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A product manager is vital for every product to ensure it aligns with the expected goals and achieves overall success.

However, good product managers are few and far between, so finding the right one for your product launch can be challenging.

To help you with that, we’ve created this step-by-step guide that explains exactly how to hire a product manager and exactly which skills to look for.

First, let’s see why finding a good product manager is so important.

Why Is It Important to Hire the Right Product Manager?

So, why is it paramount to find the right product manager? How do they impact the success of a product?

Product managers are needed to streamline processes and maintain cohesion, even for a product with great potential.

They’re necessary to develop a sound product strategy and roadmap and ensure teams don’t deviate from the plan. Additionally, their excellent communication skills enable them to establish effective collaboration among various teams within the company.

Let’s look at the must-have skills for that type of product manager.

What Skills and Qualifications Should You Look for When Hiring a Product Manager?

Product managers usually already have a wide range of skills, but there are three qualifications you need to look out for. These are the game-changers!

Communication Skills

While technical skills can be a huge time-saver, the biggest problem in teams or between teams is always communication. A good product manager should be the perfect mediator between workers to ensure optimized collaboration.

People Management Skills

Communication skills are useless without the ability to manage people. PMs need to excel at problem-solving, organizing, resolving conflicts, and, most importantly, showing empathy toward the company’s workers.

Leadership Skills

Communication and people management skills fall under the umbrella of leadership. However, many other skills are equally crucial for a product’s success.

These include, but are not limited to, decision-making, creativity, trust-building, time management, establishing realistic expectations, creating practical solutions, and more.

But, depending on the industry, specific technical skills might also be just as critical as these people skills.

With that in mind, let’s examine the steps to hiring the right product manager!

How to Hire a Product Manager the Right Way

To find the best person for the job, communicate the particular skills you’re looking for, what kind of product they’ll be working with, and more.

Follow these steps to do that:

1. Optimize Your Job Description

To ensure you find the right person for your product manager position, building a suitable talent pool is essential.

The best way to achieve that is by optimizing your job description. Clearly explain the position's responsibilities and which skills your company finds most valuable. Mention potential career paths in your company, salary, and other benefits.

2. Use Hiring Platforms

Online hiring platforms are undoubtedly one of the best methods for talent pooling, as they open up access to hundreds or thousands of candidates. You have a much wider reach than usual, and you’ll also have easy access to a candidate’s skills, experience, and other information from their resume.

At Burtch Works, we can vet the talent for you, simplifying the process!

3. Test The Talent’s Technical Skills

So, you reduced your talent pool to a couple of dozen or a handful of potential hires. What now?

If most of the candidates left have the necessary communication and management skills, your next step is to test for the needed technical skills. This should help you reduce the pool of potential hires.

You can achieve this by asking a series of typical product manager interview questions or conducting practical evaluations/tests. Or, for even better insight into their tech skills, check out the next step.

4. Take-Home Assignments

A take-home assignment is one of the best ways to gain insight into a person’s handling of projects, time management, technical skills, and problem-solving.

This step is essential in your interview process for product managers.

5. Team/Peer Interview

A product manager needs more than technical and management skills. The product manager needs to fit perfectly into the company’s culture, so having company peers or your team interview your potential candidates can also provide valuable insight.

Their impressions/opinions should also have a substantial impact on your hiring decision.

6. Background Check

If you’re close to making a decision and picking a candidate from your talent pool, another safety net is a background check. It’s a good way to verify all supplied information and mitigate any risks.

7. Creating an Offer

This is another crucial step of the product manager hiring process.

If you’ve found the perfect candidate for the role, you’ll need to acknowledge that through your offer. Considering just how important their role is, you’ll need to provide a competitive compensation package that includes both base salary and all benefits (medical, leave, equity, fitness, etc.)

Other huge factors for candidates will be job safety, career opportunities, location, and commute time. Explain the potential opportunities for further growth and consider offering compensation for commuting or work-from-home days.

FAQs

What are some red flags to watch out for when hiring a product manager?

When hiring a product manager, the biggest red flags are poor communication skills and an aversion to feedback. If a product manager is unwilling to communicate properly with their team and does not accept positive feedback, that will have a very negative impact on the product.

What are the key differences between a product manager and a project manager?

The main difference is that product managers are responsible for creating the product strategy and ensuring proper collaboration between teams, while project managers focus on execution, following budget restrictions, and ensuring the quality of deliverables.

How important is industry experience for a product manager?

A product manager with industry knowledge will definitely have a positive impact on a product. However, communication and people management skills have a much more significant impact, so industry experience is not always necessary.

Can you hire a product manager remotely, and what are the best practices?

You can hire product managers remotely, but only if you provide your team(s) and product manager with the means to properly collaborate and communicate online (apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.)

During the hiring process, it’s best to use talent-hiring services to optimize the process and ensure you get the best possible person for the job.

How do you measure the success of a product manager once hired?

The success of a product manager can be measured through the execution of the product strategies, the roadmap, adherence to the roadmap, product metrics, market research and feedback, product quality, and, most importantly, customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Since you’ve gone through this guide, you should now have a deep understanding of which skills you should look out for when hiring a product manager and the necessary steps to ensure you find the right person for the job.

To make the process even easier, consider checking out our talent-hiring services! Here, we can easily assess your needs, identify the right talent for your role, and begin interviewing immediately.

You can also check out our other guides for different roles in various industries.