This article is for people that want to hire their next Product Manager and is most useful for organizations that do not yet have a lot of experience in the product domain.

That already helps me leap right into the crux of things: A lot of people that hire their first Product Manager do not necessarily have a strong Product background. Out there in the wild, especially for Start-ups, *someone* just starts wearing the product hat and begins to act as a Product Manager on the project. 

But how are you supposed to know how to hire another Product person since you just got in by chance yourself or might actually just be the CMO or Founder?

First of all – I believe it is actually not too hard, but it is important to set yourself (and the candidate) up in the right way. 

Over the years, I have had the privilege to do more than a hundred interviews across all sorts of companies, seniority levels and domains.

From my experience, two things are crucial for a rockstar Product Manager to uncover their full potential: [1] they are a good mutual fit for the role and [2] they have full buy-in and resources from the organization from their first day on. That being said, I often see that the PMs that truly shine often end up focusing on something else than they were hired for initially.

Alright, let’s dig into this:

Well, do I actually need a Product Manager? 

This might sound a bit like a smartass question – but it is important to get clarity around this. For instance, if you feel engineering velocity is not high enough you should dig a bit deeper to understand what you truly are in need of. As an example, if you feel that the team is suffering due to a lot of dependencies on other teams or projects and lack of coordination, you might consider hiring a Program Manager who helps orchestrate the execution. If you build something like a visual interface but do not yet have a designer – that might be the underlying reason slowing everyone down. 

What can a Product Manager do for me and what can they not do?

In my mind, great Product Managers look at the world, find the best problems and get the right people excited to invest their time and energy to solve it. 

This does not mean that they will think through every detail of the solution. It also does not mean that they will handhold other functions on the execution. It simply means they will rally people behind the problem and make sure a solution is delivered. Great PMs will typically involve the people around them across engineering, design and business to figure out the details rather than sitting down and producing a ‘here is the answer’ document. Here is what I think Product Managers should do:

• Identify problems that when solved well provide customer value (What).
• Create high fidelity qualitative and quantitative insight into the status-quo (Why).
• Get others (Engineering, UX, leadership) excited about the problem.
• Marshall the resources.
• Craft (with engineering and UX!) an elegant solution and an execution roadmap (How)
• Constantly seek validation with customers to influence the solution.
• Constantly cheer for the team.

Am I ready and is my organization ready for a PM to come in?

As a CEO, you want to focus on the fun stuff and have a tireless worker bee execute your ideas with engineering? NOOOO, Think again!

Imagine you already have a strong opinion of what the product should be. I’d caution hiring a Product Manager to ‘execute’ on that plan. I have made this mistake myself before and I see this in others, especially start-up founders a lot. At some stage of success they realize: ‘I can’t do this alone, I need a team that helps me execute X Y Z so I can focus more on strategy’. The pitfall is that great PMs will begin to develop their own opinions and that will mean they might do things differently and also alter the strategic direction. Depending on the seniority level this of course is more or less the case. Ultimately, you want people that complement your organization but it is crucial that you and your organization are ready to be led in a slightly different direction. New PMs will bring new direction and focus – embrace this, otherwise your new hire won’t be able to bring their full potential to the table. 

One of the key complications is if there is already a CEO or co-founder who is very strong on the product but realizes they need to match the growth of the organization with building a product org. Their first instinct will be to hire someone who is a lot like them. 

In this case, you should ask yourself: 

• Am I truly ready to give up the product hat I am wearing? 
• Am I okay that a new person will begin to work much closer with the engineering team?

My recommendation is to find yourself someone you are comfortable with, give them the runway and space to do their thing. Make sure you find someone with the instincts to involve you and other leaders in the organization to the right degree. Overall, the new person will do a lot of the things you might have loved to do before like getting things done with the developer team, holding a passionate speech about the company vision or impersonating a big win. It is crucial for the company, yourself and your hire that you genuinely trust that person and really love to see that person succeed. 

What to look for in a PM?

I mostly agree with Todd Jackson here (whom I am basing this part on), there are a few qualities that you can find in all great PMs

Must have

• Outstanding intellectual ability, able to process and synthesize information
• Excellent communication
• Demonstrated leadership
• Collaborative and effective within the company culture
• Product instincts

Good to have

• Knack for knowing what customers/users want
• Strategic/analytical thinking
• Technological background
• Entrepreneurial spirit

Nice to have

• Write code
• Create designs
• Runs quantitative analysis 

To me personally, maybe the most critical skill for a PM is to identify the problem that needs solving and be so effective and convincing in articulating a narrative / vision that others want to work on the problem.

You will find that great PMs can really make a difference, if the team (and especially engineers) truly internalizes the problem statement and the direction. If a PM accomplishes that, the team will be happy, productive and magical things can happen, even if the topic itself does not sound too exciting if compared to ‘hotter topics’.  

Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, VP of PM, Product Owner, …. I am confused. What do I need?

My advice is to completely ignore the actual title – these differ a lot from company to company and I have also observed people using other titles in their external-facing profiles (e.g. to look more important when interacting with customers). If you hire from the bigger tech companies, levels.fyi has a somewhat useful overview.

What you should do is to talk to the candidate. I know this sounds trivial – but I want to make sure you do not get misled by pompous titles.

How should I assess a Product Manager?

I recommend not to spend too much time with CVs. Obviously, it is useful as a hygiene factor and pre-selection of 5-10 candidates. Look for real product management experience. Did they launch something? Were they in charge of it?  Did they have a clear individual impact? In the interview, look at how the candidate crafts their narrative. 

To get down to 3-5 candidates, I recommend 30 minutes pre-screening coffee chats. Your primary goal is to feel the chemistry. Pitch them your project and how you think about it and see how they react. ONLY pick candidates you are in love with (none if you are not!).

For the interviews, I would strongly recommend creating an interview panel from the 3-4 key technical people (i.e. Technical project lead + CTO), business and supporting functions (e.g. design, finance). This will make everybody feel involved in the hiring decision, PMs run on relationships and buy-in. This will help your hire to produce stronger results later!

I recommend checking references for your final 1-3. Please be 100% transparent (only use references the candidate offered) and make clear in the process that you might at some point reach out. Hear from an executive to learn how they were perceived in the organization and hear from a peer (ideally tech lead) if they were liked in the organization. Of course, take the feedback with a grain of salt.

As an extra, get external validation from an experienced PM from the outside to make up for the experience gap and get an additional unbiased assessment.

How do I convince my prime candidate to join?

Fantastic PMs will typically have a couple of other offers. You will need to make your case. Aside from the hard numbers negotiation, tell your top candidate that you really really want them. This does not weaken your negotiation position, it is a signal to the candidate that they will find a set-up in which they can succeed.

What is crucial at this stage is that you are 100% open and honest on scope, title, challenges and future opportunities. Do NOT promise something vague like “we are in a growth phase, anything is possible”. You will have a disappointed PM in a year – nothing is more costly than that. 

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We want to thank Elias once again for his contribution and are looking forward to more insightful conversations with him. We also want to thank our partners from phase2, for connecting us with Elias and making this conversation & future collaborations possible.