One of the more common things I see in Product Management Leadership (more so in startups and “small to medium” organizations [i.e., 10-500 employees]) is that they often haven’t any experience outside of the organization that they’re in at the moment. They get roped into the culture that they, themselves, created or supported and haven’t found a way out of the labyrinth. This means you will see Vice Presidents of Product who were SMEs turned Director of Product to VP of Product within the span of 8-15 years.
I’m not criticizing this situation heavy-handedly. These individuals will often know their users pretty thoroughly; they will know the pain points and the expected behavior. Still, they will not have established processes that generally make sense outside of their own organization. What this looks like to someone that has more external experience would be:
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Inconsistencies in questions to follow-up questions
- More often than not, these leaders have little to no understanding of what they really want in a candidate. A gap in their team may be obvious to them (I need a data analyst so we can interpreter the data we have to support our direction. I need a Senior Product Manager to mentor and drive the inexperienced PMs we have on our team) except there isn’t enough focus on product management that they know what makes a good Senior PM/Data Analyst.
- This causes them to ask rather ambiguous questions yet also repeat themselves several times over. Many of the interview questions these types of leaders have are directly provided from a GoogleFu of “data analyst interview questions” or “top 50 product manager interview questions.”
- Additionally, they’ll also ask the generic “gotcha questions” that focus on catching the interviewer in antipatterns from existing questions online or a question that requires industry expertise to have the “right” answer.
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Lack of user-focused questions, comments, or processes.
- Many smaller product management departments/teams lack the resources or buy-in to push user-centric decisions fully. I know this sounds insane, but it happens. Stakeholders, executive teams, and board of directors seem to have this firm stance of "We invested in this product, we were the users of a competitor, and these were our pain points, so everyone has these pain points - how dare you suggest that we don’t know our customers/users."
- This causes many startups to be in an echo chamber of use cases until the PM team can break out and start performing surveys, interviews, or even get buy-in for analytical tools to understand user behavior better.
- When questioned/challenged on processes, they will often repeat very generalized and well-stated processes. In previous interviews, it’s been obvious that other PMs have questioned the product lifecycle process at the organization enough times that the leadership has Googled a few key buzzwords and flowcharts to respond with the “expected response.” (even though no such process exists internally)
By that time I’m interviewing a candidate, I often have listened in on a panel interview with the rest of the team and have insights on what questions have been asked - the responses - and a list of notes from the rest of the team members on their views on the candidate. Which means… what, exactly? It means that I’m not going to bore the individual with high-level questions, won’t be repeating the same questions, and want to drive a conversation to understand the candidate better.
I expect the bulk of the conversation will be questions aimed at my position, the company’s stance on specific processes/tools/functions around product management, and around the role itself (frequency of performance reviews, average raise and timing, the salary, and any remaining clarification of the responsibilities of the role). On my side, I want to understand how this candidate thinks (what drives their product analysis, what are the OKRs that they feel better helps drive the product, why they enjoy being in product management, etc.) and get a feel for how the individual will fit within the team as a whole.
Even with all of the most well-intended, thoughtful hiring processes - it isn’t always the best experience for the candidate. Maybe the Group PM had walked out of a stressful meeting, or they’re feeling stressed on that particular day. In some situations, that individual may already have a candidate they’ve approved, and you end up being a “time-waster” that HR threw at them. Startups often fail communication, and HR will push their potential candidate to the next hiring manager without considering existing candidates and where they are in the process (unfortunately).
At the end of the day, many people in product management haven’t spent much time in product management, between medium-sized organizations trying to have a PM team to please investors/board of directors to startups promoting a standard PM to a c-suite position within a year or two. Product Management has become an “up and coming” industry/role, and everyone wants to jump to the top or into a FAANG organization. This means you’ll have inexperienced leadership and inauthentic candidates.
As a candidate, you have to ensure that the company you’re interviewing with meshes with you - just as much as they expect you to mesh with them.
