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Interviewing Like A Product Manager
Rich MironovCEO, Mironov Consulting
7 March 2020
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• Veteran product manager/exec• Organizing product organizations• Mentoring product leaders
• 6 startups, including as CEO/founder• Interviewed many hundreds of product
management candidates• Lately, helping lots of clients hire their CPO
About Rich Mironov
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Will product manage for food,
options, and illusory
moments ofself-importance
Conversations, market information, priorities, requirements,
roadmaps, epics, user stories, backlogs, personas…
product bits
strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,targets
Field input,Market feedback
Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets & CustomersDevelopment
Marketing& Sales
Executives
ProductManagement
What Does a Product Manager Do?
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WE CAN PRODUCT
MANAGE OURSELVES
• Good product managers know how to• Segment markets • Analyze and target customers• Turn features into benefits• Do basic solution selling
• In your job hunt, you are the product• Quiz: how to apply these skills to your job hunt?
Core Product Skills
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ME!
• Segmentation: identify reasonable-fit companies• Identify where your background/skills/assets are most relevant
• Market/customer analysis• Do some homework, try my product, read up on my company
• Benefits, not features• Tell me why you’re who I need.
Highlight relevant résumé bits.
• Solution selling• Think about my pain points: what product
problems am I having? How would you help?
Demonstrate Your Product Skills(What I Expect from Candidates)
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• Quiz: best ways to learn about what’s happening inside a company?
• F2F discussion with someone who works there• Not someone on the interview roster• Ideally, a product person• LinkedIn is your friend
• Humble, thoughtful, open-ended• You would never launch a product
without understanding your target audience…
“But I Don’t Know What’s Happening Inside These Target Companies”
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“As a product management executive…I want to hire product managers who already have great product skills…So that I can unload a bunch of products problems that I currently handle myself”Non-goal: product training/mentoring responsibilityNon-goal: carefully frame all problems and decisions
What Hiring Managers Really Want
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“As a programmer who knows nothing about being a technology product manager, what should I learn before interviewing for /
transitioning into a product role?”- Real Quora question for Rich
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"As a professional race car driver who knows nothing about
software, what should I know before interviewing for an
enterprise software architect role?"
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1. Promise a new feature to a customer during meeting2. First customer interview represents a market segment3. Confuse sales calls with customer learning/research4. Believe your own marketing materials about why
customers buy and love your product5. Confuse process steps (stories, tickets, releases) with
market success (renewals, revenue, customer love)6. Announce that you’re “CEO of the product”7. Narrow job role definitions (“you do X, I do Y”)8. Project manage development work9. Tell engineers how to solve things10. Not know your internal counterparts
10 Mistakes You’ll (Probably) Make in Your Product Management Job
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CONTACT
Rich Mironov, CEOMironov ConsultingSan Francisco, CA 94102
RichMironov
@RichMironov
+1-650-315-7394
