In this post, we will discuss hiring for a product role from other functions within your company – engineering/QA/design, business development, operations, customer care, etc.
I have hired half a dozen PMs internally from other functions and guess in what % of these hires turned out to be great PMs? It is 100%.
Here are my learnings from hiring internally from another function –
1. Always keep looking out as great PM candidates can be found in many places – Once I found a suitable PM who was a contractor in a technical support role. He was not even considering a career in Product till that point but showed some attributes to become a good PM.
2. Necessity is the mother of search – Once, I had to hire a PM for a domain that was too technical. External candidates were either not liking the role or didn’t have the required technical expertise. An internal candidate came to our rescue.
In another situation, a role required deep empathy with operations and a candidate from operations came in handy.
3. It is relatively very easy to evaluate an internal candidate. You have access to unbiased feedback from all stakeholders in his/her current role.
4. In many cases, you would also have the opportunity to observe the candidate before hiring them. You can give them trial features to build and get warmed up before making up a decision to offer.
5. Beyond feedback from others, I check for good communication and stakeholder management skills. These skills take time to develop and so it is better you hire someone already at a higher bar.
6. It is ok to give benefit of the doubt to a candidate who doesn’t speak PM jargon, use frameworks and standard problem-solving techniques. These can be learned pretty quickly.
Once I interviewed an internal candidate and towards the end of the discussion, I told him – “You did not answer what I expected but you are still hired”. The reason for the seemingly irrational decision was that this candidate had good feedback and also high agency which I have observed earlier.
I realized that if he had spent time preparing for a stereotypical PM interview, he would have done well. Of course, post joining my team, he did pretty well in his job.
As with hiring from your network, balance your team mix of internal hires vs external hires based on the stage of the company, your current needs, and to get diverse perspectives
Word of caution: While many cultures encourage employees to seek suitable internal positions that are good for their career, some managers find this cross-functional movement as a violation of their territorial control. If there are signs of the latter, the candidate and then you need to do a lot of ego massaging and slowly and persistently convince the manager to have a smooth transition.
