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What are the most important skills for a product manager?
by
NavehMevorach
What are the most important skills for a product manager?
1. Wear many hats
At the core, a product manager sits at the intersection of three aspects of a product:
So a good PM has to balance the interests of these 3 to be successful.
2. Influence without authority
Certain decisions taken by the business could be detrimental to the customer experience so a good PM has to be able to clearly articulate and defend the customers' interests from within the organization.
3. Context switching
A good PM must learn to know when to zoom out: by focusing on the forest, and when to zoom in: by focusing on the trees in the forest. You have to be able to dive in to low level stuff like prioritize (JIRA) tickets, while also being able to think at a high level by researching the competitive landscape, identify niches to exploit, define go-to-market strategy.
A good PM will serve as the CEO of a product and also its janitor.
The passion for being a product manager - that's it
Sounds stupid, right? From my 6 years experience in different product roles, this is how I would distill the PM role: the person holding it should be passionate about being as good a PM as possible. None of the activities and (mental) tools you use in this role are super-complicated, but most people don't do them because they loose interest and prefer other roles. Good PMs just can't d anything else :)
A more standard answer:
Thanks for your wisdom!
May I ask what is the best way to interview someone for PM position?
What questions will you ask?
What products do you use/like, why do you like them and how would you improve them?
And then successive "why?", like a 4 year old.
Tell me how you handle conflict at a personal level.
Assume you're extremely rich, what would you do with your energy and time?
Also, a product test is good to have: something that would mimic the real work they'd do at your company (it's always different in different places). No wrong answers, but helps you understand their style of thinking and working and compare with other candidates.
Ironically—or not—another important skill for a product manager is not having too strong of an opinion on the solution.
At the beginning of a project, especially working within a team, it's easy to develop a quick opinion about what the best solution is. Then you fall in to the trap of justifying the solution you were leaning towards .
A good product manager gathers quality information, collaborates with the team, and surveys the field before developing an opinion on the solution.
Cant agree with you more =)
as I asked @paunx
What question willl you ask during an interview for a product managment job?
If I was interviewing someone for a PM job I would just ask about questions relevant to the business.
If I had a marketplace business for example, I'd ask: how do you solve the chicken-and-egg problem for marketplaces?
Just depends on what your business/product needs.