Getting the PM Interview — and then cracking it
Hiring is tough, and the process is flawed for both companies and candidates. When being hired as a software engineer is strongly positively correlated to time spent leetcoding, we definitely haven’t figured things out.
The single biggest chunk of my time and energy is spent on hiring and team building. Product Management is perhaps the toughest role to hire for, and to be hired for (when the bar is properly set). In my experience, relatively few people with the title actually fulfill the role such that they are contributing to team gestalt.
So I offer some thoughts, which you could construe as advice, for your consideration. Life doesn’t work on a one size fits all basis, but my perspective is considered, and has refined with time and experience. The principles hold true for all disciplines that I hire for, and at all levels of seniority.
Read the Job Description
Seriously. Do this. Properly. Maybe twice.
I know a lot of job descriptions don’t convey too much. I’m sure ours are far from perfect. However, we write the description for a reason. To give you a basic sense of what we might expect from you, and what you might expect from us.
In our case, this description is often broken into three sections: “We will give you…,” “You will…,” and “You likely have…”
Each of these means something. Look at them, and ask yourself if they make sense for you and are a fit. If not, then move on to the next search result.
Actively construct your resume
I suspect that we have a lot of false negatives when we reject a candidate at the resume stage. Rightly or wrongly however, if you’re applying cold, this is the primary representation of yourself to us. Whatever form it takes, be it your LinkedIn profile, a web page, a pdf, or something else, put some thought into how it articulates who you are, what you have achieved, and what you are capable of. You are creating the tapestry of you.
If you are a Product Manager, this should actually be pretty straightforward. If you have to think hard to get this right, take a long and honest look in the mirror, and think about where you really are as a PM and how you might need to up your skills. If you can’t do this naturally or trivially, you shouldn’t be applying to senior PM roles.
When we look at your resume, we are looking to infer that
- You can communicate succinctly and effectively (unlike this blog post!).
- You comprehend the importance of how something manifests to an audience and care enough to put in the requisite effort.
- You can define and organize around goals and outcomes, and then figure out how to deliver against those.
- You possess a basic level of integrity.
Succinct and effective communication
Review every word and sentence. If it’s not adding value, then remove it. Know the 2–3 points you want to convey about each experience that you’re highlighting, and then nail them. Remove everything that is extraneous to that.
As a good general guideline, if you’re over a page as an early career PM, you’re doing something wrong. If you’re ever over two pages, even as a senior executive, then you come across as not knowing where your value lies and what demonstrates and defines it.
Format and detail
Think about how your resume looks and reads, particularly on a screen, which is where it’s most likely to be reviewed in that make or break moment. The little stuff really matters.
If you won’t take the trouble, for your own personal benefit, to use a consistent font, validate your spelling and grammar, or even simply to make sure things line up such that they are easy to read, why would we trust you to build something that we want our millions of users to love?
If you say you were a Principle Product Manager who established some core design principals, we’re going to swipe left on you.
And please, please, spell the name of your current employer correctly.
What you’ve done in your previous jobs
There’s a simple premise here. You’re applying for, say, a senior PM role. You’ve got several years of experience as a PM. Given this, we don’t need you to tell us about the activities you engaged in as a PM. That’s called being a PM.
We need you to showcase that you can identify a problem or need, explore solutions, and lead a team to achieve outcomes. We want to learn about the decisions you made, and the impacts they had.
In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen the following standalone assertions on PM resumes.
- “Worked closely with engineering to deliver the product.”
- “Analyzed data and looked at reports.”
- “Created product requirements for engineering to build.”
- “Ran A/B tests.”
- “Created a product roadmap.”
- “As Product Manager, I owned the product from concept to release.”
- “I implemented agile methodologies.”
- “Led a project to redesign the app.”
- “Led an effort to analyse retention for the app.”
- “Worked with product marketing to launch the product.”
You’re wasting your time and ours with these. We didn’t learn a thing about any of those candidates, and everyone of them failed the resume screen. We simply shouldn’t have to ask “why?” or “so?” or “and…?” And we presume that a good PM understands that.
Instead of
“Led an effort to analyse retention for the app, Worked with engineering and UX and launched a redesign”
try
“Tied slow user growth to low (17%) week 1 retention, established a correlation with user’s first action, designed and tested new day one experience ultimately increasing week 1 retention to 76%.”
Integrity
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” — Walter Scott (Marmion)
Don’t Lie. That’s it.
If you went to a conference that was on the Harvard campus, don’t claim a Harvard education. This tells us that a) you have no integrity, and also b) you have this delusion that going to Harvard automatically makes you superior. In truth, your education is a signal, and can be a strong one, but you’re absolutely not getting hired simply because of your school.
If you worked for a company that did some sub-contracting for Google, don’t try and pass yourself off as having been hired there as an L6 Staff Engineer.
And definitely don’t be the person who submitted the same resume twice, some time apart. Once for an iOS position, and once for an Android position. In the first instance, having worked 7 years at Apple, and in the second, having worked 7 years at Google. Everything else about the resume was the same.
Anything like this simply serves to mark you out as someone who is comfortable with intellectual dishonesty and an absence of integrity. Not qualities that we are keen on.
Prepare to be interviewed
There are countless books out there on the subject — feel free to read them and take what you can from them. I think most have some nuggets of constructive information. Remember though, that you don’t just have to crack the interview — you need to be able to do the job. Which is what we are trying to assess in the interview.
Outside of technical and core skills assessments, there are a few key things we are looking for from you in the interview process, and beyond. I say beyond, because if you fake your way into the job, and don’t live up to all of these thereafter, you’ll be looking for a new job.
- Rationalize what you’ve done, as articulated on your resume. When you come in, you have to be able to talk about how you made decisions, how you made it all happen, how you took your product or feature to market (an oft-ignored and critical aspect of PM), and what transpired thereafter.
- Discuss the product that you’re looking to come in and manage. In particular, if it’s a consumer product, and you haven’t bothered to use it, then please don’t bother coming in. We don’t expect you to have all the answers, or even any of the answers. We do expect you to be able to react and respond, to have a point of view, and to debate it on the fly.
- Engage in an intelligent conversation about the business and industry that we are in. Read a bit, and use that intellectual horsepower. Particularly in a smaller company, you are going to need to take strategic ownership and tie everything you do to business outcomes and where the market is headed.
- Do your homework on us. We’re not perfect. Ask the tough questions, because we’re going to want you to do that when you join. Puffery marks you down as desperate to work here for the wrong reasons. Engage with the challenge, and let us know why the challenge would make this a great opportunity for you.
- Don’t spend your time telling your interviewer how awesome they are. We’re all one of 8 billion people on the planet. If there’s something that one of us has done that really resonates with you, bring it up after the interview. If you’re talking to me, you don’t get bonus points for being a cricket or Manchester United fan, or for loving CricInfo. You get more points for leaving me feeling in awe of you.
All of this really boils down to something very straightforward. If you are both honest with yourself, and true to yourself, the rest will flow naturally, and you will both get the interviews you deserve, and the jobs you deserve. Perhaps more importantly, you will end up showcasing the qualities that will get people to take a chance on you. It’s hard work, and it’s not always fair, but you can give yourself the best possible chance.
Good luck out there!
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