Hiring Product Managers
What You'll Learn
Introduction to Hiring Product Managers
How to Build a PM Job Profile
How to Interview Product Managers
Take-Home Assignments for PMs
Introduction to Hiring Product Managers
- How to Hire Great Product Managers
Jackie walks you through how to identify what kind of PM you want, which skills are easier vs. hard to teach, how to structure an interview process, and how to create a great candidate experience.
- The Non-PM’s Guide to Hiring A Product Manager
Merci goes through an end-to-end process for hiring PMs, which includes a phone screen, an in-person interview with the hiring manager, interviews with PMs and/or designers, a take-home, and a group presentation.
How to Build a PM Job Profile
- How to Hire a Product Manager
This is a classic article on hiring product managers from 2005. Because product management was so new at the time, the article provides an introduction on product management and the backgrounds of candidates that may be a fit for it.
- So You’re Hiring a Product Manager?
John provides a list of 20 possible (and sometimes controversial) goals of a product manager, and asks you to force-rank them in order to develop a job profile for the product manager you want to hire.
How to Interview Product Managers
- Interviewing Product Managers
Brent dives provides suggestions for interview questions mapped to product manager skills.
- 5 Interview Questions for Hiring the Best Product Managers
Radhika begins by explaining the flaws with asking questions that focus on hypotheticals around popular apps. Then, she explains how asking about product strategy and prioritization related to products the candidate has worked on gives you a more accurate view of their abilities.
- How to Tell (or Show) If Someone Is Data Literate?
Juan breaks down questions you can ask to assess data literacy for product managers across 3 categories: 1. Ability to resolve data-driven questions 2. Ability to access data 3. Ability to solve complex data problems 4. Ability to share & communicate data-driven insights
Take-Home Assignments for PMs
- your pm interview take-home is measuring all the wrong things
Erin argues that it's really, really, really hard to evaluate a PM candidate based on a take-home. She provides a framework for how to make one if you really want to make one, but recommends that reviewing past work is more important than a take-home.