Finding the right PMs for your organisation might take time, considering the competition in the market and the need for a consistent process.
There are different ‘flavours’ of PMs in practice. There are startup PMs, go-to-market PMs, scale PMs, design PMs, platform PMs, and data PMs.
Someone awesome at one flavour may not be the best at others (or there’ll be an adjustment period). Understanding your problem is critical to hiring the right product manager. That’ll inform how you rate them on specific skills — more technical, business-oriented, design-oriented, a jack-of-all-trades.
The ideal product manager does not necessarily have to come from your target market (there are pros and cons to this), but they need to empathise with your target market. This trait is often challenging to find in high-technology companies trying to produce mass-market products. We tend to think of our users as we feel about ourselves and our friends. However, the target market likely has different values, priorities, perceptions, tolerances and experiences.
From their daily interactions, product managers pick up a deep understanding of the product and technical capabilities; they achieve this by playing with the product, discussing it with customers and developers, and reading and reading. For technology experts, the product almost becomes their hobby. They think of themselves as product experts.
In addition to the above skills, a Product Manager must also possess excellent team management skills and be able to communicate clearly and efficiently with many people ranging from team members to testers to potential clients. General management experience is also needed, as a Product Manager will be responsible for seeing a product from start to finish and, therefore, will have many different employees working under them. At times, a Product Manager will also need to recruit and hire for specialised positions to see a project through. High integrity and a dedication to seeing a project started and finished promptly are also necessary.
From their daily interactions, product managers pick up a deep understanding of the product and technical capabilities; they achieve this by playing with the product, discussing it with customers and developers, and reading and reading. For technology experts, the product almost becomes their hobby. They think of themselves as product experts.
In addition to the above skills, a Product Manager must also possess excellent team management skills and be able to communicate clearly and efficiently with many people ranging from team members to testers to potential clients. General management experience is also needed, as a Product Manager will be responsible for seeing a product from start to finish and, therefore, will have many different employees working under them. At times, a Product Manager will also need to recruit and hire for specialised positions to see a project through. High integrity and a dedication to seeing a project started and finished promptly are also necessary.
Hard skills for a product manager can vary widely. It helps to have some technical knowledge of the product to guide product ideas and work well with the technical team. For instance, the product manager is unlikely to have to create specialised product specs. Still, they should be able to understand the technical aspects of the product features, as well as be able to conduct data analysis, have a basic understanding of the product’s development, and perform market research.
In particular, relationship management skills and high EQ are vital to successful product management. This includes things like active listening, leadership skills, good delegation skills, and more.
These core competencies are the baseline for any PM, and the best PMs hone these skills over years of defining, shipping, and iterating on products. These PMs excel at reflecting on where each of these competencies has contributed to the success or failure of their products and continuously adjusting their approach based on customer feedback.
A Head of Product role is often a transition from managing a product to managing the people within a product team, giving them the support and tools to do learn and develop their knowledge to carry out their work independently.
Those in Head of Product roles will want to gain experience across as many different technologies as possible, acquiring approaches and techniques that will be useful in the next step.
It is no surprise that the budget for PM roles becomes a considerable challenge to accommodate, considering the market benchmarks. Although the usual factors like experience, geography and skill level apply equally in this case, it is also essential to demonstrate the overall benefits of providing an inclusive and accommodating workplace in a post-pandemic world.
When organisations have product roles to fill, many look for that combination of experience and expertise to go perfectly with the rest of the team. It sounds like a good plan until you hire someone and find out that even though they check all the boxes, something doesn’t work. Or maybe you never find that perfect combination but later realise you somehow managed to hire the right person anyway. It doesn’t have to be lucky. We can do better…
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