I’ve been interviewing for product management positions and have not been very impressed by the hiring managers or the product leadership at some companies.
(This is something I look for when I interview since it’s important for me to be able to learn from the leadership at the company.)
Company 1:
Interviewed with the VP of Product in the 2nd round. I thought she was okay but she asked me some questions that made no sense. When I asked follow-up questions, she took the back questions. I felt her questions weren’t thought through.
Then interviewed with the CPO in the next round. During the first 5 mins or so, I felt he wasn’t listening at all. He kept asking me about things I had already answered. The rest of the interview was fine but short. I asked him if we could go over time since I didn’t get a chance to ask questions.
He agreed so we spoke for 20 more minutes. I feel the interview would have gone on longer had I not said thank you so much for your time and ended it. After that, he mentioned he was late for a meeting but didn’t bring it up earlier.
Company 2:
Interviewed with the Group Product Manager in round 2. He sounded impatient and wouldn’t let me finish answering before jumping to another question. Also wasn’t a good listener since he asked me questions I had already answered. I also felt he was “virtue signalling” by saying how good he was at critical thinking, strategy and thinking out of the box, and how much influence he had over the CEO and the direction of the company. Oh, and he also said that I might not be good at strategy given that I had never worked at a start-up. He still asked me for some ideas about how to grow the product (that’s the only product at that company).
The next round was a case study, and the whole thing was really unprofessional. The HR sent me the assignment on Friday and I could ask questions over the weekend. But when I sent the questions, the email was no longer active. They finally responded late Monday and told me to make assumptions and not ask any questions. No thanks.
Am I the only one experiencing this?
On a side note: I do see people moving up the ranks/titles without the experience. For example, someone I know went from PM to Director at a start-up with less than 1 year of experience as a PM.
– Rohit Kumar
Discussion
A] Thank you for sharing this. I’ve been feeling the same way about all points.
To help me keep calm and focused, I think of this from 2 perspectives:
I like to use the dating analogy here: you will meet a lot of people who may not be compatible to you and you know when you see those signals. But it’s a numbers game and you need to keep trying and be open to being patient. If you end up committing to a “meh” date will you be happy? And, is it fair to that person that they’re not making you happy?
think from the hiring manager’s perspective and what they must be thinking. Interviewing dozens of candidates and wondering the same thing “how’s this bro a director of product at startup A when they can’t even do X?” Customer empathy here LOL. They also may be having a bad day as well. Sometimes I’ll ask others in the loop about their experience working with the manager: watch for those signals
I think you have a good sense of what you’re looking for. A great boss is underrated; I prioritize a great boss (who doesn’t need to be ex-head of product at FB) because having someone kind, organized, and a good person means I can learn to trust them to have my back when it matters (conflicts, promos, etc) which will allow me to do my best work.
Something I do is build a framework on traits I look for in a great boss and then determine how much of it the “candidate” satisfies. I find this helps make trade-off decisions much easier.
– Nathan Endicott
B] One of the more common things I see in Product Management Leadership (more so in startups and “small to medium” organizations [i.e., 10-500 employees]) is that they often haven’t any experience outside of the organization that they’re in at the moment. They get roped into the culture that they, themselves, created or supported and haven’t found a way out of the labyrinth. This means you will see Vice Presidents of Product who were SMEs turned from Director of Product to VP of Product within the span of 8-15 years.
I’m not criticizing this situation heavy-handedly. These individuals will often know their users pretty thoroughly; they will know the pain points and the expected behaviour. Still, they will not have established processes that generally make sense outside of their own organization. What this looks like to someone that has more external experience would be:
Inconsistencies in questions to follow-up questions
More often than not, these leaders have little to no understanding of what they really want in a candidate. A gap in their team may be obvious to them (I need a data analyst so we can interpret the data we have to support our direction. I need a Senior Product Manager to mentor and drive the inexperienced PMs we have on our team) except there isn’t enough focus on product management that they know what makes a good Senior PM/Data Analyst.
This causes them to ask rather ambiguous questions yet also repeat themselves several times over. Many of the interview questions these types of leaders have are directly provided from a GoogleFu of “data analyst interview questions” or “top 50 product manager interview questions.”
Additionally, they’ll also ask the generic “gotcha questions” that focus on catching the interviewer in antipatterns from existing questions online or a question that requires industry expertise to have the “right” answer.
Lack of user-focused questions, comments, or processes.
Many smaller product management departments/teams lack the resources or buy-in to push user-centric decisions fully. I know this sounds insane, but it happens. Stakeholders, executive teams, and board of directors seem to have this firm stance of “We invested in this product, we were the users of a competitor, and these were our pain points, so everyone has these pain points – how dare you suggest that we don’t know our customers/users.”
This causes many startups to be in an echo chamber of use cases until the PM team can break out and start performing surveys, interviews, or even get buy-in for analytical tools to understand user behaviour better.
When questioned/challenged on processes, they will often repeat very generalized and well-stated processes. In previous interviews, it’s been obvious that other PMs have questioned the product lifecycle process at the organization enough times that the leadership has Googled a few key buzzwords and flowcharts to respond with the “expected response.” (even though no such process exists internally)
By the time I’m interviewing a candidate, I often have listened in on a panel interview with the rest of the team and have insights on what questions have been asked – the responses – and a list of notes from the rest of the team members on their views on the candidate. Which means… what, exactly? It means that I’m not going to bore the individual with high-level questions, won’t be repeating the same questions, and want to drive a conversation to understand the candidate better.
I expect the bulk of the conversation will be questions aimed at my position, the company’s stance on specific processes/tools/functions around product management, and around the role itself (frequency of performance reviews, average raise and timing, the salary, and any remaining clarification of the responsibilities of the position).
On my side, I want to understand how this candidate thinks (what drives their product analysis, what are the OKRs that they feel better to help drive the product, why they enjoy being in product management, etc.) and get a feel for how the individual will fit within the team as a whole.
Even with all of the most well-intended, thoughtful hiring processes – it isn’t always the best experience for the candidate. Maybe the Group PM had walked out of a stressful meeting, or they were feeling stressed on that particular day. In some situations, that individual may already have a candidate they’ve approved, and you end up being a “time-waster” that HR threw at them. Startups often fail communication, and HR will push their potential candidate to the next hiring manager without considering existing candidates and where they are in the process (unfortunately).
At the end of the day, many people in product management haven’t spent much time in product management, from medium-sized organizations trying to have a PM team to please investors/board of directors to startups promoting a standard PM to a c-suite position within a year or two. Product Management has become an “up and coming” industry/role, and everyone wants to jump to the top or into a FAANG organization. This means you’ll have inexperienced leadership and inauthentic candidates.
As a candidate, you have to ensure that the company you’re interviewing with meshes with you – just as much as they expect you to mesh with them.
What kind of things do you look for when interviewing a candidate for prioritization? additionally, what are some red/green flags?
– Marco Silva
Discussion
A] Whether they can deviate from the framework to incorporate new inputs quickly. For example, a framework may rank two efforts as 1-2 after the other, but you may go with 2 ahead of 1 due to a large customer need, or the quick time to market even though the value might be lower, etc. I talk to so many PM candidates who cannot work without following a strict framework, it gives the impression that they cannot handle lots of input.
– Yuri Roman
B] I always treat the framework as a foundation because not everything I have dealt with from the supply chain fits into those situations. Sometimes I have to react and understand product fixes, so I do not have the time to metric out features or put a strategy against certain things. I would love to learn more about the road mapping and planning portion of product management. Thank you for sharing that quote!!
– Vlad Podpoly
C] I think generic frameworks are great for learning about ways that you can prioritize and factors that can be used. But often they do not capture the nuance or grey space that exists in some of the prioritization decisions. Blanket applying a generic framework would be a red flag for me.
Green flag. Aligning priorities to your company /product vision and the metrics that have been identified as important which you are trying to move. Using some sort of structured decision-making/ logical process to prioritize. Able to think critically about tradeoffs and evaluate factors a generic framework wouldn’t capture.
I was looking for a smart contract/blockchain co-founder. While I have an option, I have found someone accomplished with back ends, data layers and AWS that is interested to support me and together we may have some momentum. I am interested to ask people what offerings they have made to co-founders. I have been working on this for some time, the concept is mine, and the backend is only one part of a bigger system —albeit important—. Should I offer equity, how much? What about convertible notes or other offerings? Greatly appreciate the advice, success stories and what not to dos.
Thanks in advance.
– Mario Romero
Discussion
A] I understand convertible notes could be offered. If equity, how much? Is there a structure to motivate and share success such as with a “cliff” or performance mandates to vest shares over time?
Looking to learn an offering that makes sense and structure beyond just “equity.” Thank you kindly.
– Michael Yoffe
B] @Michael Yoffe, I completely understand where you are coming from. Your feedback makes sense.
To add clarification… I am working with someone in the AI ML space and their solution is an important piece of the puzzle. Working with someone in automated marketing. Have a team in Pakistan building a custom tool. Paying a team in Poland for UI. Have an intern. So, the back end and all this guy brings to the table are extremely important. I have been working on the concept for 5 years and am bringing it together. He and his team are a very important part of the puzzle but there are more puzzle pieces than two. Tom Brady (originally from Boston) is nothing without the line, guys that can go deep, a defence and a coach. So, do you give Brady 50%? Even Brady has taken less at times to get Gronk on board. How do you make room for a full team? Also, this guy has his own existing business/startup so should I also get some piece if that? It will also grow as we grow.
– Mario Romero
C] In terms of the actual equity split, there are 100 ways to skin the cat and arguments to be made in either direction.
Regardless of what role you guys agree on (e.g., “Tech Lead” / “Founding Engineer” with 5 – 20%, “Technical Cofounder” / “CTO” with closer to 50%), I highly recommend starting with a contract role where you pay him out of pocket for ~3-6 weeks
It may seem expensive now but, unless I’m missing something, you guys don’t know each other well at all. Put in a crass way, “Would you get married to someone after the first date?”.
Figure out ways to spend as much time together as possible before discussing any equity splits or compensation arrangements. Normally the easiest way to do that outside of coffees/drinks/walks is to pay him an hourly rate to work with you.
This first list of aphorisms is more general; I’ll share observations on particular themes too. I also try and be explicit on the usage of Product Management (a discipline) and product generally (the stuff we create).
What I’ve learned is that there is a profound difference between how the very best product companies create technology products and the rest. And I don’t mean minor differences. Everything from how the leaders behave, to the level of empowerment of teams, to how the organization thinks about funding, staffing and producing products, down to how product, design and engineering collaborate to discover effective solutions for their customers.
When considering such a career move, Cagan and Jones’s categories can offer some guidance for sniffing out strong product companies before you join. Here are just a few examples of questions you can ask during a job search.
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