What I Look for When I Hire a Product Manager By Airbnb Product Lead

hello so Sam stole my first question but it's good to get an idea of the audience here when I was first talking to Katie about what to speak about tonight I figured well this is a product school maybe starting to talk about what I look for when I hire product managers might be a pretty relevant topic for the room I want to keep this pretty interactive so along the way if you have questions if you have a discussion topic if you want a veer in a different way feel free to raise your hand and and make it a dialogue so a little bit about me I started my I guess college life coding decided I wanted to try something different moved into the finance world for a while decided I wanted to try something different so I went into consulting I was a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton for for a few years until I decided I wanted to try something different and went from consulting moved to the Bay Area joined PayPal awhile back and started in analytics I did analytics for a while until I started up my own behavioral analytics team after that I was primarily focused on risk management and the risk function from there I moved to corporate strategy and basically took a full tour of PayPal for the course of almost six years and then decided I needed another change and moved to Google to be a product manager and actually the reason for this move was I felt product management took a lot of those skill sets and blended them into one role where you know you're coming up with the strategy but you're also figuring out how you're going to execute that and actually make it happen and for me I liked that full ownership and to end I'm not Airbnb I'm a product lead for trust I oversee areas like identity what we know about our users account integrity content moderation financial fraud offline risk tools and infrastructure so it's been a fun ride but along with my career I'm also a full-time mom and so a lot about me is that I think family as important to me as my career and so I am basically you know I look for roles where I can be the best I can be at work but it also enables me to be the best I can be at home so I gave you a little bit about my journey in my path and sort of how I started with a bunch of different functions until I kind of landed into product management and I actually think that meandering path has helped me grow into being an effective product manager in order to be a product manager and own something end to end you kind of have to understand how all these various functions come together you know starting with the idea you know I would say consulting was a great place where hey someone has a problem how do you want to solve this you know how are you gonna come up with some idea to recommend all the way through analytics how do you get data to tell you a story and kind of validate your idea and think about you know what decisions should you be making and what are the trade-offs you know all the way through you know product management where you take all of that and say okay great now how do I actually bring something to life and make it happen and actually like look at the results so that would be primarily how I took my path towards product management and you know being where I am now and having grown out a team it's interesting because I am less into kind of the day-to-day work but I'm actually kind of putting together this entire team of folks who was building a vision you know that I've been kind of planning for Airbnb for some time now and watching it come to life which which kind of gives me a little bit of the best of both worlds where I can kind of grow a team but also see a large vision execute and so that's primarily my path and where I am today so what are you guys here to learn about is what am I looking for when I'm hiring a PM you know I think there's a lot of different skill sets that you can have as a product manager but looking at a bunch of different companies and sort of what it comes down to in terms of fundamentals I actually think probably these four attributes vision structure thinking leadership and collaboration as well as execution and accountability I think these are actually the form major attributes that will really really make someone stand out as a good candidate now you'll see I I actually combined leadership and collaboration and execution and accountability and I didn't separate those because I actually feel like they do come hand in hand if you're a great leader but you don't know how to collaborate or if you execute well but you don't take accountability I think that that's not you know that's not enough so this would be primarily the four buckets of areas that I find most important I'll go into each one and talk a little bit about what they mean what exactly do I look for within those categories and what are kind of sample questions that people tend to ask on interviews to help gauge competency in in one of these areas so vision you know I think vision is sort of this area where you can really shine when it comes towards creativity long-term thinking as well as just you know how you communicate I think you know someone can can ask you hey where do you think this should be in the next ten years and you know there can be a variety of different answers out there but how you actually structure your answer to say you know something that is bold something that may or may not be attainable but something that that sounds you know aspirationally out there and that you know oh it's basically like a North Star you know for example a long time ago it was someone's vision to get to the moon and you know many people probably thought that was pretty outrageous and you know they probably took a lot of steps along the way until they finally got there but that was someone's vision and so I think when people tend to ask questions around vision it's it's about saying hey here's something super tangible I can get from point A to point B it's more about how are you defining that North Star so some sample questions that you know tend to be pretty common in interviews is hey you know if you could redesign an elevator or if you could redesign a refrigerator or if you could redesign fill-in-the-blank what would you do and how would you do it and you know it's meant to be a thought provoking question for you to kind of take a step back and think about oh well what could be really cool in this and may or may not be achievable but you know this this would be a really interesting vision I think that's one aspect of vision where it's more on the creativity side then there's also like long-term thinking and scalability you know if you're looking at more technical rules or more back-end rules how are you painting a vision for a system that seems you know scalable for the future and how are you thinking about making sure that your vision gives you some sort of architectural plan that that seems aspirational for a team I think all of it really comes down to to kind of telling that story as well as being able to you know inspire someone you know many times you'll have people ask you what are your favorite products what are the products that you don't like and usually a follow-up question to that tends to be well what would you do to make this product better and it's really going back and thinking about okay what are the problems that do exist in this product that I do like or that I don't like and what would I be doing to actually make this you know bigger better bolder so so I think these are kind of questions you'll hear that are really trying to gauge your vision now you'll see I put communication and many of the many of the attributes I think the entire interview is also gauging how you communicate how you tell somebody your thought process because you're thinking on the spot and everyone gets that it's not like you know everyone expects you to have a canned answer before you come in and actually if you have a canned answer before you come in you usually comes across and doesn't work for you so you know I think part of the process is also as you're forming ideas and as you're thinking about you know the answer how are you actually structuring that and breaking it down into pieces that people can actually they just understand and go with you on that path so it gets me into structure thinking I think you can call this whatever you want many companies will say hey we're gauging your analytic skills some people will say we're gauging your strategy or your prioritization or planning or so forth for me it all boils down into structure thinking how are you taking that vision or that problem and actually breaking that down and applying a framework and you know making tangible components now of that vision where you can actually say okay I'm gonna create these milestones and of all the features or things that I can be doing to get to this milestone how do I prioritize that list and decide what should go to the top which go to the bottom I think this is sort of what I think about in terms of structure thinking now some companies tend to ask those more you know how many windows or how many lights or how many X are in a given location you know they usually throw people off but really what people are looking for is how do you apply a framework to that question so you know for example I remember a question was how do you determine if you're a SkyMall magazine and which is the magazine in the seat pocket in in the airplane when you're you take out that magazine it's usually a bunch of advertisements starts out with how many SkyMall magazines do you think need to be within production each year now that's like a super okay all right let's start well what are we talking about here are we talking about you know US domestic are we talking about international okay we're talking about us so domestic now what matters more is it the flight patterns or is it actually the number of planes probably the number of planes given its it's more about behind the seats so okay now I don't think how many planes are probably around in the u.s. and basically you're kind of walking down this step process with your interviewer on how you break that problem down into more tangible pieces to then provide some estimate numbers and get to some reasonable conclusion now that number might be way off but at least it shows that hey I can take this problem digest it acknowledge I have no idea what the right answer is but break it down into some sensible path as to my reasoning for why I got to my answer I think another important thing on these questions is also what questions do you ask back to the person asking you so you know hey I'm making these assumptions you know what do you think or you know making sure your assumptions are really clear at the beginning because you will be making assumptions to get to your conclusion so the more you're upfront about those assumptions your interviewer can come along with you for the ride other things are just clarifying questions like hey you know how often do they change the magazine every year is it seasonal you know how is 5% an appropriate number for amount that people take them with them or get stolen or get dirty or and whatnot like what's the replacement rate to think about sort of finding these questions that make the interviewer also feel like not only did I take that problem break it down into getting to some sort of answer but I'm also thinking about all these peripheral things around why my answer could or would change I think that's also a valuable valuable piece to add to answering these types of questions you know another is just how do you decide between trade-offs so you're presented two options to get to a certain goal how do you decide that one is better than the other and again there may not be a right answer but it's more of how do you actually talk through your thought process on how you make trade decisions is really what the interviewer is looking for so these are kind of more on structure thinking sometimes also what comes into play is domain expertise is it a very specific role am i looking for someone who has experience in a given area then possibly the questions will go more in depth on a certain field but again it depends on what you're applying for more of a general PM role or a specific domain beyond role so I think actually trade-off decision will be more applicable not on getting to the number of that answer but when when you'll likely get like a follow-up question usually a follow-up question is once you get to a number is like okay so do you think the company has an ROI on that and what other pads could they possibly be taking you know given that their goal is targeted advertising to travelers I think open-ended questions give you a little bit more leeway to talk about trade-offs you know if you were the CEO of SkyMall magazine and you had to choose what to do in five years time how do you decide it and I think open-ended questions give you a little bit more leeway to trade-off decisions versus getting to a specific number it's more of just what's your logic and what are the assumptions you're building in that equation to get there yeah I mean I think that that is a very very standard question that's us because you know and I think you will see this you know instructor thinking as well as an execution you want to ship something your goal is to take this vision of yours and drive it to execute executing something now the goal of that should be some level of impact because if you you know launch something that no one wants then really wasn't worth it so you really have to think about what impact am I trying to drive and really define that at the beginning of your project so you know I am trying to drive more bookings or I am trying to drive fraud down and if my goal is that then when I launch this I should assume that I should be looking at you know the conversion rate the drop-off rate the you know how much did I impact false positives or false negatives if I'm looking at fraud you know if there's any second-order issues that you're touching that you know you're not directly hitting but could be impacted by whatever your your product is or your experiment is what are those and do have like line of sight of saying hey my core metrics would maybe be the booking rate but I also recognize that I might be impacting this other area and so I kind of want to keep my eyes on those other metrics to to just make sure that hey you know I drove booking rate up but my you know customer service contact rate just went up dramatically and that's actually a big cost right there so I want to make sure that hey even though I hit the metric I wanted to I'm not creating any peripheral damage yeah I mean you can assign ROI to everything that goes into a project you can basically say okay you know the amount of time spent and so you know I think an easier way in interviews is to just generalize concepts and say like okay my level of effort spent on this project was X and that way you can assume level of effort you know encompasses the people the time etc and say like hey you know I'm going to assume that this was like a large project versus a small project so my level of investment was large large equals some number which we can define and make an assumption on and I'm gonna assume that the impact I'm driving has to balance that amount of effort and so I think talking about it that way might help illustrate that hey you're taking into consideration all of those things not knowing what the specifics are but I need to make sure my level of effort actually balances against the results I Drive you know I think it depends how much you like a particular domain to decide that you want to go deep you know versatility I think is great if you're not really sure what type of domain you want to specialize in and if you want exposure to different parts of the business because you know I can work on let's say the you know home site of Airbnb and then tomorrow I can go work on the experiences site of Airbnb and you know next I can work on the payment side of Airbnb oh but you know what in payments usually having more knowledge about payments and you know a little bit more depth of understanding of the payments industry is actually pretty helpful in payments so payments might be one of those areas where you actually do want to go deep if you want to make a career out of being in payments so I think it really just depends on your preference and what type of jobs you find interesting you know I my career would say I was very versatile and trying a bunch of different things but along the way I have also specialized in the trust and safety world you know having touched everything from financial fraud to product abuse to identity and reputation I can weave that into a story of trust and sort of trust and safety so even though I've tried a bunch of different things there's still some umbrella to put over it and that worked for me but I I know a lot of product managers who can be doing a lot of variety of different things and that works for them honestly I think that these are very transferable skill sets across all industries and so really I think even coming from a different industry it's how do you distill a very complex problem that you faced in a way where someone from a different industry who has no idea about you know the aviation space you've now explained your vision structure thinking and you know skill sets along that go with that in a way where that person can consume it and say oh yeah this guy has these skills he may not know this area but he has these skills so I think that's actually something you can overcome just by kind of showing but hey I have these skill sets I'm willing to learn and apply them to a new area yeah the Edit you you could consider communication as its own bullet point and that's a fair point the reason I put it across all of them is because usually I'm assessing that along the way I think for structure thinking actually something that really helps on the communication side is pausing when someone asks you a question that's likely gonna throw you off your feet say okay can I have a minute you know and think about it digest it and figure out what framework you're gonna apply towards answering it and then answer it because that's going to help you on your communication if you start answering right off the bat you're likely gonna go here and then here and then here and then here and then along talking through it you're gonna realize oh wait actually you know let me let me actually now bring this all together but if you actually take a minute you step back and you think about it and maybe take out a piece of paper and write down like some of the things that you're thinking about it's gonna really help you communicate your points back and help you stay structured that's why I include it on each of them because I think that it is something that just comes with all of the questions that is a tough question I mean I think there are a lot of great candidates that come in the door which is why you tend to have multiple interviews in a day because you're meeting so many different people with so many different perspectives that hopefully that can help calibrate who stands out because you know to me I might think hey this person is better than this person and to someone else that might be their way around but ultimately then there's some level of vote that comes in on hey did he stand out enough to enough people or did she stand out enough to enough people now that all is that sometimes doesn't work there are times where everyone comes back and like yeah you know this is a good candidate but you know no one's like a strong supporter I actually think that it is worth taking a chance on someone where there is strong support because you say hey you know what this person has like really great knowledge in this area great domain expertise like shows the skill set I think they can get the job done but this person has like really bold thinking and you know kind of different in in kind of how they're approaching the problem and you know we really think this person has a lot of potential and actually part of like the interview process is also I'm trying to grow people I don't want to hire people who you know don't want to grow with the company so part of its also like what's the hunger or the appetite of the person coming in the door how excited were there what kind of energy did you get from this person and hey you know what I'll take a chance on this person and maybe they need a little more mentoring but I think this person you know three years from now is gonna actually develop and flourish in a much different way so I think that's also something that comes into play when you're assessing two really good candidates I actually think if you're a function that works really close with product managers you almost have like an in to observe who you think are great product managers and who you don't think are great product managers and get to understand why do you think this p.m. is better than this p.m. what about them stands out to you and that might help you decide what kind of product manager you want to become and then figuring out okay hey you know in my role right now I'm maybe much more on the execution side of things so how do I want to actually start getting a little bit more on sort of the vision or the problem-solving aspect ahead of the street ahead of it and how are you working closely with your product manager to be part of that process with them I think that's always really helpful when whenever I see engineers and designers transition into PM it's usually because they were practically doing the job anyway in their function so next is leadership and collaboration you know one thing I was talking about is you want to grow people you want people to be able to be autonomous you know someone might take a lot of coaching and mentoring but usually you're investing that time because you think that there's a payoffs on hey this person is gonna become a really great individual contributor that I'm not gonna need to spend as much time with because I think they're on it I trust them I don't feel like I need to micromanage or or be involved in their space that are gonna let me know when they need me and you know that's sort of what you're kind of gearing towards so how are you demonstrating your leadership skills you know are you able to influence room are you able to you know have the composure when put in tough spots when you're asked that hard question do you get knocked off your feet how do you deal with disagreements this is kind of the area where you get the more like tell me about a time and you know usually it's to see how you handle different situations so you know tell me about a time where you disagreed with someone and what happened and it's not just about you know oh I disagreed with someone and and I was right and they were wrong and so that's pretty much you know and there are a lot of story and it's it's not that the candidate will come off saying that but that's essentially what I digest because it's well you know we had this conversation and usually the candidates always wants to show that they were right at the end and it's it's out of coming out of a good place because you're trying to show your best foot forward and trying to show that hey you know what like we did disagree but I convinced this person and so forth and yeah I actually really think it's really worthwhile to use real examples and it doesn't always have to be where you were right and sometimes it's okay to be wrong and being able to say yeah you know we disagreed about this and I was like really really adamant that like this should have been the way and you know this person convinced me like there's another way to think about that and you know we went a different path and ultimately actually realized that they were right and you know what I learned from that was okay I need to be a little more open-minded in the beginning and actually discover all the different perspectives and paths to decide you know what to do that shows me oh okay you're mature enough to admit that you know you were wrong you had the right workplace maturity to have the conversations to influence and change your decision you know and that's okay I'm not saying that you have to always give an example where you are wrong but my point is it's okay to give an example where you are wrong you know workplace maturity I get a lot of times of you know whenever I say tell me about a time it's the this executive staff person came down and said like we just had to do this and I didn't agree with it at all and you know but then we had to do it anyway and then at the end it failed and so you know yeah okay well that was probably not the best example that I needed to assess your leadership skills because it didn't show me anything of a dialogue that you had it didn't show anything of how you each tried to influence each other in some way or form and how you got to a conclusion together so so I would say like when you're thinking about how you're showing and sharing those stories how are you actually thinking about showing some leadership on yeah you know I made the effort I tried to influence I held my own composure in that situation I didn't just get mad about something but I can actually collaborate with someone I can have a conversation I can you know find a way to come to some level of agreement and even yeah there are times where you will have to disagree and commit but I can do that gracefully I think those are really the types of things that you look for and and want to hear about and you know many times we will ask like tell us about a failure and how you talk about that and how you actually tell me what you learned from that that's really how I'm assessing leadership and and collaboration skills there was a project that was supposed to be delivered and it didn't get delivered on time I mean I would actually question like is pointing the finger to the engineering team the right thing who made the decision who scoped the project right right but but my point is like even in that even in that scenario that you you gave there is a hey you know engineering didn't deliver this on time okay accountability engineering team how do I say that but I actually think that may be another way to look at that same problem as if that was a scenario where something can get the were done time let's understand the circumstances was there like some fire where everyone had to you know hands down drop this project and go work on something else and was that actually more important than this and that justifies why this was delayed who made the decision and who scoped the project that said that it would actually be completed in half the time was that actually the right scoping in the beginning so I think actually showing the multiple perspectives of well there's probably 10 reasons or more why this could have actually been late let's actually understand why it was late and then figure out the accountability versus deciding the accountability upfront which gets us into our next which is execution and accountability because you know I think that is really important as a product manager even though you're not the one who is actually executing you know you're not the engineer building it you know you're not the data scientist running the experiment you're kind of overarching and guiding the path forward you're also the responsible party in this mix because people are looking to you to provide that direction to provide that guidance and kind of holding that accountability all the way through all the way to the end I think that that shows like more maturity in your product management skills you know some example questions here tell me about our recent role how did you recent launch you measure impact if you know you're going off roadmap and how do you actually communicate what's changing what signals do you actually use to determine that you're getting off track how do you actually notify stakeholders early and keep people involved you know I think product manager is you can't just stay on the strategy side of it like I think if you want to stay on the strategy side of it then strategy is probably the right function and role to kind of look for as a product manager you have to be all the way through you have to be in it with your team if your engineers and your data scientists and your designers and researchers if they don't you know feel like you're being the host and you're being the you know team player that they all need then I would consider that a miss you know call it collaboration or call it accountability I actually think you know you after work as a unit and a product manager should always be able to take responsibility for when things don't go wrong or when things do go wrong even if it happens for other circumstances I'd be like okay yeah this went wrong it went wrong for these reasons you know what I could have maybe noticed that earlier and called it out and actually waved a flag early enough where this wasn't an issue that at least still shows like hey you know what there was something I could have done or something that maybe hey I I didn't think about this actual problem that could have happened and maybe I should have thought about that in the beginning so yeah execution accountability organizational skills how do you keep your team organized you know how do you run Sprint meetings how do you make sure your team is going towards a certain direction you know sprint of course maybe there's multiple ways to do that frankly I think the whole point of it is just making sure that people are staying engaged and toward deadlines and making sure that you're tracking progress and making sure things are moving and when issues or bugs or you know trade-off decisions come up that you know maybe you didn't plan for how are you actually working through that as a team how do you manage all those stakeholders so you know maybe finance or marketing or legal or ops you know there's probably multiple stakeholders for your project there might be other product teams that are actually a stakeholder for your project so how are you actually managing all of those people how many of them do you need to keep in the loop on a weekly basis versus a monthly basis versus a quarterly basis how are you making sure that those relationships and expectations are managed across that time where no one's kind of coming to you and saying hey what's going on with this and again I think storytelling is actually a little bit across and that kind of goes with the communication but as people ask you about you know the tell me a time where or tell me about you know a certain product you launched or so forth a lot of it is how do you actually tell that story and how do you bring people along for the ride where they're engaging in your story you know I would say how do you make people feel part of the creation of the solution as well so you know even though you think you know the solution of what have to take maybe it's also kind of having that in mind but spending some time with your team being like hey this is a problem that we've prioritized solving for this quarter so you know there's probably multiple different avenues we can take here like let's take a you know half hour or one hour and brainstorm like what are all the ideas let's throw all the ideas on the board and then okay these are all the ideas on the board well which ones you know do you want to weed out and so forth and you know maybe you'll still get to the answer that you originally thought but you brought people along and maybe you'll get to a different answer which you're like oh I don't think about that okay that could be interesting I think brainstorming with your team and with all your functions whether it's like you know engineering data science design research kind of involving more people in that brainstorm process is a really great way to bring people along so we did a sauna for awhile we now move to JIRA for task management and and that's what we've been using but I mean I think like task management and project management tools are like a dime a dozen and you know you'll try one for a certain period of time you'll get sick of it and you'll be like uh it has all these issues and I don't want to do this and then you're just gonna switch to another one you're gonna discover a whole new set of issues and and so forth and it seems to be the pattern that we go on and so so if two product managers on my team are trying to compete for resources on two different visions how do I decide which one to fund is that that's your question I really would look at impact in ROI at the end of the day which one is gonna drive a better outcome for the company and you know maybe one is really great for short-term but one is like a bigger investment for the long-term and at this stage and where we are what's more important so you had asked earlier you know how do I find the right fit for me because at the end of the day these skill sets are great for all product managers everywhere but every company has a different culture and a different feel and so how do I really determine where I want to be a product manager I think one thing to consider is you know small company versus large company what kind of experience are you looking for are you looking for somewhere where you know the visions not very clear yet there you know you're still kind of trying to figure out the path forward you know you want to be really scrappy you want to do more prototyping you want to kind of just like test and learn do you want a lot of resources do you want to build something very scalable do you want a lot of investment to be kind of more stable where hey you know I I know that this is gonna be funded for sometime and and you know I'm gonna drive this large impact but it might take a longer time you know what kind of experience are you looking for what level of risk reward am I looking for also am I looking to take a gamble and say hey you know what I surely believe in this idea and I really want to go in and try to make that idea come to fruition now maybe it won't and it'll fill but I think it's gonna be a great experience and a learning experience for me or I think you know I'll meet great people and you know I feel like the network I'll build from this is gonna be great even if it doesn't work out or am I looking for something that's hey like I want something more stable I want like a career path I'm looking to kind of grow on a career ladder and so forth and and I think those are just two very different types of experiences you can get culture I think you know you brought up as a really good point as well how do you determine what culture you fit best with are you looking for something that you know is more hey like I want to get decisions made cutthroat let's keep moving let's go or something that's like more collaborative more kind of open more you know maybe decision making is not as fast but you know there's more inclusiveness what are you looking for you know and that also gets into sort of the next areas like who is the decision making function right I mean everyone wants to be the decision-making function but ultimately someone needs to take a decision so you know some companies I think are you know engineering has a much stronger voice in decision-making and some it might be design that has a much stronger voice in decision-making product managers I think always do have a say in decision making for their products but when I say decision making I'm saying as a company leader at like the executive staff level what are their what do they find important like Amazon I would say is a very business led company they're constantly looking at ROI they're constantly looking at their business model to determine what's the next thing to invest in how are those decisions being made who are making those decisions and where do you feel like that aligns best with what I think is right for me so you know for example I will say Google and Google probably has a much stronger engineering culture in the sense of a lot of decision making you want to make sure engineering is on board because engineering has a very strong say you know in Apple I would say maybe it's more design or you know even at Airbnb I feel like design is a much stronger function where it's hey you know how am i bringing design on board to say this is actually the right user experience for the user you know business LED would be hey you know what there's a business unit that's actually controlling the P&L and they're gonna be the stronger function here so I need to make sure that they're bought in on the decision-making so it's more of knowing who who's kind of helping make decisions move forward and figuring out which culture you sit best with I would I would hope ideally that all of these things matter but practically you know when you walk into companies I don't know that decision making is as clear to say hey you know what we've you know ultimately the decision has to matter and all those things matter user experience matters scalability matters you know ROI matters but I think what I'm trying to say here is who's actually taking the decisions on what type of vision to go forward on and what's driving their decision is your CEO being driven by hey I want to provide this user experience are they being driven by hey I want to drive this business value is it I want to create very cool technological solutions like what drives your CEO is probably more on what drives decision downwards even though all product decisions will encompass all of these things and it will matter for all decisions that a product manager makes I think it's pretty valuable to be cognizant of what drives your c-level on on making decisions Airbnb I think you know a couple years more than a couple years ago was probably like small and startup you know I would say like Google is like large and I feel like Airbnb is closer to small than they are to large but neither small nor large which actually comes with its own set of challenges right because you know they think about it like a kid you know you have a kid and then you have an adult and then you have this awkward stage in the middle where you know you're trying to figure out who you are you know it's kind of like the best period of your life where you're like figuring things out but it's also the bumpiest period of your life where you're figuring things out and so I think it also depends like are you you know someone who enjoys a lot of process and a lot of clarity because large is the way to go for clarity and process you know are you looking to kind of figure things out as things happen then like small is the way to go because that's usually without process and and without clarity I think when you're in the middle you're kind of trying to find your way there but you're not here there I think it's how do you think scalably especially if you're moving to a large company and you want to go from you know having done two startups and now want to move to a large company it's why do you want to move to a large company and you know given what you did or what drives you what's your interest and like for me it would be like hey what made you decide to exit or you know what's making you now decide you want to move to a large company I think that actually will probably be I mean I think actually founding companies is a great path towards product management because you own everything so you actually do have to think about the end-to-end spectrum of from you know starting of vision and problem solving all the way down to like the execution of how things are running and the accountability of you know how things go so I actually think founding a company is a great great example to use in telling your stories I think APM programs are probably the best path for if you have no product management experience APM's are kind of it ends up being like the entry-level college grad path towards product management but I think you know they will probably I have heard that they take beyond college grads into their program I know Google offers one Facebook offers one and a few other companies offer them and I think those are really great pads for people who have zero product management skills to actually go to a large company learn about product management and build kind of that reputation for me I also didn't like you know I graduated and did a bunch of other things before I came became a product manager but I think what I demonstrated was hey I've done a lot of different things and I can weave that story together as to why that equates essentially doing product management so you know I think it's more on have you actually provided vision and guidance for an area and have you actually owned the execution and accountability for actually what happens and how do you explain that hey given you know the fact that I'm an aviation and you know I own this business unit but you know on the ops side you know how does that but you know what I actually also drove product decisions because I found that we were doing all of these things that weren't really scalable and so you know I actually found ways to do XYZ and create these products to actually make ops 10x more efficient that's essentially a product manager job for me so it was interesting I was actually on maternity leave and was asked to come into Airbnb to give a talk to some of the PM's and when I went in I found actually that they're in a space you know and and I was actually mention this earlier is you know Google at when they first started wasn't a time to really define search and ads online and you know it was a new space they kind of got to define and pave a lot of the way air B&B in the sharing economy space I feel like is kind of paving the way and defining us space that's not very clear today so for me that was very attractive that like hey you know this is a company that's still in the phase of defining what's to come and still in a phase where you know regulation hasn't caught up and it's unclear you know like hey you know ten years from now how are we actually making this work and shaping things for our success and you know I think Airbnb is in a very unique place where we actually are operating in that kind of let's let's pave it let's shape the way let's figure out how to do this and you know there aren't any clear like baselines or benchmarks that we can use in the industry to say oh like this is the right way to do it it's like no you're figuring it out you gotta you got to try different things and see how to push the path forward so that was very interesting for me and then the people I you know I think cultural fit is a really important thing how you meet people in the company whether it's through your interview process or even just going for coffee with different people and really getting to know what the company culture is like to figure out hey am I gonna operate well in this environment am I gonna feel happy in this environment are they gonna respect my boundaries you know there was a time where you know I was willing to work till however late I'm not in that place anymore I need like I'm happy to you know go home at a certain time spend some time with my kid put him to sleep I have more work to do I'll do it after he's sleeping I need to know that I have that level of autonomy on my schedule that you trust me that I'm gonna get my work done you know I need to operate in that kind of culture but that's important to me it may not be important to the next person so figuring out what your values are and how you aligned with the company's values I think in the tech area most companies are very product focused you know I think it just depends like are you product focused with an engineering lens are you product focused with the design lens are you product focused with you know like what lens on top of product is really how you kind of think through it on first glance I think most you know of the big tech firms are all all product lead I think startups are very clearly product led I don't know if that helps if you go to interview for a company and you've never used their product you should be wondering why you're interviewing for that company you know I think it's super important to really understand the product that you want to go work on and and feel like hey you know what I've used this product and you know what actually I came to these few downfalls and like I would be really excited to come in and fix that or you know hey like this is what I love about this product and you know here's what I think is great and by the way I think that it will be also cool if like we thought about these other few things I definitely think showing that kind of passion and homework that you know you know what you're walking into is is very important I think if you haven't managed before stepping into a manager role is hard because I think managing requires a certain skill set that is very different than an individual contributor I think being a great product manager doesn't actually necessarily mean that you're gonna be a great manager of people so I think you know when I think about someone who's gonna leave teams it's it's less it's great can you be a product manager can you have the mindset can you guide and lead and coach people on that but really what are your management skills you know how do you instill trust in your team how do you get them to perform their best how are you taking accountability for your team essentially then your team is a little bit of your product right and so how are you actually helping define a vision and represent them but also giving them room to shine and make sure that you're not always representing them I don't know what I would look for from am it from someone who's never managed to then come in and manage I actually kind of prefer if like - if you've never managed before I would have rather you grown within the team because then you have a lot more context on the team and how things are working you know people have been able to observe your work and also your collaboration and leadership skills so then say hey you know what you're ready for this I don't know what would what it would take for me to take that hump on someone or that leap on someone that's not internal but I think it helps tell your story internally in the company that you're in because you're basically saying hey you know I'm performing at this individual contributor level but I've been managing in all these other areas of my life and I really think I can apply that how are you actually growing your career within a company into managing now if you don't have that opportunity internally you know maybe it's how do you go to a smaller company where you're where you're given that opportunity because it's a smaller team there may be willing to take the risk and then get as you get to bigger and bigger companies maybe that risk is it's less justified on a manager level versus an individual contributor level and that's that's that's my two cents I'm sure every other manager has a different take on that great well that leads us to the end

Channel: Product School

Views: 68,963

Rating: 4.8789916 out of 5

Keywords: Product, Product Manager, Product Management, Product School, Tech Startups, Coding for Managers, How to get a job, product manager salary, product manager resume, product manager jobs, what is product management, what is a product manager, product management training, how to become a product manager, cracking the product manager interview, product management jobs, google, machine learning, ai, Machine Learning Products, Technology, Career, airbnb, Hire a Product Manager

Id: rloipilALEM

Length: 50min 5sec (3005 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018