This is a Guest Blog by Mr. Gyan Gupta, Product Evangelist, Bada Business
Hiring a product manager is a very crucial part in the success story of an organization. Being a pivotal cog in the wheel of the entire scheme of things that determine ultimate triumph, this process needs careful deliberation and execution.
The very first step in this task is to define the role of the product manager. What is that person required to do and what are the job role expectations. Among a plethora of functions that product managers fulfill, what is solicited for your particular position. Are they expected to do the growth hacking, or does the organization want them to scale, are they expected to retain, engage or simplify. There has to be absolute clarity in terms of what roles they are required to play and what expectations they have to fulfill. Is the person expected to take it from a 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 100 or 100 to 1000? This very first precursor to the exercise of hiring product managers is like laying the foundation of a building and needless to say it has no room for errors.
Next important factor is scrutiny of the skill sets which again needs to be clearly defined and then sought. Aspirants can have very strong business acumen or a thorough understanding of the business perspective. Some can bring a sound technical knowledge to the table which in turn comes handy when collaborating with the development team while some can be excellent at user experience. Ideally looking for a diverse skill set is a prudent thing to do while hiring your product management team, in case you are hiring for more than one person. A wide spectrum of different skills will enable a big diverse team.
Mr. Gyan Gupta, Product Evangelist, Bada Business
Something I personally endorse and practice at Bada Business is to make sure that candidates have a problem solving capability. Challenging them with logical and typical problems to solve is an ideal way to evaluate how good they are at solving something logical.
Furthermore it is very critical for product managers to be good in the art of collaboration as interaction with multiple teams is a huge part of their day to day functions. Their communication and collaboration skills need to be in place for higher productivity.
Training is another very important aspect that affects the overall performance of the organization and as important as hiring. A comprehensive onboarding process is of utmost significance to make sure the new recruits understand the company’s process, its industry, the nature of the business and its perspective very clearly. Giving them a thorough understanding of the larger goals, aspirations, and challenges is paramount in their future performance and assigning them a mentor can prove to be very useful. Once that step is finished helping them build domain knowledge is the next requisite because that is very critical for a product manager.
Continuous learning opportunities have to be made available to them, so that they are continuously learning about the business, its process, the domain, the function, customers and data.
Lastly, cross functional exposure makes product managers adept at understanding the different functions of the organization because they have to interact with a lot of different functions in the course of their tenure.
