Lenny's Newsletter - How to interview product managers
This is a peek at today’s subscriber-only post. Subscribe to get access to this full issue—and every issue from the past three years. How to interview product managersInterview structure, skills to test, questions to ask, project examples, and more👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out about work. Send me your questions and in return I’ll humbly offer actionable real-talk advice. Now, on to this week’s post…
I can understand why so many people are befuddled by interviewing product managers—the role is so endlessly undefined, how can non-PMs possibly know what to interview for? As Gergely Orosz (ex-Uber, Microsoft, Skype engineer) confessed in a tweet, “we EMs have no clue how to do these. At first, you wing it; by the third time, everyone has their own, completely different setup.” In my chat with Harry Stebbings last week, I shared a bit of advice on this, but it was quite brief. So let’s get much deeper. Below, I’ll share suggestions for:
Disclaimer: People have strong opinions about how to interview, but very few people have enough data (or have looked at their data) to know if their interview assumptions are actually predictive of performance. Interview best practices are generally anecdotal, so definitely do your own research. With that, let’s get into it. How to structure your PM interview processHigh-level, I’d set up your interview process like so:
To benchmark a typical hiring funnel, I asked Benji Encz, CEO of the recruiting platform Ashby, to share stats he had on conversion rates at each step, and wow, did he deliver. Here are hot-off-the-presses stats his team pulled for me, based on over 75,000 recent applications across high-growth tech companies. Takeaway: You need to talk to an average of 23 PM candidates to hire one great one.
I would be remiss if I didn’t plug my new Talent Collective here, which is quickly becoming the single best place to find and hire product managers—and help you find your next dream gig. Learn more here. What skills to interview forThere are 10 core skills of product management, but assuming you’re interviewing an IC PM (i.e. not a manager), you can whittle it down to these six:
Interestingly, product sense isn’t ever on PM career ladders, but it is something that companies interview for, so I’ve included it in the list above. What interview questions to askI wrote a whole post sharing my favorite PM interview questions, so definitely go read that, but here’s a sampling:
This full post includes what to look for in the answers, red flags, and a ton more great interview questions to inspire you. Seriously, go check it out. And don’t forget to keep your questions consistent, with predefined good and bad answers, to avoid bias.
The projectI’ve found the project portion of the PM interview process to be the most informative component of the interview. It’s the only time you’ll get to see the candidate tackle a chunky new problem, be able to watch them in action, and have a discussion about it. Though some people don’t include it, I couldn’t imagine a PM interview without it.
The goal of the project is to get a taste of how a candidate approaches a new problem. Most importantly, you aren’t looking at how close they got to the right answer. Instead, you are looking at how they break down the problem, how they structure their solution, and how they communicate it to you. Often the discussion afterward is even more valuable than the prompt itself. You have two options for delivering the project:
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Older messages
How to develop product sense
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Your question implies that it can be developed, and to that point, I 1000% agree. Contrary to what a lot of PMs believe, product sense is not something you need to be born with. It's a learned
A product manager’s guide to web3
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
How PMing in web3 is different, the pros and cons of going web3, how to break in, and how to be successful—by guest author Jason Shah, head of product at Alchemy
What is good monthly churn
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Benchmarks for good and great monthly churn, by company type and price point
Lessons from 140+ angel investments
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Biggest surprises, how to get started, what to look for when evaluating companies, plus a ton of advice from many smart investors
The inside story of Facebook Marketplace
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
A guest post by Deb Liu
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