Hiring and interviewing for the right fit

A guide to hire product managers with a fit mindset

Hiring is a tough challenge. More so for an early stage startup. Not only do you need the right skill set, you also need the right mindset. 

Early stage startup carry a lot of ambiguity and vagueness while you are proving your product and business model. The last thing you want your hire to say is – “Make up your mind”, “Do you even know what you are doing”,” The company has no strategy” and so on.

Even in later stage or mature companies, hiring becomes a challenge. It’s too expensive to replace someone and retrain. There is opportunity cost involved and loss of momentum. 

Yes, some jobs are highly specific in their requirements, especially technical jobs. Someone hiring for a marketing job in a two sided marketplace needs to have that uber experience (pun intended).

But job descriptions are often very vague. They will list out the technical features of the job. And there would be several candidates who can check the box.

OR, there would be so many requirements that no one fits the bill. Once I saw a job posting that had about 20 bullet items under qualifications required. Everything under the kitchen sink. And I blurted “Oh God”. I meant I literally thought that God would be the only candidate who would be a fit. 

Let’s say you manage to shortlist from the resumes, how do we interview and find the right fit, assuming the technical requirements are assumed in the candidate.

Yes, you need an engineer with React skills of 3-5 years. But refine that requirement in your head at least. 

It could be something like. I need an engineer who has been involved in an early stage B2C startup at least once, has created an out of the box solution in any technology, has shown the ability to ramp up on any tech stack. Experience within our industry and with react.js would be OK but not a deal breaker. 

The skill set required to build and launch is going to be different from a mature product that needs incremental improvements.

• Can candidates handle prioritization by taking varying streams of inputs and making a compelling case for a prioritized roadmap? 

• Can they handle ambiguity ?

• How do they handle negative news (e.g when you want to pivot)? 

• Do they just pick up a discussion thread and move on or do they linger on? (“I told you so, let’s not do it this way”).

The last thing anyone wants is a person with a negative mindset. 

Here is one technique I have been trying in the interview process to hire for the right fit. For the purposes of this article, I will use the example of a Senior Product Manager role in a mature company as an example. 

The first step before you talk to anyone is to clarify the top 5 traits or behaviors you really really need for the job. This is a crucial step. A product manager role requires wearing multiple hats through the day and ideally you want everything in one candidate. But let’s face it, it will be too expensive to find that ideal candidate. 

A few years ago, when hiring for a product role, we came up with these top needs. Not all roles even in the same job family are the same. So think hard on what your top 5 needs are for the specific role. 

1. The ability to synthesize inputs from a variety of sources to help with prioritization. Many candidates get overwhelmed with multi threaded-ness. (This is different from multi-tasking). I have seen many candidates who rather be in a single threaded role. Multi threaded-ness requires staying on top of multiple input streams and the ability to connect dots and patterns.
   
   In one of the roles we were hiring, we knew there will be customer inputs and executive inputs from varying sources and it was critical that our candidate be able to handle that with relative ease
   
   In the interview you can ask how they handled a similar situation or have a case study question. (“Imagine, you are a PM of ….how do you handle that”.

2. Ability to distill complex ideas into a simpler points. The job description will likely put this item under “Great communication skills”. But communication skills vary. What we needed for this role was someone to take all the complex technical ideas and have the ability to distil the ideas into a coherent explanation. Personally to me, this is a very important skill in a PM role.
   
   In your interviews, you should look for evidence if the person has been in a situation similar to yours or ask a case study type of question.
   
   By the way, how a candidate answers any of your questions also gives a clue how they communicate. If you get a very good picture of the candidate’s experiences as they talk, then you know they communicate well. If they ramble on or try to explain in a different way, or if you have to ask them to explain again, then that could be a red flag.
   
   Ramblers by definition have a problem with simpler explanations. So sit back and listen. If they finish their thought in short sentences and you are convinced of the explanation, you have a winner.

3. Prioritization framework – An important job of the product manager is to prioritize. You cannot deliver on everything. The candidate needs to have the sense of how to prioritize. There are several frameworks out there. (by my last count about 25). Find out how they prioritized in their previous role. If they did not or if they say “the management told us what to do”, that’s a red flag.
   
   What you are trying to get to is how they think of prioritization. Are they bottoms up? Or top down? Both are needed but what is their strong suite.

4. Ability to present to various audiences – In the role we were hiring, a lot of decisions needed to be made by various actors. To make better decisions, the right ideas needed to be presented in as clear a manner as possible. Otherwise the efficiency of the decision making reduces as people have to reconvene and rediscuss.
   
   An easy approach in the interview is to have the candidate go to the whiteboard and describe a project end to end. Do they structure their presentation? Or are they randomly scribbling and drawing lines? Do they use lists? Do they write clearly on the whiteboard ?
   
   In one case, we also wanted to check how the interviewee handles a bit of stress. So in the last panel, we invited one of the earlier interviewers back into the room for the last 10 minutes. We asked to talk about a certain point in their experiences.  Some panicked with two people in the room, and some handled it well. We did not penalize nervousness. Rather, we were looking for if they can create composure and continue with their thought process. This is of course pre Covid.

5. A collaborative attitude – This one is probably a make or break criteria. How do they collaborate with Engineers, UX, business and so on. It’s important to ask how they handled a difficult situation. Or cook up a scenario from your real life project. 
   
   Personally to me, I need a candidate who will question, confirm, clarify but not argue for the sake of argument. Look for evidence of how they discuss an idea with you. In one interview, I decided to build a new product/feature on the whiteboard with them. I was looking for clarifying questions. If they insisted that a particular point of theirs is better, I would ask why. If they were open to conceding their main point I would ask – Are you sure?
   
   In fact, once I decided to interrupt a candidate a few times. I wanted to see how they would react. Do they get agitated? Are they calm? This technique is not perfect as they are on their perfect behavior.
   
   Sometimes I repeat a question a couple of times. A response like “I just explained a few min ago…..”, “Like I said before ….” is an alert. Not a deal breaker. I’d rather they say….”Good point….remember we were just talking about Idea X…..let’s build on that”

Now that you have your top 5 traits, you can structure your interview panel and questions accordingly.   

Getting the right candidate with the right mindset is critical. You need to hire someone who is in it for the passion. This is especially critical for an early stage company. 

Here is how Sir Ernest Shackleton hired his crew for the Endurance in 1914.  

“Men wanted for a hazardous journey, Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return is doubtful. 

Honor and recognition in case of success.”

Guess what type of people applied.  (from Simon Sinek’s Start with the Why)

It’s a bit impractical to post a job description like this in today’s market. But the feeling should emanate in your interviews. Something like – 

Startup in the “XYZ” stage in the B2B Saas space with only 50K funding to date. Looking for an engineer to build out a product. Lots of validation in progress with 20 customers underway. Initial hypothesis proven, use case being finalized. Zero revenue to date. Limited pay but with generous stock options. No 401K, Basic benefits. 

Success not guaranteed. If successful, it will be a major boost to your resume and your bottom line.