire evaluation team. This consisted of what was accomplished, performance, lessons learned, and what to do differently next time.
This was a great test of a candidate’s ability to prioritize, focus, and work under pressure in a changing environment. While it was a little nerve wracking, it also indicated the importance that the team and company placed on finding the right candidate with the skills necessary to get the job done properly. Kudos to their originality. Other companies should be so inspired.
Geoffrey – Excellent point, looking for domain knowledge as a prerequisite indeed unnecessarily shrinks the pool of talented candidates, and often leads to shoehorning the wrong person into PM role.
Great post. I have been fooled by people who nailed the high level questions, but were inept.
On the otherside, I recently jumped into the SW world, and my sole familiarity on the wireframe side was one project late in my old life as a hardware PM.
But I think that defining a set of requirements and then defining a rational prioritization scheme would be very useful. That covers pretty much all genres of PM.
I also highly agree about the reduced importance on the domain knowledge. This often leads to trying to shoehorn an engineer or a marketing person into a PM role, and it often is a poor fit. It is far easier to teach the technology/product than the product management fundamentals.
Thanks for sharing!