Williamson outlines a five-step interview process for hiring product managers
Scott Williamson · Scott Williamson: Hiring the Best Product People in Five Steps, Why the Best PMs are Writers | E1118 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Feb 21, 2024 · at 11:50
Scott Williamson, former CPO at GitLab and VP of Product at SendGrid, details his structured process for interviewing product management candidates on 20VC with Harry Stebbings.
0:00 / 1:01exact quote · 61.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Five interviews total. First one's a 30 minute recruiter screen or hiring manager screen if you don't have a recruiter. Just checking for the basics. Then the hiring manager should spend an hour with them checking on sort of the clear the bar for the core competencies of PM, and I can get into what I think those are. An engineering manager interviewing for an hour or so, where are you testing for clearing the bar on the domain and the minimum level of technical knowledge they're going to need and their ability to work with engineering. One peer interview. If you have other PMs, they should be doing this. I can get into tactics and techniques for that, but I'd typically like to see that be a little more hands-on where they work on something together. And then one more sort of finalist interview, either with the hiring manager again, or a bar raiser interview. If you have someone else in the org is very good at interviewing where you get into more like a case question.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Scott Williamson
Williamson: Founders should not hire product leaders before achieving product-market fit
“And I think if you hand it off before then, it can be very problematic because it's these decisions, which ICP, what are we going to prioritize to build for them? What's the core user experience? These things are so central to a company, especially if it's a P…”
Williamson: AI will merge PM, design, and engineering into a single role
“I can imagine this triple roll down the line where they're doing PM, design, and engineering with the help of AI.”
Williamson: MBAs are unnecessary for PMs unless aiming for executive roles
“If you want to be a badass PM, I don't think you really need it. You can learn the skills that you need to learn through product-focused training, through being in the right situation, through learning from Jedi Masters at your company. If you want to be a CPO…”
Williamson: PMs should spend 50% of time with customers, not 5%
“Now, to do that well, you need about half your time to be out of the building. Most PMs spend about 95% of their time facing engineering. And zero to fives talking to customers and being out in the world.”