Hiring a product manager is different from hiring for most other roles at the company because the best fit for the job can be a developer, engineer, marketer, or even an MBA. Additionally, many small or young companies are looking for a leader who will do the same job as the CEO or owner of the company: set priorities and sit at the centre of different departments. 

Finding The Best Candidates

To hire the right person, you should first define – at least partially – the vision for your product. Once you know what you are looking to bring to market, here are some steps you can take to find suitable candidates. 

There are different types of product managers, but all of these types have some things in common:

• Excellent intellectual faculties to understand the vision for the product
• Communicate that vision to the team members
• Have the leadership skills to motivate team members to build the product until it is perfect

These commonalities are a good starting point when you’re creating your product manager persona. 

The next step is to define what type of product manager will best fit your company. There are two factors to consider here:

Product Manager Goals

• For a brand-new product, someone who is experienced in prototyping and bringing products to market may be the best fit.
• For companies competing in the market, the best manager may be someone who has proven experience in improving performance metrics.
• Finally, candidates experienced in building the infrastructure needed for growth may be the best option for companies looking to scale.

Product Manager Roles

Product managers serve as a guide for the tech, design, and business departments. If you look up product management jobs on any job site, you will find many variations of the product manager role. Here are some popular ones:

Product Marketing Manager

The project marketing manager is focused on the customer-facing side of product development. They organise focus groups, create case studies, and manage the marketing team.

Technical Product Manager

Technical project managers have an engineering background. They are as involved in the strategy, ideation, and road mapping as a regular product manager, but they focus on the engineering team.

Growth Product Manager

This is a relatively new management role. Growth managers are involved in communications and cross-functional team relationships but focus on one stage of the product’s life cycle (activation, retention, revenue, etc.) rather than each stage. 

Questions for Project Management Candidates

A nice mix of technical, behavioural, and analytical questions can help you understand the mindset and thought process of the candidates. Here are some examples:

• To understand their communication technique, you can ask how they explain technical concepts to non-technical team members.
• To gauge their management skills, ask them how they would handle a situation where a delay in product delivery is likely unless they intervened.
• When finding a manager for a new product, you can ask them about their process for identifying user needs and achieving product market fit.
• The analytical questions don’t have to be related to project management. The purpose is to understand how they approach problems. To analyse their thinking process, you may ask how they would find the number of electric cars in Europe.
• Learning from mistakes is part of the process for any manager. A good question can be about what they learned from a mistake they made.

Product managers understand customer needs and lead teams that ensure products meet those needs. Therefore, hiring the right person can be critical to the success of the product and company.