How to Hire a Product Manager: A Guide for Startups

Maybe your product is gaining traction. Your engineering team is stretched thin. Senior leaders and managers want visibility into timelines, and you’ve started hearing the same question in every meeting: “Who’s actually owning this?”

That’s when hiring a Product Manager shifts from nice-to-have to necessity.

But hiring a PM too early (or choosing the wrong one) can create more confusion than clarity.

The Product Manager role is notoriously hard to define, especially in startup environments where roles blur and priorities shift overnight. Add to that the dozens of different PM archetypes circulating online, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed before you’ve even started the search.

This guide will help you cut through the noise. Whether you’re making your first PM hire or expanding your product team, you’ll find practical advice for identifying the right time to hire, what skills to prioritize, and how to run an interview process that sets you — and your next product leader — up for success.

What does a Product Manager do?

Ask 10 different product managers this question, and you’re almost guaranteed to hear 10 different answers. That’s because product organizations can vary from company to company depending on the size, team layout, or product philosophy.

I’ll make it easy for you. Having worked closely with product teams for much of my career, I find that Product Managers usually fall into one of the following buckets:

Technical: Technical PMs will typically work more closely with the engineering team than other types of product managers. They usually work on more complex or sophisticated products that require advanced technical knowledge (and even coding experience).
Generalist: Generalist PMs usually focus more on the “business side” of the product. Typically working closely with a Product Designer and either an Engineering Manager or Technical Lead, this PM sets the strategy and direction for the product, while leaving the technical component to the engineering team. Think of this PM as the “CEO” of the team.
Process-focused: Process-focused PMs typically serve as project managers for their teams, setting the direction and assigning individual tasks. This role is responsible for keeping processes on track. These types of PMs will need to know and be capable of leading their team through SCRUM (a process followed by agile engineering teams) and often complete work in sprints.

Note that there can be overlap between these roles! That’s what makes the PM role so difficult to define.

When to Hire a Product Manager

It’s tempting to consider hiring your first Product Manager once you cross the $500K - $1M threshold. Founders often assume that bringing in a PM will help them scale faster by increasing delivery speed and relieving the burden of product decision-making. But hiring a PM too early is a common (and costly) mistake.

Just because your company is gearing up for growth doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right time to add a PM. In fact, early-stage companies often regret hiring a PM prematurely, for a few key reasons:

There may not be enough meaningful work for a Product Manager to do
There isn’t enough data or customer insight to inform strategic decisions
Product priorities can shift quickly, leaving a PM either sidelined or rendered redundant

When you hire a PM too early, they end up either optimizing unimportant decisions (should the button be green or blue?) or splitting hairs on trivial tasks. That’s a misuse of limited resources at a stage when every team member needs to be fully leveraged.

So what’s not too early?

Consider hiring a PM when:

You’ve achieved some level of product-market fit. I get asked this question a lot. The truth is, few people really know how to define product-market fit. I like to think of it as a gut feeling you get based on the following metrics:
- Revenue: Are people willing to pay for it? Better yet, do they actually pay for it rather than vaguely say they would in the future? There’s nothing that validates a product quite like money from real customers.
- Adoption: Do people who sign up for the product actually use it? Beyond paying for the product, you need customers to stick around and continue to pay. Pay attention to adoption and retention metrics within the product.
- Churn: Churn happens. You will lose a customer at some point, but if churn is dwarfed by your ability to bring on new customers, you could be on your way to product-market fit.
- Customer satisfaction: Do your customers like the product? Do they rave about it to you or on social media? Happy customers are a sign that your product strikes a chord with your market.
You are increasingly moving in a cohesive direction with your product strategy.
You need someone to drive innovation or impose structure on an increasingly messy process.
There’s enough work (and opportunity) for a full-time product owner to lead or amplify efforts.

If you’re truly ready — because your product has momentum, your team needs a leader, and your roadmap is begging for strategic ownership — then read on to learn how to hire a Product Manager who can make a difference from day one.

How to Write a Product Manager Job Posting

Your job posting will dictate the type of candidate that you attract and bring into your hiring funnel. Bland or generic job postings may appeal to a broader audience, but they won’t necessarily appeal to the right hire that your team needs.

A good job posting begins with a job description that covers the responsibilities and duties of the role. Start by describing the role, challenges the hire will work on, and skills they will need. Then move on to write your job posting, which you will use to market the role and attract ideal candidates.

When writing a job posting, I like to start with the following three things:

Assess the needs of my team
Define the ideal candidate profile I want to hire
Note the responsibilities and roles of the job

And from there, the basic job posting template I use includes the following:

A company description: Go beyond the basics and use clear, descriptive language to give your prospective candidates a taste of what your company culture is like.
Summarize the role: Make sure to include a brief description of the role, key responsibilities, and experiences you are looking for, as well as the tech stack that your team uses and the product category that the PM will own. Make sure to define success for the role, too, and the team structure.
Skills: Are you looking for a SCRUM expert? Or someone who can dive into the data rabbit hole without thinking twice about it? Define exactly what type of PM you need (referencing the list above) and note the skills for the role.
Benefits and location: Finally, include where the job is (if it’s not remote), expectations around being in the office, and benefits that come with the job.
Compensation: I’m an advocate for being upfront about compensation. Pay will depend on location and experience, though a study by Product School may help:
- Associate Product Managers typically make $86,000/year
- Product Managers typically make $126,000/year
- Senior Product Managers typically make $152,000/year

Those figures are base salaries; you will need to factor in equity and bonus structures as well. Check out my guide for writing effective job postings for an in-depth walkthrough of this.

The Hiring Process for Hiring a Product Manager: What to Expect

Interviewing is a key step in any hiring process, but many companies aren’t using their interviews strategically.

This especially goes for PM interviews, where you can gauge whether a candidate is truly the right fit for your company. When interviewing a product manager, I recommend that you involve multiple team members in the interviews for a set of diverse, informed perspectives on each candidate.

At a high level, the typical product manager interview process looks like this:

A recruiter screen: Make sure the candidate meets the minimum requirements for the role and is likely to be a fit for the organization. Focus on their expectations for the role, basic skill questions, personality fit, and their interview timelines.
A hiring manager screen: Make sure there is a strong chance that the candidate fits the role. Focus on getting to know the candidate at both a technical and personal level to ascertain whether they match the role needs and your internal culture.
A “meet the team” interview: This could be a full-day or a half-day, depending on the size of your company and product organization. This is typically made of two parts:
- A take-home project that the candidate presents.
- 1:1 interviews with potential colleagues to assess the candidate’s skills, thought processes, and leadership approach.

It’s worth calling out a quick note about the take-home project.

This is your chance to gauge whether the person you’re interviewing is a good fit for the role, and not just a good fit on paper.

The project should be closely aligned with the work you are looking for this new hire to do, and because of that, you should pay the candidate for their time. I recommend you set an hourly rate based on what a PM of this level would be paid, and communicate clear expectations around the amount of time you expect them to take on the project. This allows you to cap the pay per candidate and get a sense of what each candidate can do with the same amount of time.

Following this, you will review the candidate’s performance with your team to make a final hiring decision. You may want to include the following as you evaluate and compare candidates:

A post-interview panel to discuss, followed by a decision by the hiring manager.
Reference checks to ensure the candidate has good character and standing, and to make sure you haven’t missed anything across the hiring process.
Make an offer!

Now that we’ve explained the interview process at a macro level, we need to specify how to engage the Product Manager candidates through specific questions, skill-based assessments, and team needs. The devil is always in the details!

How to Interview a Product Manager

Because the “Product Manager” role can mean so many different things depending on the company, it’s important to start with what YOUR company needs from this role. From there, map the related skills and key questions according to those needs.

I like to split the PM interview into two parts:

Seeking out the required skills (again, these should be based on your company’s needs)
Specific questions to assess those skills and competencies

Let’s walk through each one.

Skills to Look For

In general, a Product Manager should possess the following skills:

Communication: Ability to clearly articulate product vision, requirements, and updates to cross-functional teams and stakeholders, ensuring alignment and transparency throughout the product life cycle.
Problem-solving: Skill in identifying root causes, evaluating trade-offs, and developing effective, innovative solutions that balance user needs, technical feasibility, and business goals.
Analytical thinking: Capacity to interpret data, conduct market research, and measure product performance using KPIs to inform decisions and prioritize features based on evidence.
Collaboration: A team-oriented mindset that fosters strong relationships with engineering, design, marketing, and sales teams to drive alignment and deliver results efficiently.
Strategic thinking: Ability to connect product initiatives to broader business objectives, anticipate market trends, and shape activities that lead to a competitive advantage.
A customer-centric attitude: Commitment to understanding user needs through empathy, feedback, and research, ensuring that the product delivers meaningful value and a positive experience to consumers and all key stakeholders.

Startups can’t afford to make hiring mistakes. To avoid the pitfalls of a bad hire, you must identify the necessary skills to achieve your company’s goals and satisfy immediate needs. From there, your hiring team must ensure the candidate who receives an offer is qualified for the role both technically and as a cultural fit through a robust evaluation process.

What Questions to Ask in an Interview

By focusing on skills first, hiring teams will be better informed about how to evaluate the candidate and what the relevant probing and follow-up questions are.

As you’ll see below, there are several key themes to hit on in your questions. I’ve broken them down into the following sections:

Product strategy and execution
Data-based decision making
Collaboration and communication
Their “startup mindset”

Product Strategy and Execution

Questions regarding Product Strategy and Execution should be focused on asking candidates about their specific experiences with bringing a project to life, from initial design through to delivery. This is an opportunity to decipher their strategic thinking, project management, troubleshooting, collaboration, and deep-listening skills.

Tell me about a project you’re proud of that took over 3 months to complete. Walk me through it from start to finish, and why you feel this way about it.
Walk me through a situation where a feature had poor adoption. What steps did you take to investigate and improve it? What was the outcome?
How do you balance customer feedback, internal feedback, and competitive insights when making product decisions?
If given 30 days to independently identify, design, and launch an improvement for one of our products, what feature or change would you prioritize, and why?

Data-based Decision Making and following KPIs

Executing a deliverable is only half the battle. Ask your candidates specifics about how they’ve evaluated the success of their products. Questions like the ones below get at a candidate’s ability to measure, track, test, refine, iterate, and improve their processes.

Tell me about a time you conducted user research on a product/feature, and that research had a big impact on the product. Specify how you measured that impact.
How do you incorporate customer feedback into your product process?
Tell me about a time when your team launched a new SaaS feature based on what seemed like promising metrics, but later discovered the data interpretation was flawed. What was your approach to course correction, and how did you rebuild stakeholder confidence?

Cross-functional Collaboration and Communication

Teamwork, collaboration, and communication are essential components to enabling efficiency and delivering quality work. But the line of questions below is also an opportunity to determine whether a candidate is a culture fit for your organization.

Tell me about a time you disagreed with an engineer or another technical team member, and how you resolved it.
Give me an example of a time when you found out that a feature would take significantly more time to finish than originally planned. How did you confront the situation, and what was the outcome?
How do you handle conflicting priorities between stakeholders like sales, engineering, or leadership?

Start-up Mindset

The start-up environment isn’t for everyone (regardless of how much experience they bring to the table). The questions below aim to assess a candidate’s agility, adaptability, time management skills, and ability to pivot when necessary.

What’s the scrappiest or most creative thing you’ve done to deliver a product or feature under constraints (time, resources, etc.)?
What’s the most important or impactful product you’ve shipped? What made it so important or impactful? Would it have been as impactful without you, and why?
Tell me about a time when you had to juggle multiple roles or prioritize competing demands. How did you decide where your focus should be, and what would you do differently in hindsight?
Why do you want to work with our startup, and what aspects of working in a startup environment excite you the most?
Describe a time when you or your team encountered unexpected market changes or user feedback that derailed your plans. How did you handle the shift in priorities?
When was the last time you made a decision that involved a significant trade-off (e.g., delaying key features, cutting costs, or taking a risk)? What did you prioritize and why?

What Makes Someone a Good Fit for a Startup Product Manager Role?

Nearly every tech company calls itself “agile and fast-paced,” but this is especially true for early to mid-stage startups.

The Product Manager role deals with ambiguity, but the level of ambiguity can be uncomfortable for some in the early stages. For younger companies, there are few decisions truly ironed out and less of an understanding of customer needs and challenges.

This could present a world of opportunity to a Product Manager, or lead to analysis paralysis.

Even the best Product Managers may not be ideal fits for an early-stage startup environment. Beyond the core skills listed above, look for someone who:

Is comfortable working with many unknowns.
Does not need a process; they can help create the process.
Can switch directions based on the needs of the business.
Makes decisions quickly, but backs them up with data.
Deftly juggles team challenges, customer demands, and business needs without letting things slip through the cracks.

Beyond being analytical, thoughtful, and customer-centric, a good candidate for a startup environment will be able to think and move quickly depending on evolving needs or shifting circumstances.

Hiring is Just One Part of HR: Download the Startup HR Survival Guide For the Rest

Hiring is a key piece of your startup’s success, but it’s only one element of a robust and effective HR strategy.

The most successful startups know that their path to scaling from seven to nine figures will be made possible by the practices they follow to attract and retain top performers in their company.

I mapped out this and more in my Startup HR Survival Guide. In this free guide, you will learn:

How HR can drive growth
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