Should your startup have a person exclusively for taking care of your company’s products? If you ask me, the answer is yes since startups have to operate in a dynamic environment.
The offer of the startups needs to be constantly tuned to the market opportunities and demands. You should hire a product manager who can think about your products and how to make them a zipping success. The person will be responsible for innovating product ideas based on product and market research.
Who Can Be A Product Manager?
Qualifications
A product manager should be a person who knows the product and the industry in and out and has management qualifications with specialization in marketing. If your startup has a technical product, then the product manager needs to have technical as well as marketing specialization.
Reporting
Before having a product manager the product management function was most probably being looked after by you the founder(s) of the startup with the assistance of team members. The appointed product manager should be given due authority to seek required inputs and information from the startup team members and should report to the founder-entrepreneur(s) of the startup.
Experience
Product Manager is a senior position than product executive hence some experience in product management of similar products is also desirable. Experience of three to five years would be most suitable for your reporting structure. If you are impressed with ]fresh talent, then you can assign product executive role during probation and confirmation as a product manager.
Skills and Aptitude
Your product manager besides having the desirable qualifications and experience needs to have a penchant for the challenge and a love for innovation. The person should be driven by growth and achievement motives.
What Can Be The Selection Procedure?
Source Of Applicants
Recruiters can opt for internal as well as external selection to hire a product manager. The vacancy announcement should spell out the candidate profile which should be in sync with the job description and key responsibilities.
Written Or Online Test
Eligible candidates can be assigned a written or online evaluation to test for product and industry knowledge as well as marketing and innovation aptitude. You can yourself set up the test or provide your inputs to the test setter.
Personal Interview
Candidates who qualify the written test can be called for a personal interview with you. During the personal interview, you can ask the candidate the reason for preferred job profile, industry and company and the candidate’s expectations.
Selection Method
Quantitative scaling method is an objective and simple selection method. The candidate’s qualification, experience, personality, performance in written test and interview can be scored on a scale of five. Parameters can have sub-parameters. The individual scores of the sub-parameters and parameters should be added up to get the total score and candidates can be ranked with the help of these scores.
Job Offer
The job offer is usually given to the highest scoring candidate. The second highest scoring candidate is called if the first candidate refuses the offer or fails to join.
LSI Keywords: Hire a Product Manager, PM, Product Manager, Product and market research, Product management function, Product executive.
