PRODUCT LEADERSHIP

Product Manager Hiring: The Decision-Making Engine

Streamlining the Employee Selection Process with Data & Intelligence.

Photo by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė on Unsplash

Product & Leadership Playbook

Play 9/196 — Create a Decision—Making Engine for hiring.

What is really one of the hardest decisions to make as a Product Leader, that has a great impact on shaping and managing the product for your customers?

Hiring a new person is one of the most important decisions a leader can make because it has a significant impact on the success of a team, department, or organization. Hiring is very complex, as lots of interests, and requirements have to be met from both sides. During the interview process in almost every company, HR, the team, Stakeholders, and Line Manager are involved in the decision-making process and based on multiple feedbacks one has to make a decision, hoping the other side is having the same conclusion, then it's a match. During the interview process, time is usually very limited, it is very difficult to deep dive into topics and really evaluate the candidate's capabilities, at the same time, in an interview process, everyone brings their own personality and questions. No wonder things can go south very fast, this is why for many years I am using a hiring decision-making engine, in order to get the necessary facts needed.

As written in this previous article, about creating a decision-making engine, it’s important for you as a leader to take your time, assess all the available options, and make informed hiring decisions to ensure you bring in the right person to help the organization reach its goals. Here is how you can adjust your own process to get better outcomes.

The Key pillars

Know what the job requires and what you expect from an ideal candidate.

The first step, instead of writing a job description, is for you to start thinking about, what are the most important activities, expectations, and challenges a person needs to be armored with and overcome in order to be successful at his or her work. Once you know, based on the key pillars, what it is that you are looking for in an ideal candidate, it will help everyone get to the same page who is part of the hiring process.

Communication

1. Clarity: A product manager must be able to clearly articulate the product vision, goals, and roadmap to stakeholders, team members, and customers.
2. Active listening: A product manager must be an effective listener, able to understand the needs and concerns of team members, stakeholders, and customers.
3. Empathy: Product managers must be able to put themselves in the shoes of their audience and communicate in a way that is relatable and convincing.
4. Influencing: A product manager must be able to effectively influence and negotiate with stakeholders, team members, and executives to drive their product forward.
5. Storytelling: A product manager must be able to articulate the value and benefits of their product in a compelling and memorable way.
6. Adaptability: A product manager must be able to adapt their communication style to different audiences and situations, and be able to effectively communicate in both written and verbal formats.
7. Presentation skills: A product manager must be able to present their product and vision to a wide range of audiences, including customers, stakeholders, and executives.

Same or similar experience

1. Product development experience: A product manager should have a solid understanding of the product development process, including conducting market research, defining product requirements, and working with cross-functional teams.
2. Technical knowledge: A product manager should have a basic understanding of technology and be able to work effectively with developers and engineers.
3. Customer-focused experience: A product manager should have experience working directly with customers and a deep understanding of customer needs, pain points, and behaviors.
4. Data-driven decision-making: A product manager should have experience using data and metrics to inform product decisions and measure success.
5. Cross-functional collaboration: A product manager should have experience working effectively with cross-functional teams, including marketing, design, and engineering.
6. Industry knowledge: A product manager should have a deep understanding of the market and industry, including competitor products and trends.
7. Leadership: A product manager should have experience leading and motivating cross-functional teams, as well as experience making difficult decisions and prioritizing tasks.
8. Same or similar product: The candidate ideally has worked in the past on the same or very similar product, so it is not going to be the first time experimenting on the clock.

The interest of the candidate

1. Curiosity: A product manager should have a natural curiosity about the market, customers, and industry trends, and be eager to continuously learn and grow their knowledge.
2. Problem-solving skills: A product manager should have a knack for identifying and solving complex problems and a desire to improve the product and customer experience.
3. Strategic thinking: A product manager should have a strategic mindset and the ability to think long-term about the product and the market.
4. Collaboration: A product manager should have a strong interest in working collaboratively with cross-functional teams and a desire to build strong relationships with stakeholders, team members, and customers.
5. Customer focus: A product manager should have a deep understanding of and interest in the customer, including their needs, pain points, and behaviors.
6. Passion for the product: A product manager should have a genuine interest and passion for the product they are managing and a desire to continuously improve it.
7. Results-oriented: A product manager should be results-driven and have a strong track record of delivering successful products.
8. Learnings: The ideal candidate, is not only joining the company for the money or environment, but, they will also look for ways they can improve themselves, and learn something new.

Behavior

1. Judgmental: Demonstrate wise decisions on (People, Technical, Business, Creativity, etc..) identify root causes, and treat those instead of symptoms.
2. Communication: Listen well, react later. Good understanding, and caring for the other. Treat people with respect even in cases of independence. Remain calm in heated situations.
3. Impact: Accomplish important work, remove silos, help out people, people can depend on the person, high performer. Good process, good results. Take smart actions.
4. Innovation: Conceptualize issues to define large, hard problems. Suggest better approaches. Proven useful ideas. Minimize complexity and simplify.
5. Courage: Say things, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agony. Take the smart risk. Question actions inconsistent with values.
6. Passion: Inspire others for the thrust of excellence. Care about organization success. Stable and celebrates winning.
7. Honesty: Candor and directness, non-political when in disagreement. Always talk about people as you would them face to face. Quick to admit mistakes.
8. Selflessness: Seek what is best for the company and its people rather than him/herself. Ego-less when searching for the best ideas. Make time to help colleagues. Share information actively and proactively.
9. Mentoring: Seeing somebody behind, helping the person to get better. Makes time to help, and provides clear guidance on how to get better.
10. Motivation: Self-starter, understands higher level, reaches their own objectives, and helps others to do the same.
11. Awareness: Understand strengths and weaknesses. Takes critique and provides guidelines. Takes actions to remove silos.
12. Discipline: Holds himself to a high standard. Expect others to do the same. Helps others to be disciplinary at all times.
13. Transparency: Describes his ideas, listens to others, is transparent in communication and how he gets to the point and what it should result in.
14. Reputation: Past actions are positive, known for being trust and helpful to others, and has exceptional domain knowledge.

Hard Skills

1. Process Skills and Techniques: Product managers need to know and master processes around product discovery, optimization, and how to adjust workflows in order to get the best value for the shortest development cycles and how to deliver those to the market.
2. People Skills and Responsibilities: Evaluating new candidates can be based on how they collaborate with other PMs or Tech leads, Stakeholders, or external partners. Being passionate about Product Management comes with Leadership and domain expertise as well.
3. Technical Skills: Under Technical skills, one can list everything from Documentation to Analytics, User- journey creation, Wireframing, API specification, and so on, depending on the position's needs.

With the above information and filter, now we have the X-axis information, let's look shortly at what information will be critical to know to make informed decisions. Here is the Y-axis.

Confidence, Importance, and Relevance are related, but distinct concepts.

Confidence refers to the level of trust or belief in the accuracy of a statement, decision, or prediction. In other words, during the process, how confident is your team about the information on hand?

Importance refers to the value or significance placed on something, often indicating its worth or necessity in a particular context. For you as a leader, how important that the candidate is having or does not have the selected skill set?

Relevance refers to the connection or relationship between something and the matter at hand, often indicating its pertinence or applicability. How relevant is the information collected by the team affecting the hiring decision?

So, in summary, Confidence, Importance, and Relevance can be seen as a progression of consideration for a statement, decision, or prediction.

In order to start making use of the engine, organize your content into columns just as seen below, define your criteria from very low, to very high, and have everyone add their feedback on how confident they are about the candidate, while you can already set the Importance and Relevance values. As demonstrated in the image below, once the results are added, your decision about hiring or not will jump at you.

In the end, all you have to do is tweak the engine to your own needs and requirements, until you have found the most optimal system for your needs. If you have however any questions, make sure you leave a comment or get in touch.

About the author:

Hi, I’m Lehel. I became a product manager to fuel my curiosity in technology and business management by creating digital products. My journey allowed me to dive deep into product design, user experience, business administration, and learning multiple programming languages. I have been fortunate to lead programs for successful Startups and Fortune 500 companies whereas a leader, my focus is on establishing a great product culture to help people strive by following servant leadership and radical candor principles. In my free time, I write about product management & leadership topics to document the learnings of my past 15 years in the field.

It starts with:

• How People Analytics helps to empower and manage tech teams?
• How to map business value with human capital?
• The 5 pillars of scaling cross-functional teams
• 12 Best Books to read in 2023 as a Product Leader
• How to set crystal clear goals as a Leader?
• How to Master the Art of Product Planning?
• The most important job of a Product Leader.
• Discovering the Right Course of Action: How to Make Tough Decisions
• 12 reasons, why successful product leaders regularly collaborate with their team members.
• Gather facts, not just opinions, to make informed decisions.
• Your failures will make you beyond successful if you follow this simple process.

You can find me at lehelkakonyi.com as well.