AMA: Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management, Observability, Kara Gillis on Product Management Interviews

Technical questions for product management are often trying to measure different aspects of the job - which varies highly day to day. Incredible context switching is required for PMs, but there is also a rhythm to the business with planning cycles happening every quarter/month that retains consistency. Some of these categories include product sense, market segmentation and focus, business model, critical thinking, competition, decision making, pricing and packaging. Communication is also pretty ...Read More

The most important thing I've learned about interviewing is to convey to the interviewer - as quickly as possible - warmth, competence, and the ability to succinctly answer the question asked. Warmth is often not talked about as a trait to embody or screen for - but it signals a lot of probable cues about what it would be like to manage or work alongside the candidate. Are you easy to collaborate with? Are you able to take feedback? Would you be a positive influence on the team? Would you be opt ...Read More

These are two different questions with two different answers. How to break into product: I always tell people to try to transfer into PM within the company they are currently working. When changing something about your career, it is easier to change industries and geographies instead of functions - but typically you can only get two out of those three. So if you want to change functions - I recommend not changing much else. Why? People who already know you are solid at some of the following core ...Read More

The questions I ask are probably not best to share here because I still want to use these questions when I'm hiring, so I'll give you the question BEHIND the question: Are you good at the following things: Hiring the right people for the right job - tell me about how you approach hiring or give me an example of a good vs bad hire I care a lot about how you manage a team, how you organize your team, how you organize work for your team, how you communicate with me, with our leadership, and with yo ...Read More

This really depends on the role I'm hiring for and what the current team lacks in skillset. And frankly, I probably didn't write the job description well enough for you to know exactly what that is - but hopefully I was transparent enough in the job description to give you a hint. A few scenarios I've hired for include: I needed someone who needed little to no training on how to manage a mature product in a very specific technology category (aka I needed to hire from a competitor) who could beco ...Read More