One startup founder asked me – “Can you help me hire a rock star PM in the next 10 days?” In another time, a Product Director from an MNC was telling me – “I feel that we end up rejecting good candidates too often for flimsy reasons. Any idea how to reduce
Around 8 years ago, I faced the dilemma of hiring a peer/friend into my team. This friend was working in a different team in the company and had the same smartness and years of experience as mine. I asked my mentor how to think about hiring someone who is your peer in
A few weeks after joining my team – one of the senior PMs casually told me “Venkat, before joining here, I spoke to your previous team members and got very positive feedback. Only after that, I decided to join your team” Surprisingly, PM after PM who joined my team shared with me
The human element of your hiring process is best captured by collecting feedback from the candidates about their experience. A candidate judges your company’s culture largely based on the professionalism of people involved in the whole process. So it is important to get candidate experiences right. Once you get the candidate experiences
The recruitment funnel is your most important tool in the whole hiring process. It is a simple tracking of a) the number of candidates from – Profiles considered → Profiles shortlisted → Initial screening/selling → Interview rounds → Offer discussion → Offer → Accepted → Joining over a period of time. b)Turn
This is a definitely widely debated topic. At some point or other, leaders would have asked themselves if they are being biased over hiring PMs based on their college pedigree. My take is this – At senior levels – relevant experience, skills, and performance in past roles are all that matters. After
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
Hiring from your network / past workplace is one of the best methods to hire the most relevant folks. You would be able to easily picture the fitment both ways – a) who from my past can fit the role really well and b) will this person really enjoy this role and
It is an understatement to say that good Product Managers are in very high demand. Thanks to the amazing growth of startups and corresponding funding. Every day, either a friend who is a product leader or a startup founder ask me if I have references for a good PM. I am mostly
Similar to how a good product manager focuses on adding value to customers, a product leader needs to understand what candidates are looking for and provide (not just promise) them more and more value. Beyond fair pay, candidates typically look for – A good boss who can also be a mentor Potential
