While a product manager's strength is their ability to talk about anything (growth, tech debt), this becomes a weakness in interviews. You cannot say everything. You must curate a single, focused story that aligns with the employer's specific problem, as that is all they care about.
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Product managers don't code, design, or conduct research. Their unique value is providing clarity through strategy, requirements, or a North Star vision. This clarity empowers the entire team to execute their specialized roles effectively and succeed.
Treat interviews as evidence-gathering sessions, not snap judgments. Ask broad questions like 'How did you grow your product?' and listen for signals of desired traits. Use a scorecard with concrete examples to assess candidates against criteria like being data-driven, thereby reducing personal bias.
Storytelling is often mislabeled as a "soft skill" or natural talent. In reality, it's a structured discipline that can be learned and perfected through training and deliberate practice, just like any other professional capability.
Ditch standard FANG interview questions. Instead, ask candidates to describe a messy but valuable project they shipped. The best candidates will tell an authentic, automatic story with personal anecdotes. Their fluency and detail reveal true experience, whereas hesitation or generic answers expose a lack of depth.
Contrary to the popular belief that it's always detrimental, for product managers, context switching is a core strength. Fluidly moving between customer, engineering, and marketing conversations is essential for integrating diverse perspectives to bring a product to life.
A common red flag in AI PM interviews is when candidates, particularly those from a machine learning background, jump directly to technical solutions. They fail by neglecting core PM craft: defining the user ('the who'), the problem ('the why'), and the metrics for success, which must come before any discussion of algorithms.
Technical skills and methodologies are commodities that can be easily learned. The skills that truly separate exceptional PMs from average ones are soft skills like storytelling, influencing without authority, and presenting effectively. These are the real force multipliers for a PM's career.
The market correction starting in late 2022 created a large pool of PMs from hyper-growth companies who lack experience in shipping products and driving revenue. This makes demonstrating tangible outcomes, not just "transferable skills," essential for standing out in today's market.
To build a truly product-focused company, make the final interview for every role a product management-style assessment. Ask all candidates to suggest product improvements. This filters for a shared value and weeds out those who aren't user-obsessed, regardless of their function.
A common founder mistake is hiring a first product manager to simply prioritize and ship a backlog of ideas. Instead, PMs create the most value when given ownership of a key metric and the autonomy to drive user and business outcomes.
