This flow is targeted toward IC PMs. Generally I do a slightly longer hiring process with executives, and it will include more peer interviews with other stakeholders they'll be partnering with, such as head of marketing, sales, etc. Depending on the org size, a more senior hire is also more likely to do an interview with the CEO, and we often skip the take-home.

The panel should be oriented towards people the candidate is going to work with on the job, so they can get a good sense of the company and everyone can make sure team dynamics will be good. In general, though, I'd lean more towards people who have good interviewing skills as opposed to prioritizing a certain seniority. Alternates will depend on how many roles you're hiring for and how much availability your team has. You don't want hiring to become someone's job and detract too much from their work, but the more fragmented the hiring team is the harder it is to make sure you're measuring each candidate by the same yard stick.

Each interview should be able to evaluate for perhaps 3-5 skills, and you hopefully want to have multiple data points from multiple interviews for the most important skills. So based on the number of rounds of interviews you're doing, it should then limit the number of skills that you evaluate for. The most important thing about this step is creating the alignment on the hiring team, rather than really measuring candidates. This helps make sure everyone doing the interviewing is on the same page.

How many coachable or learnable traits a team should tolerate in a hire is going to depend on the resources of the team. If it's a first PM hire at a startup, they won't have time to coach on a lot of these skills. If it's a well-run PM program at an enterprise, they probably have formal programs in place to train all candidates up.

For example, with one client, it was important to screen early on for candidates who would be willing to be part of a cultural transformation.

Jenny Wanger

Teams should complete this hiring guide for every position to ensure team alignment and deliver a great experience to every candidate.

Invest an hour in your hiring team to present a much better experience to the candidate.

Hiring is expensive, and making sure everyone on your team is aligned helps smooth the process out.

A smoother process helps you get better candidates and 

Demonstrate to your hiring committee that you value their time

When you’re about to embark on hiring for a new role, make a copy of this template. Meet with your hiring team to get alignment around what you want to hire for, and get every member of the team to populate their questions.

Not every company will use every step, and that’s okay. None of this is meant to define the best way to hire; it’s meant to create a base for you to improve communication on your team. You need to customize it for yourself.

Share the template with your hiring team and make sure everyone has reviewed it before they begin interviewing.

Candidates frequently ask “what are next steps?” and this empowers everyone on the team to answer that question.

Hiring coordinators who know next steps can schedule meetings and interviews without you.

Having well-defined processes of how a candidate moves to the next round reduces bias in hiring and makes sure that all voices are included in the hiring process.

Create your map using your tool of choice and place it here (this one was made using the Lucidchart add-on).

 on how to think about setting up your steps and speed of hiring from Jade Rubick

Calendar Scheduling link (especially if working with external recruiters, this is so helpful. Means they don’t have to do back-and-forth on both ends to get calendars to work. Can also send candidates calendar links so they can set the tempo for their interviews.)

Etc., etc. Do this for every person involved in the process from your company. If you have two people participating in a round (Person A OR Person B / Person A AND Person B), include both of them and make round robin or group calendar links as needed.

Link your job description here so it’s easy for everyone to access it whenever they need it. 

It’s important that everyone understands what you want to be hiring for and what you are willing to train on. No candidate will fit 100% of the job description. These two resources help jump-start this conversation on your hiring team.

) Have the hiring manager and potentially the whole team identify which of these skills are most important for this particular role. Once you’ve done that, map each skill to at least one interview to make sure that the interviewer at that stage knows they are expected to evaluate the candidate along that dimension. I have included a few examples below.

https://nealcabage.com/framework/product-team-competencies/

Example skillset-interview mapping from a client

Have a discussion on your team about what you’re willing to train for and what you aren’t. I’ve had interviewers come back and say “the candidate doesn’t have any experience with [our particular type of agile development framework] so I’m a no”. 

Turns out it’s very easy to teach a new development framework; it’s much harder to teach critical thinking skills or good writing skills.

The recruiter will screen resumes for this role.

Outcomes-focused language. Beware of vanity metrics, no demonstration of impact, etc. There should be clear numbers around how they measured product success.

The basics. Typo-free, 3+ years relevant experience (broadly defined), easy to read, strong storytelling etc.

Comfort with engineering. While a technical background isn’t necessary, do they indicate that they can work comfortably with engineers and a technical audience?

Experience having worked in a company of our size in the past.

After a resume review, the recruiter conducts a 15-minute screen to make sure there’s a potential fit.

Experience doing product discovery and user research to identify problems

Experience partnering and pushing back (appropriately) on both engineers and design

Add additional items that are good signals in the person’s background/experience

Alignment around compensation (if comp isn’t listed in the job description)

Add additional items that are must-haves in the person’s background

To send to all candidates prior to their first interview. Your goal as a hiring manager is to make sure that there is nothing in how you interview that fails a candidate; you want to be declining candidates because they are not good fits for you. Help them succeed as much as possible by giving them everything they need to prep in advance.

How to have a successful PM interview at our company

Keep your answers concise and related to the question that was asked. We look for people who can communicate clearly and briefly.

Talk to us more about the HOW instead of the WHAT. We don't need to know the details of what your product does, but care much more about the processes you followed and decisions you made. We also want to know who you worked with and how you worked with them.

Have your examples ready. We conduct behavioral interviews and so will be asking a lot of questions about what you've done in the past. Some of the topics we'll be asking about include:

working with engineers to solve technical challenges

provide links to some background material so they know what your product suite is about

give them more information on the particular product role you’re hiring for and why they should be excited about it

If you expect them to have studied up on your product a lot before their first interview, or do so later on

Prep your questions! We'll leave you lots of time to ask questions about us and what it's like to work here.

This is a good point to send them your hiring steps chart and people list with LinkedIn profiles so they can see who they’ll be talking to.

From here on out are the various interview types that you might want to conduct. For each interview I’ve added a few potential questions that I’ve found to be helpful, but you will want to add and enhance the questions to match your needs and process.

Having documented questions matters for a few reasons:

It allows you to have multiple people conduct interviews for one role and evaluate for the same things. That way if there’s a scheduling conflict or PTO the interview process can still move forward.

Asking the same questions of each candidate every time helps reduce bias in hiring. It doesn’t eliminate it, but every little bit counts.

Allows you to work on the wording to make sure you’re getting the information you need from the candidates.

I generally aim to have 30% of the interview time dedicated to their questions, and always at least 10 minutes. Remember that they are evaluating you too.

Confirm that it’s still a good time to talk

Share the interview process: ask a few questions, have a chance to hear more about the role and us, they can ask questions

PM Hiring Guide from Avenir Design

PM Hiring Guide

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