The Recipe for a Great Product Manager – Top 10 Ingredients

It’s tough, really tough, to find product management talent no matter where you’re located. The toughest part is that this scarce talent will literally make or break your software company’s long term success. To make it even tougher for small companies, these folks typically have to be really sharp across a broader set of disciplines to make an impact. The good news is that PM talent doesn’t necessarily have to come from folks who have done the job before, as long as they have the necessary skill set to succeed in the long run (and there’s an existing PM leader to shepherd the transition). The day-to-day tactics can be learned, but there’s a lot that can’t be learned or taught. They either have it or they don’t. Over the years, I’ve compiled my own cheat sheet for hiring Product Managers…roughly in order of importance. This has allowed me to be fairly systematic in recruiting, interviewing and hiring. I hope it can come in handy for you as well.

10. Eye for Design

I’d put this one higher except there is a descent chance that your product doesn’t have a significant user interface component. For products that do, I think it’s essential to have a Product Manager that fully appreciates the value of great usability and design…and not just a pretty interface. As the PM, they’ll need good instincts for when design needs more work and they may need to be a forcing function to drive the adoption of ongoing, formal user feedback testing.

Ask yourself…

Can this person distinguish a well designed interface from a poorly designed interface…from both a usability and aesthetic perspective? Has he / she created wireframes in the past to communicate an early vision? Does this person have experience tuning interfaces based on user behavior and data?

9. Real Experience

This one depends on where you are as a product organization. If you have some senior leadership already, then you can likely take on a coaching project or two…as long as the potential upside is there. Even if you do have an established Product org, I’d recommend not overloading the team with these hires. But, if you’re looking for your first product hire, you’ll want someone who has proven success as a Product Manager.

Ask yourself…

They may talk a good game, but has the candidate lived it and been successful? Has the candidate successfully driven and managed a product roadmap before? Does he / she know how to get things successfully built and shipped? Does this person understand how to achieve organizational readiness and who needs to be involved to bring a new feature / product to market?

8. Organized / Detail Oriented

If you’re a small company with limited resources, you’ll likely need your Product Manager to be a great project manager as well. Plus, you’ll need someone who is contributing to efficiencies and doing more with less.

Ask yourself…

Is this person super organized? Do they communicate in a clear and concise way or do they ramble and go off on tangents? Does the person describe things and give examples that flow in a top-down, organized way or jump down into the details too soon without providing proper context? Is this person a project manager extraordinaire…are they detail oriented, a risk identifier, a barrier crasher, results oriented? Is their resume clear, concise and grammatically correct? Can this person set and hit feasible product schedules without overcommitting the rest of the team and putting them in a bad position?

7. Ability to Prioritize

If you’re a growing company, you’ve likely got more and more innovation and market opportunities than you could ever take on. The PM will need to be the one that is trusted with a system for prioritizing these opportunities and deciding what’s most important now.

Ask yourself…

Can this person take dozens of really important things and determine which 2 or 3 are the most important? Given $50 to get groceries for a week, does the person end up with a bag full of essentials or a bag full of impulse buys? Does he / she have the ability to break a product / feature down into consumable, prioritized chunks? How does this person go about justifying priorities to the rest of the product team and company leadership?

6. Technical Background

This one isn’t necessarily required, but in my experience I’ve seen a very high degree of success when the Product Manager has a technical degree and / or has actually been an engineer or software developer at some point in their career. This can also potentially backfire if the person doesn’t clearly recognize that it’s not their ultimate responsibility to decide how the solution gets implemented.

Ask yourself…

Can this person have intelligent conversations with Engineers and at the same time not be too forceful on “how” something is implemented. Does this person have the technical chops to gain the trust and respect of the engineering team? Do he / she have enough insight into technology to help inspire possibilities and a vision of success?

5. Collaboration and Communication 

By the nature of the job, the PM will be working with lots of different parties (internal and external) to do their job at a high level. Outstanding collaboration and communication skills are a must to effectively leverage cross channel market input and keep both customers and internal team members on the same page.

Ask yourself…

Do this person put paramount importance on collaborating with real users and customers in creating new products / features? Does this person like to involve the greater product team (engineering, design) in brainstorming and scoping out solutions up front? Does this person look to other channels in the organization (e.g., client services, sales, support) as valuable input to drive innovation? Will this person be an effective communicator within the product team and across the organization? Is this person convinced that great ideas can come from outside of PM? Is this person open to other points of view and does he/she know how to effectively channel different perspectives (without yielding to all ideas)? Would it be fun to collaborate on solving problems with this person?

4. Leadership

Bottom line, is this candidate a leader? A Product Manager will be expected to lead through influence…not through formal authority. This is the toughest kind of leadership to master.

Ask yourself…

Is this someone that smart people will get behind? Do you see this person being able to walk into a room of engineers, designers, other PMs and get everyone behind a vision or idea? Do you trust this person? Does this person have the ability to influence? Is he / she like-able? Does this person exude confidence without being too cocky?

3. Domain Expertise

One of the main responsibilities of a Product Manager is to be a user expert and a proxy for what the customer wants. A clear understanding of your client’s world is something that can be learned over time, but it can take years and it’s very difficult to shorten the ramp up period. Provided the other important skills are there, having deep domain expertise will supercharge the new PMs ability to impact quickly.

Ask yourself…

Does this person already know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of your target user(s)? Is he / she intimately familiar with all the common struggles and pain points of your target market? How much in-the-field experience does this person already have to draw from when having to make those small, day-to-day product innovation decisions? Does this person have an existing network they could draw from for market discovery and user feedback insight?

2. Raw Intelligence

This one is impossible to teach so it better be there or it never will be. Especially at a smaller company, you’ll be relying on this person to drive a significant part of the strategy and lifeblood of the company. Good old fashioned intelligence is paramount.

Ask yourself…

Is this person wickedly smart? Does the person relish the opportunity to try and solve difficult problems? Does the person actually have the ability solve difficult problems? Does he / she tend to attack a problem in a variety of different ways, searching for the best way or do they have tunnel vision and get blocked easily? Does this person ask a bunch of clarifying questions before diving into a solution or are they quick to jump down a rabbit hole? Is this person a critical thinker?

1. Product Instincts and Curiosity

This one is super important as you can’t really teach good instincts. You need someone who is always challenging the status quo, pushing the envelope, wanting to make things better and challenging themselves to think in revolutionary ways.

Ask yourself…

Does this person have a keen instinct for good products vs. great products? Is it someone who has the ability to attack problems from a new and unique perspective? Can this person solve problems in ways that nobody else thought of…in simple ways? Does this person have an inclination for always thinking “hmmm…I wonder if we did it that way, what kind of difference that would make”? Is it someone that lights up at the thought of digging through product usage stats to get insights on improvements? Does this person have a knack for finding ripe product opportunities based on severe / underserved pain points?