Ken has a great overview on how to hire a Product Manager. My favorite line is “Remember buddy, nobody asked you to show up.” It reminds me of a quote from Larry Ellison. Apparently he wasn’t told when they hired the first Product Manager/Marketing person at Oracle. When he ran into the new hire in the hall and he explained what he did, Larry stared at him blankly for awhile and then said “If you aren’t selling the product, and you are building the product, what the #%!@#$ are you doing here?” Could be urban legend, but delightful none the less.

I think this is one of the harder things to grapple with when coming out of engineering which is so structured and tangible. Nobody asked you to show up. I wish somebody had come out and told me as soon as I started doing this stuff, “hey, this is going to be fuzzy and you are going to constantly question the purpose of your position. That is part of the job. Oh, and congratulations on your new position.”

One of the items Ken focuses on is getting feedback on your products from the candidate. Nothing bugs me more than when a candidate doesn’t know what you do. I have walked people out because of it. If you haven’t taken the time to learn about us, why are you wasting my time, and more importantly, my team’s time?

Ken is also right on about hiring the smart people. Above all, look for the super stars. The hard part is finding/identifying them. And that is damn hard.