Hiring a product manager? Who do you actually need?

A product manager is a key hire for your company. It can be a challenge to find the right person and convince them that your role is the right fit. This is especially difficult if you are hiring your first product manager.

There are many different types of product managers out there as well. Some specialize in B2B, others in B2C; some have experience with SaaS products, while others have worked for software companies or been embedded in large organizations. These different scenarios influence the skills, experience, and value that an individual PM could bring to your company.

This article will guide you through the process of hiring a PM, from defining the role, to attracting the right candidates, asking the right questions in the interview, and ensuring you and the candidate have found the right fit.

Consider the primary activities

We are starting to see a range of job titles in the product management domain. Product manager, product designer, growth manager, etc. Rather than get bogged down in job titles, consider the likely primary activities that you will ask your new PM to undertake in their first 12–18 months in the role.

These primary activities are heavily influenced by your products and services and the current context of your business. Are you looking to create new products and services to support growth? Do you have a product that has product-market fit, but need to scale? Do you need to rationalize a wide product portfolio and focus on key areas?

For simplicity, let’s group these activities into three types of PMs:

The Explorer — This PM is good at discovering new opportunities, doing research, making connections, networking, performing competitive research. They can find new opportunities and build a business case for pursuing them. If you are very early stage or your revenue is starting to plateau — consider hiring an Explorer.

The Custodian — This PM is a “safe pair of hands”. They are practical, organized, and can coordinate an existing team. They are good at prioritizing and juggling multiple activities at once. If you have an existing product suite that is performing well in the market and you just need to keep the ball rolling — consider hiring a Custodian.

The Designer — This PM is creative, comfortable with creating designs and prototypes. They may also have a technical background or at least an appreciation of the technical considerations when designing a product. If you have a defined business case and product strategy and need to move to the next step — consider hiring a Designer.

Specialist or All-rounder

The next consideration is whether you want a specialist who is just a really good “Designer” or an all-rounder who could cover all areas of activity. The answer will depend on the size of your organization, the size and type of the product, and the other skills currently available within your team. Of the three activity types, I would say the most specialist is the designer type.

One also needs to consider retention. If you have hired someone who is passionate about design, they will soon become malcontent if put in a custodian role for too long.

Permanent, part-time, or contract

Following on from the last point, have you considered whether this role could be filled part-time or on a contract basis versus full-time? Discovery and growth activities can often be performed on a part-time basis, providing useful backup to existing full-time positions. Design activities usually have a fixed duration and may not be required in the long term — making them ideal for a fixed-length contract.

Level of experience

Consider what level of experience you require. Certainly, use the number of years as a guide, but also consider how many products have been managed, what stages of the lifecycle they were at, and ask for tangible results that have been achieved.

Set an “Explorer” a short task to help evaluation and ask for previous work from a “Designer”. The “Custodian” requires the most knowledge about your existing product domain, target market, and industry — so probe for evidence of that knowledge.

For all three roles, you can luck out and find high levels of talent in early career candidates. It saves money, but more importantly, you can reward quickly and often to help with retention.

Product management background

Consider whether you want a seasoned “Been there, done that” PM or whether you could transition someone from a different role. This is particularly interesting when considering existing employees in other roles. Some of the best PMs I have worked with have transitioned from sales engineering, account management, or customer success positions. This is particularly true for the “Custodian” style of activities.

Which companies should I target?

PMs often require deep domain and industry expertise. So think about which companies your future PM may worked at previously. Draw up a named list of your competitors, your suppliers, and other players in your target market. Hiring from a direct competitor or customer has complications that are best avoided, but there still should be plenty of companies on the list who are indirectly related to yours.

Key questions to ask at interview

Given all of the above, see below for some suggested questions to add to your interview discussions:

How would you describe the activities you perform in your current role?

What percentage of your week or month is spent performing these activities?

Do you specialize in any particular activity? Why?

Are you looking to do more of this activity in your next role?

Are you looking for a full-time position?

Would you consider a part-time or contract position?

How many products have you managed?

What stage in their lifecycle were those products?

Do you have any relevant industry expertise?

What do you know about our target market?

If transitioning into a PM role. What attracts you about becoming a product manager? What skills and experience in your current role do you think are transferable?

Which companies in your career history do you think are most like ours? What did you learn working at those companies that you think is relevant to our company?

What to do when you have found the right person

When you think you have found the right person, the tables are somewhat turned, and it is time to start promoting the role. But also, you need to check fit. It takes a while for a new PM to get up to speed, and it is a pain if the new hire doesn’t pass probation or leaves within 12–18 months because the job wasn’t a good fit.

So consider these activities to help promote the role and ensure a good match for both parties.

Present and discuss the current roadmap or product plans. Remove any extremely confidential/sensitive information if necessary, but the pros of sharing the roadmap outweigh the cons of leaking any proprietary information for your final one or two choice candidates. Note: seek permission to do this first if necessary.

Talk openly about the balance of activities between the Explorer, Custodian, and Designer roles. If you hire a Designer when you really need a Custodian — they are unlikely to stay for long.

Facilitate a discussion between other key stakeholders — someone in sales, service, and development are good choices. Invite for a “day in the life” experience.

Get a second opinion on the hire from an external product management expert. They may pick up on areas that you have missed due to internal biases that can creep into the process.

There is a bit of investment of time, money and energy required in the above, but this is nothing compared with having to start the hiring process from scratch if things don’t work out.