Our Associate Product Manager Program
How is Taxfix developing the next generation of product leaders? Tim Hermes and Kilian Justus, the two Product Managers who built up our Associate Product Management Program, explain why the program matters for Taxfix, how it works, and what we look for in candidates.
Building products that customers love is hard, and doing so at scale is even harder. Taxfix has nearly 20 product teams to date, and that number will only grow as we mature. With that many teams, it would be impossible for one central authority to determine what each team builds. Every team needs to discover its own strategy and solutions, independently navigating the uncertainty of researching problems, setting hypotheses, and trying new things.
Product managers (PMs) play a vital part in making this happen because they are the ones setting their team’s direction. PMs empower their teams of designers, engineers, tax experts, and data analysts with the broader context of how their work fits into the overall business strategy to ensure the company achieves its goals. And as we continue to expand into new markets and develop new services, our need for this strategic role has only grown.
Of course, excellent product talent is hard to find. Few people have experience driving product discovery, for example, because product management is still a young discipline and is lived very differently across companies. We realized that it was our responsibility to find and develop aspiring PMs ourselves. And thus, the Taxfix Associate Product Manager (APM) Program came into existence.
The program aims to enable people without any past product experience to learn the craft from scratch. APMs lead a product team from day one and receive intensive mentorship from more senior product leaders along the way. Our goal is for program participants to graduate as fully-fledged PMs within 12 months of joining the company.
Creating Taxfix’s APM program
We based the APM program on our own experience as Taxfix’s first unofficial APMs. After joining the company as novice product managers, we both quickly had the opportunity to take ownership of critical product lines. Kilian had been at Taxfix for only four months before becoming the PM for our new market launch in France, while Tim started driving our first financial service that will change the way customers currently receive their tax refund.
It felt like a crazy amount of responsibility, but we soon realized that we had a built-in safety net to support us whenever we struggled. Our managers and other Taxfix PMs mentored us, taking hours at a time to work through our plans of attack together. They helped us improve our preparation for C-level deep dives and were invaluable sparring partners for elevating our team’s way of working. We quickly built up our product toolkits, and within a year, we both graduated as product managers.
Two ingredients helped us grow from APMs to PMs:
- We jumped into the cold water from day one. We led teams early on and learned by doing. The experience was a stress test, but being stretched so much allowed us to develop quickly.
- We received intensive support from experienced mentors. The moments in which we learned the most were when we faced real, messy, complex problems that we could talk through with more experienced PMs.
These two aspects — ownership and mentorship — define the Taxfix APM program.
What does the program look like?
Many disciplines benefit from being taught in a classroom. However, in our experience, product management isn’t one of them. We believe that the best way for APMs to grow is to let them do the whole job, from strategy definition to delivery, in a real-world context. We don’t offer any day-long seminars. And we don’t follow the models that many companies use, where APMs start by shadowing more experienced PMs or only own execution while another PM sets the direction. Beginning in the first week of our program, APMs are assigned to a team with an important mission and given full ownership.
At the same time, every APM has three mentors:
- Their manager — a Group PM who usually brings several years of experience managing other PMs
- A senior product executive — typically a Director, VP, or C-level who can offer high-level advice
- An APM Alumni — a former APM who can directly relate to the experience.
Each of these mentors commits a set amount of weekly or biweekly time and is highly available for support. APMs also have quarterly growth check-ins with their managers, beginning in the very first month of the program, where they review development plans and assess the skills they need to focus on to be able to graduate as a PM.
Additionally, we offer other formats to help APMs build their skillset, like workshops on specific PM subject areas and discussion rounds between PMs. Still, we believe that the most enriching knowledge comes from the hands-on approach previously mentioned — real responsibility and in-depth personal support to master the challenge. From the very beginning of their journey with us, we ask APMs to define objectives for their teams and hypotheses to set the direction for their product line. With minimal coaching, it’s incredible to see new starters coming back to us with those answers and presenting their vision.
What are we looking for?
Offering this level of ownership and responsibility requires the right people. However, our APM program isn’t about finding people with a specific hard skill, a set number of years’ work experience, or certain grades. We don’t require any past experience in product management. We hire for growth potential and use six criteria to assess it:
Product Motivation. Do they bring a genuine passion for great products? For solving real customer problems? Could they imagine a career in the product world?
Growth mindset. Are they ambitious about their development? Do they question their own ways of thinking, and are they eager to improve how they work? Would they be receptive to coaching, hearing feedback, and challenging their opinions?
Grit. Do they bring resilience and tenacity? Will they dig into tough problems, get their hands dirty, and tackle them against the odds?
Critical thinking. Can they handle complex information, thinking about it systematically and synthesizing it into action?
Collaboration and trust. Do they understand that they can only be successful as a team? Will they work in the interest of the company and their peers even when no one is looking and contribute to building psychological safety in their teams? Will they trust the people around them and involve them in their decision-making process?
Product leadership potential. Do they bring the potential to learn how to lead their teams through uncertainty and disagreements? Will they be able to learn how to build a trusting environment in their team? Might they eventually become coaches themselves, to the people in their team and other PMs?
These six criteria already proved helpful for hiring our first cohort of four APMs: Margarita, Mirko, Saadet and Stefano, who we selected from more than 400 applicants. They started driving their own product areas in November 2021. In the coming months, we’ll focus on supporting them with their development while learning a lot about how to improve the program experience for future cohorts.
We hope to perfect this systematic approach over time and help many high potential candidates become fully independent PMs in 12 months. And with that, we’ll have solved one of the biggest obstacles to building products that customers love at scale.
Interested in becoming a Taxfixer? Explore our open roles.
A big thanks to Kilian, Tim, and Samuel Flannagan for putting this story together.
