What do you look for in a product management resume for a mid-senior role? How does someone standout in a resume pool?

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:

1. 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 become my successor and run a team. That required me to hire someone who was ready to become a manager to lead a team but hadn't been given a chance yet, was happy to stay in the same industry/domain BUT was looking for a change. I hired someone who was referred by a colleague and is probably one of the best hires I've ever made. I was able to promote this person pretty quickly, and they now lead a team.

2. I needed someone who could help me fix a renewal rate / churn issue for a mature product - someone who could delve deeply into problem solving and execute on solutions to that problem, someone who was good with tracking metrics and communicating out the strategy and impact of that implementation. I wanted someone with consulting experience and outbound go-to-market experience. I found someone who had worked in product marketing at Accenture, who helped improve the renewal rate by 20% in 1.5 years.

3. One time I wanted to invest heavily in machine learning and AI capabilities within a product, and I wanted to hire someone who was hungry to make an impact, who was junior but could lead products relatively self-sufficiently. I found someone from an internal team who was incredibly high potential, but not necessarily getting the projects he/she was desiring in the current role. I was able to provide more upward mobility and autonomy right away, which was attractive to pull him/her over to our team.

4. When hiring a manager, I use something my husband calls the "tropical fish test." If I had a few tropical fish with a very complex set of feeding and care requirements, and I was going out of town - would I trust this person to take care of my tropical fish for a week? Would they be dead when I return? This is a proxy for "will you take care of this team the way I would, and are you able to take things off of my plate if I delegate them to you?" I have had remarkably good success in this area, and also not so great choices made in this area. I have learned my lesson and hire managers more slowly if I can.