8 questions to ask to dig out great product owners/managers
Business is all about having the right people doing the right thing
Can we agree on that? I think that’s why recruiting is so hard and can have a huge impact on business. Moreover PM must handle tech, UX and business topics with efficiency. As they need to perform in a great variety of tasks, finding the hidden gem can be though!
Here’s what I do to conduct interviews for products owners/managers.
Before diving in, two notes:
- these are though questions that apply better for experienced or senior roles than juniors but I adapt it to the interviewee’s profile
- give to your applicant a couple of minutes to think about his/her answer if needed so you have a complete response and material to discuss
First of all, I divided the product owner’s activity in 8 parts:
A product owner or product manager can be great without being a master on all these topics but you need to know where he/she is good at and if it’s going to fit your team or within your organisation and product. For example, a B2B product for developers might need a PO/PM with great technical skills while a pure marketing B2C product with low tech features might not.
Soft skills & general behavior
First question:
Tell me about something you learned by yourself? How did you do it?
It has NOT to be job related and can be anything.
Great PM /PO are often passionate people and learn constantly. The idea of this question is to look for passion in the learning process and try to find if learning is a life philosophy or not.
WEAK answer: he/she is speaking about a small topic and is not able to go deep into details about the subject or the learning process.
STRONG answer: he/she is speaking with passion and is able to give some source (books, blogs, authors…) or have specific action he/she has done to learn (took an online course, went to an event…).
Process & orga
What do your product management process look like?
WEAK answer: blurry methodology (or none!), less than one or two different teams mentioned (UX, dev, marketing, BI…).
STRONG answer: sharp and detailed process with different phases (ex: discovery/delivery/improve, mesure/build/learn, … or the design thinking’s 5 steps process). For PM, the process MUST focus on the user and the problem we are trying to solve. The participant might speak about tools like AB testing, prototypes, data analysis, personas…
Strategy
What is the worst idea you’ve ever had or your biggest mistake?
Looking for the worst idea is better than looking for the best one because it’s often way easier to convince people of a good idea than a bad one. Thus, you can know the actual impact he/she has on the business and his/her influence in the company. By diving into it (when did you realize it was a mistake? how did you overcome it?…), you can understand a lot about his/her way of workin and behavior.
If he/she is not accurate enough on the solution or the problem, he/she might not be the lead or at the center but only a part of it. Turn out it’s one of the favourite Elon musk interview’s question and I easily understand why.
Marketing & creativity
How would you promote our product (online, offline, on a TV ad,…)?
You have a good opportunity to know if he/she understand the real value of your product, your market and your users or customers. It’s a very hard question so you need to give him/her a couple of minutes to think.
WEAK answer: Something unrelated and/or on the wrong target.
STRONG answer: Creativity regarding the format or the message with a direct link with user’s emotion and problem.
Design & UX / UI
Tell me about a product you find very well designed? Why?
It has not to be tech related and can be anything (physical product works great also).
WEAK answer: “I love XXX, it’s a great product and easy to use”
STRONG answer: Something that solve a real user problem with efficiency. The interviewee should be able to go into details about why it’s well designed. What are the top features and why it matters (for the user, for the business,…)? What’s unique about this product? Is there “invisible” details he/she as noticed?
Growth
How you would expand our product or assets to other business / market?
WEAK answer: something really too close to the current business / market or something obvious.
STRONG answer: If she/he has really understood what your product does and what are your assets, she/he would be able to find idea to generalize and expand your business (either B2B, B2C or B2B2C). It’s also a good opportunity to know if he/she is really interested by your company / product and has done some research beforehand.
NB: depending on the product / company, it can be a really tough question.
Data
Which metrics do you think would be important for us to track? And why?
WEAK answer: vanity metrics and not business correlated metrics. For most apps, it would be pages views, visits, time spent on app, …
STRONG answer: KPI close to the user’s lifecycle and business (acquisition, retention,…). It depends a lot on your customer, business & market but it could be : User retention, revenue per user, specific task efficiency ratio…
Tech
Describe in details what happens when you type google.com in your browser
This is a simple question but it could take one hour to have a start of a complete answer.
Note : this is a web oriented question, I take another one for a mobile app PO/PM (see the end for ideas).
WEAK answer: There is a very common confusion with what the server runs (PHP, JS, ROR, python, java…) and what the server generates and sends to the browser for the first request (HTML only).
STRONG answer: A detailed answer would talk about DNS, IP, servers, CDN, url & cookies, HTML parsing, JS/CSS downloading, parsing, execution…
NB : again, some great PO/PM can be weak in tech topics. There is no eliminatory questions, you just need to evaluate.
Conclusion
After you explained the job position, make the person rephrase it so you know her ability to :
- Listen and memorize
- Summarize
Bonus point : you know also if he/she understood right about what you said and if he/she won’t be disappointed when he/she finally comes.
Final note
Remember that people can learn and grow especially if you guide and help them!
It’s not because someone gives weak answers to these questions that you should not hire him/her. These questions are only a tool that should give you a hint about how mature he/she is about product management and his/her potential.
I also recommend you to read this awesome (and detailed) article => https://firstround.com/review/find-vet-and-close-the-best-product-managers-heres-how/
Other questions I like asking…
- [UX] What is the key for a good user interface?
- [UX] How do you know if a product is well designed?
- [UX/UI] What are the benefits of a design system?
- [UX] Which advices would you give to a colleague for a good user interview?
- [Tech] What do you do when you encounter a bug? What do you do to make sure you understand it fully?
- [Tech] Which tech advices would you give to a PO of a very slow app?
- [Data] Tell me about a time you used data to make a decision.
- [Process & Orga] What aspects of product management do you find the most exciting?
- [Process & Orga] How do you decide what to build? What not to build?
- [Strategy] What are implications of self-driving cars?
- [Soft skills] What do you expect from your manager?
- [Soft skills] Is consensus always a good thing?
- [Soft skills] What kind of people do you like to work with?
- [Soft skills] What kind of people do you have a hard time working with?
- [Soft skills] When did you experience a real passion for something?
- [Soft skills] What topic would you like to know more about?
- [Soft skills] How do you say “no” to people? Tell me a time where you did say no to someone.
Many thanks to Florent Vie and Maud Vinour who helped me writing this article!
