Tips In Recruiting Your First Product Manager

Recruiting your first Product Manager to lead the product isn't easy.

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Some things to keep in mind:

1. PM responsibilities vary from org to org.

Be ready to encounter candidates that don't cleanly fall in line with how your company imagines the role.

Shortlist generously.

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2. Hire someone smarter than you.

Ask situational questions regarding prioritization & product decisions. See what questions they ask, what angles they uncover.

Also, have they explored your product & pointed out something you didn't know? Great sign.

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3. Even if they don't have a technical degree, understand if they know the rationale/tradeoffs of the tech stack of the products they have owned before.

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4. Experience is not equal to years of owning the product manager title. It's how much you have actually shipped. Ask for something that's live.

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5. Assess their bar of product greatness.

What product do they look up to & why? Have they noticed something non-obvious about it?

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6. If you were to role play as the customer, what kind of questions do they ask to extract your functional (& emotional) pain points?

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7. Size up their cross-functional effectiveness. Delve into their interaction with sales, marketing, support etc.

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8. When they talk data, do they contextualize it?

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