If you want to hire a user interface designer you get to see their portfolio and you will immediately see the quality of their work.

If you want to hire a software engineer, you can see their code and see what it is that they can produce.

But when it comes to hiring product managers for software businesses, it's not quite as straightforward.

When you look at the role of a product manager you see that they identify someone else's needs and turn them over to others to produce improve results.  Their role in this process is difficult to identify from the outside

They might have been involved in the creation of the inputs into this process by measuring and identifying needs, or interviewing users, but they might also have been given a brief and asked to deal with it.

They might have been involved in figuring out the user or data flow that constitutes the core element of the feature, but they might also just be fitting into an existing system.

So given the potential variations, how do you test for the skills of a product manager?

Ask the right questions

Below are some questions that I look to put to any potential product manager in order to get an idea of how they think:

1. How do you measure the success of a Product Manager? - It's a tough one.  Sales people get measured by sales.  Developers get measured on delivery of good code on time. So what they think about how they should be measured tells you a lot about how they think.
2. Why does your current company exist? - This one gives you a real insight into the type of product manager they are.  If they say 'we have appointment booking systems for managing bookings for retailers' or say 'retailers want to get customers to commit to visiting their store and to direct traffic into non-peak times' you know whether they're thinking about value, needs, systems etc...
3. Where do your skills lie as a product manager? - Again, it's an opportunity to identify which end of the product spectrum they sit on.  If they're all about 'working through the requirements and giving detailed user stories' then you've got a processor, whereas if they talk about 'measuring usage and developing tests' then you've got an analyser.

Use their CV

We know that everyone tries to make it look like they were instrumental in the successes of their past, so the aim should be to make the candidate prove it, by using some of their own phrases.

If they've said they have "exceptionally good soft-skills" ask them why they are exceptionally good, who has stated they are exceptional, and what examples of these exceptional skills do they have.

If they've said they "delivered the most successful product the organisation had" then ask them in what terms it was successful and how this was measured, as well as how they specifically contributed to this measurement.

By following this approach you'll soon find the people who were instrumental in what they stated and those who were trawling the dictionary for impressive adjectives.

Give them a test

With a test, what you're really doing is trying to find out where their skills are and where there might be gaps.  Very few product managers are equally skilled in all areas from data to design, detail to delivery.  When you leave an open subject for them to consider you'll see which areas they gravitate towards.

For example, when looking for a product manager to get involved in how our product integrated with third parties we gave them a task which looked at an integration with the specifics of "Consider what information we would need to understand in order to support this integration."

From this we had technical approaches, not so technical approaches, process focused responses, restricted responses and ones that looked into the future. It's not black and white, but you get to see the shades of grey you might be letting yourself in for.

I like to give candidates a couple of days to think about this, but if you're feeling particularly harsh you could always follow the Facebook approach and just spring it on them in the interview.  "Here's a problem, do your product management magic".

And the basics

Of course, all the standard aspects of recruitment still apply, such as culture, attitude, motivation, etc..., but you can certainly look to get some idea of what product skills you're going to be getting when someone walks through the door on day one.

How do you find your product managers?

About Rob

Rob was a professional soccer player, and cinema manager, before moving into software development 20+ years ago. He was a founding team member at startup Ormsby Street, is a founding member at Don’t Keep it to Yourself, and heads up the product team at Qudini. https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjdrury/