A common question I get is how do I interview differently for a Growth Product Manager vs a Product Manager? Many people need help to hire growth product managers because it is inherently different.

This guide is what I use to help my teams at Rapid, Twilio and the companies I advise understand the essential core competencies that a Growth PM needs to have so that we are looking for them throughout the interview process.

The biggest difference is that in a Growth PM you're looking for somebody who is clearly experimental, will fail fast with high creativity, and is comfortable operating in ambiguous grey areas

My view is that a Growth PM can come from any discipline. It is not necessarily just a PM that wants to transition to growth work.

You need to be prepared if they've never worked in a formal PM role, but I think the right person can learn the mechanics of the growth role. This is why I tend to look for more founder types vs simply strong product managers.

There are a couple of things I expect out of a Senior Growth PM that show they are ready for the Senior role.

The main thing is that they've led something from start to finish. They've shown they can find value, facilitate a solution, and take it through to the end. A growth PM might be executing really well and helping the company move forward, but they aren't finding and creating the opportunities themselves.

Out of these interview areas, this is the question I see candidates struggle with the most. I specifically have them talk about their most recent initiative vs having them cherry-pick something that they've likely rehearsed and prepared for.

When they've prepared for it, they will likely choose the most successful initiative they were part of and that makes it difficult to understand how they might operate week to week in reality where you are dealing with failed initiatives.

A Growth PM should understand that the most important thing is to move the metrics. If a growth resume I'm seeing doesn't have metrics, that is a red flag. Additionally, in a Senior Growth PM role, I want to see someone has led something from beginning to end.

One thing is that you often see Growth PMs with short stints on their resume. I think this happens sometimes because companies haven't really figured out how a Growth PM fits into their org and the trajectory. So unlike other roles, short stints with a growth PM aren't always a bad thing.

A Growth PM should be changing the way other departments approach their work, otherwise they aren't likely finding needle moving initiatives.

This means that a Growth PM will inevitably run into collaboration challenges and need to navigate them.

The toughest one is sales. When you are creating change in sales, you're changing something with their money. Excellent sales folks have quotas and they come up with strategies to hit those quotas.

Coming in as a Growth PM and saying that you've found a way to help the company make more money but that sales needs to change how they operate is difficult. It's hard for an individual rep to see how the change is going to help them and frankly it oftentimes doesn't in the short run.

Out of the three areas I find this is the one that is hardest to evaluate. What I'm trying to get is how effective they are operating in grey areas. I'm asking them to think about a problem that they've probably never thought about and don't have all the details for. I'm not expecting them to give me the exact answer, but I'm looking for if they have frameworks and approaches that they use and combine it with some creativity and energy.

You can often get someone who is overwhelmed by the ambiguity and while they might not be able to answer it in an interview, they could if they were in the weeds.

But when you are in a Growth PM role, you can't wait to get all the data and insights. You need to find a way to move through the ambiguity.

This is a good hiring tactic I've found regardless of what the role is. We all have people we've worked with before that we'd love to hire. You don't want the only touch point to be when you have an open role and tell them you have a job open. That is abrasive and transactional and that is the last thing you want to do with this pool of people.

So I use this as a way to engage in a more indirect way. I'm asking them for advice, not if they want a job. If it grabs their interest, they will likely surface if they are potentially interested in changing companies.

Laura Schaffer

I use this interview guide at Rapid to help the team better understand what to look for in a Growth Product Manager, versus a Product Manager.

This is a foundational guide to design an interview process for a 

 Growth PMs need to check the box on these 3 foundational qualities.

 Throughout the interviews, listen for how they leverage and work with the rest of their Growth Squad (Growth Engineering, Growth Design, Growth Analysts, Growth Marketers) to operate and succeed. *If you have to explicitly ask how they work with their squad because they do not mention them, that is a red flag.*

1. Experimental, Hypothesis-Driven Mindset.

Failure happens at a very high rate - 80%+. The best Growth PMs understand this - have lived this - and bake failure into their strategy. They use failure to lead to success.

Most recent product or initiative

Need to move the metrics

Growth is a Team Sport. There isn’t a single user that Growth touches that isn’t touched by someone else – and in fact, Growth is often about nurturing or growing users for the purpose of handing off to someone else, like core product or sales. The best Growth PMs build partnerships proactively and instill a growth mindset across the business.

Collaboration with other departments

3. Frameworks and Applicability to Your Business.

The best Growth PMs are wizards at hearing a complex problem and figuring out how to get to the brass tacks of resolving it. They can do this because they have a set of tried and true Growth frameworks that they know and use. Put them to the test with real Growth challenges you’re facing.

Interview guide for Senior PM, Growth at Rapid

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