I had to be careful about who I chose to be on the panel. For example, one time I was hiring for a PM. And you might think, okay, that design partner should be on the panel and that engineering partner should be on the panel. But some people are a little bit better at asking critical questions, honing in on what exactly it is that we want to be testing for in a candidate.

I don't want to put people on the panel just because they're on the team. I think you need to really train up your interview skills and be a good interviewer in order to be on a panel. I would explain to some folks, for example, that I'm going to ask this engineering lead to be on the panel even though he's not on the team that this role's open for. And I told that the engineering person who was on the team that if they're interested in it, this is an opportunity for you to shadow someone who's really good at interviewing from the engineering perspective, and train your skills up so you can do it next time. That's how I would position it to make it feel more inclusive, but also set expectations of how they were supposed to act and what it is that I wanted them to learn from the process.

Over time, we trained up interview skills across the team and we had a lot more people we could choose from.

In PM interviewing in general, there's a practice out there of giving interview candidates homework assignments. And they like to say, it's only going to take 2-3 hours, it shouldn't take you longer than that. That is such bullshit. It always takes longer.

If a candidate really wants that job, which is especially true in this market, it probably takes 10 hours. We all like to say we're more efficient than we are, but if you want to get a role and you've been tasked with something, you're going to spend a lot of time on it and perfect everything you possibly can.

I generally like to stay away from assignments that are external or about your own product, and instead ask people to show projects or work that they've done that they can speak to in detail. They already have some material and knowledge, and should be able to go deep. But even more, I think it allows you to better understand how they have actually worked in past environments and companies and products, as opposed to their thinking about your product. Otherwise, candidates are going to say the same thing pretty much across the board. I think it's a bit fairer to candidates and if you have the right interviewers on your panel, you can ask the right questions. You should be able to tease out their critical thinking skills and product sense.

So that's why we asked for a presentation as opposed to asking candidates to solve our growth problems internally at Productboard. We've been really pleased with the people that we've hired and the talent that we've had. So I would say that it's served us well.

We had candidates dropping out in later stages of the process, so we thought we might not be selling hard enough in the beginning. A change we made in Rounds 1 and 2 was to spend more time here and elongate the lengths of those interviews.

In the beginning I actually didn't have a recruiter, so it was tough because I personally had to spend a lot of time upfront with candidates. But later, I worked with a dedicated recruiter. Once he trained up and got a really good sense of people that I'd like, he did a longer sell call and then I followed with a longer hiring manager call.

It was a 60 minute call in total and I talked a lot about the opportunity in the company. That's something you have to do a little bit more of if your brand is not as well known, you have to sell really hard.

And then of course both my recruiter and I were available throughout the next rounds as well to really reinforce the opportunity.

For the first 10 minutes or so, it's an intro to understand a candidate's background better.

The bulk of the time is then going through two different areas.

Section one is this first question. What I'm trying to understand here is how senior or junior is their product thinking? What is their product intuition? Can they execute or have they been able to show results that they can execute? What kind of product spaces are they an expert in? And usually people will pick a project that they feel really comfortable talking about, that they've developed an expertise in.

And then all of the other bullets in this section here are basically follow on questions. So I'll ask them to pick a project and describe it to me. And then I'll ask questions like, how did you define the problem space? What was ultimately the definition of the problem? There, I'm trying to see if they can synthesize the quantitative and the qualitative. Are they using a diverse set of data to help them define the problem? Did they clearly articulate a hypothesis and who the hypothesis was for? How did they prioritize things? So all of these are follow-on questions casually about the end-to-end product development process. And then ending with a reflection.

This whole set of questions is for me to get signal on the quality of their PM craft (or as much as I can in 15-20 minutes).

This is me testing how mature is their understanding of product growth. I'd ask them, what does growth mean to you? How do you define it? How do you think about it and how do you think about it for a product like Productboard? If they haven't looked at the website and haven't looked at our product, that's a deal breaker for me.

In most cases, people had really different answers here. I'm not looking for the right answer necessarily, although the right answer does impress me. But I'm looking more for the thinking, the curiosity, and the interest. And also how that's changed over time because not everyone you hire will have done growth work before.

It's a numbers game. Most people haven't done it. And you can't only target a narrow pool of the people who have done it. You're looking for people who have an affinity.

Finally - this is a really important piece - I give them a hypothetical scenario at Productboard. And it's not all that hypothetical. In the grand scheme of things, most people are trying to improve trial conversion rate anyway. It's just for me to understand the more - they told me about their product development process in a project they knew really well. Can they apply it to something different and use their knowledge of what they've learned already to abstract it to a different type of problem? I'll guide them through that process, but I'll poke and try to throw some wrenches and try to see how they react to different information.

When putting together a panel for each role, I always aim to keep it consistent. However, sometimes things don't go as planned and I might need to make some changes. For instance, if someone misses the team collaboration interview, I might invite them to the panel, or vice versa. Of course, it's important to set expectations for what is expected in each interview and ensure everyone is on the same page.

To help with this, I created a document for every role and sent it out to everyone in the interview loop. I assumed that everyone would understand what they should be interviewing for, but that's not always the case. Some people are better at reading and comprehending the document than others. So, if someone doesn't engage with it, they might end up asking the same questions as me during the interview, which is not ideal. Instead, they should be focusing on specific questions related to the role.

Depending on how engaged the panel members are, some training and expectation-setting might be necessary at the beginning. However, once it's done for one role, it shouldn't be necessary to do it again.

Another helpful strategy is to have a recruiter who really understands what each step of the interview process should look like. They can work with the panel members, coach them, or even call them out when their candidate feedback doesn't align with what they're supposed to be testing for.

Having a partner in this process is extremely beneficial, as it takes some of the pressure off of me and allows for more collaboration. By avoiding these potential pitfalls, the interview process can be more effective and successful overall.

I mainly bring in Engineering, Product, and Design panelists for these roles, but I've also considered PMM in the past since we worked closely with them. If your organization is larger, you could consider adding an analyst to the panel loop, but EPD is essential.

These are the core members of your team who should be able to evaluate candidates. The cross-functional collaboration interview should include at least one member from each function, but engineering and design are essential. During this interview, they're evaluating how well candidates collaborate with other functions, resolve conflicts, and align diverse teams to achieve a common goal.

For the presentation, you have more flexibility, but I still recommend including EPD and some senior personnel such as the design or engineering manager or a senior PM. These individuals should be good at reading between the lines of a presentation and asking the right questions to evaluate the candidate's skills.

We used to save the presentation for the end of the interview process, after the team interview and the (skip-level) VP interview. But we noticed that some candidates would become less motivated to put in effort and even drop out right before the presentation. It seemed like they were using us as practice or leverage for other roles.

To weed out candidates who weren't serious or interested, we switched up the order. We now do the team interview and presentation together, and save the VP meeting for last. This way, we can better balance our time and resources and focus on candidates who are genuinely interested in the role. This approach has been successful for us, so we have continued to use it.

I'd only send candidates to my manager if I was confident in giving them a yes and really trying to sell them hard. So very few people ever made it here. My manager would use this stage to check on culture fit and ask critical thinking questions. I'd also give him feedback on the candidate, highlighting any yellow flags that needed further investigation. Depending on my feedback, my manager would tailor his approach accordingly. Once everything was sorted out, we'd move on to the offer stage accordingly.

Japna Sethi

I created this updated interview process as I learned what was and wasn't working while hiring Growth PMs at ProductBoard

Recruiting screen - basic qualifications and relevant experience

Hiring manager - critical thinking, problem solving, product process

 - collaboration cross-functionally, communication

VP Product / skip level - general product sense, behavioral, dig into any yellow flags

Wrap up - reference checks, meet & greet with Product Leadership

Assess the candidate’s general background and experience at a high level.

How did they get to where they are today and what are they looking for next?

Understand the candidate’s project experience - what types of domains did they own or projects did they deliver?

What was their impact in each role or for key projects?

Dig into their background to see if candidate has experience with the following:

What is their understanding of growth work?

Why is the candidate interested in Productboard, this team, and/or this role?

Anything on their timeline that we should be aware of

Assess the candidate’s communication skills, interest in the role, quality of questions, and experiential fit

Round 2 Meet the Hiring Manager, Japna (60 min)

Deep dive into their Product Growth experience. Understand their process and critical thinking

Walk through a project (of the candidate’s choosing) 

What were the specific responsibilities this candidate had?

How well is the candidate able to articulate the problem, hypothesis, and scope of the project?

How does the candidate explain prioritization and tradeoff decisions?

Dig into any interesting challenges or flags with respect to the general product management process and collaboration skills. Assess candidate’s storytelling abilities.

What is the candidate’s understanding of “growth” in general? What are their philosophies and opinions?

What about placing it in context of this specific product/role?

Ask a hypothetical case question about a common situation on the Growth team. How does the candidate structure and frame up their answer?

Ask follow up questions to dig into details and assess critical thinking

Assess candidate’s critical thinking skills, decision-making approach, ability to scope projects, ability to execute across both discovery and delivery, prioritizing strategically

Assess candidate’s cultural fit and ability to work with others/with you as the interviewer

Round 3a Cross Team Collaboration Interview

Set context by telling candidates that this interview focuses on how they might operate as a PM on their team, how do they collaborate with others, etc. Candidate is free to give examples of situations where relevant.

How does the candidate work with other members of the team, namely Engineering and Design?

Interviewer should work with the candidate to determine what is ideal versus practical. Understand where the candidate has made mistakes in the past and what they have learned.

Does this fit with the culture of accountability we have today?

Assess candidate’s ability to get stakeholder buy-in for prioritization decisions. What is their process of putting together a roadmap?

How does the candidate handle conflict regarding priorities? How have they been able to defend and/or adjust their priorities?

Assess candidate’s ability to keep a cross-functional team aligned. How do they handle conflict internally? What are some lessons or real-life examples?

Navigating ambiguity and synthesizing experiences

Assess candidate’s ability to navigate ambiguous situations and/or challenges at work. What does the candidate need in order to move through these challenges?

 (60 minutes - 25 min presentation, 25 min Q&A, 10 min buffer):

Prompt 1: Product management thinking & process

We are excited to meet you and hear about your passion for product management! Come to introduce yourself and tell us in detail about a time when you launched a specific feature/product you are proud of.

Walk us through your process end-to-end and make sure to touch on:

Prioritization process - strategy, objectives, criteria

Communication with the team - listening, alignment, collaboration

What did you learn? Where could the process be improved?

At this point in the process, we have identified any flags and we are confident in the candidate’s strength. We are checking their references in parallel. A call with XX should primarily be used to sell the position/role to the candidate so they accept the offer.

High level overview on the candidate and their experience

Cultural fit - are they a fit for our current operating and collaboration style?

Growth Product Manager Hiring Interview Process at Productboard

Growth PM Interview Process

Summary:

Round 1 with recruiter (30 minutes)

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