AMA: Klaviyo Director of Product Marketing, Jenna Crane on Product Marketing Interviews

I think the best product marketing candidates — and product marketers — have one thing in common: empathy. Empathy helps you understand where others are coming from, and that is the foundation of great messaging & positioning as well as great collaboration.  If you can put yourselves in your customers' and prospects' shoes — what they care about, their needs and pain points, what success looks like to them, their emotional state at different phases of the customer journey, etc. — you are hal ...Read More

My favorite question is "What would be your positioning statement for yourself as a product marketer?"  I love that question because it shows me how comfortable they are with the basics of positioning, and it tells me a lot about the aspects of product marketing that they care most about. For example, they may highlight their strength in messaging and positioning, or their customer-centricity, or their ability to partner with teams across the company. It's also another opportunity to see how the ...Read More

Getting on my soapbox here for a second (though I suppose I've been on it this whole time) — make sure your resume is concise and clear. It should be 2 pages MAX, ideally 1 page. I don't care if you've been in the industry for 30 years, you should be able to distill down your experience into 1 or 2 pages.  I've passed on candidates who technically have strong experience because their resume is a long rambling mess that I tried to read and couldn't get through.  This sounds like a ridiculous and ...Read More

Make sure you talk about the process! That includes:  What was the existing state when you started (i.e. messaging didn't exist, it did exist but it was falling flat / was outdated, etc.)?  How did you go about developing the messaging (i.e. what inputs did you use)?  How did you test and/or validate it with customers / prospects? How did you socialize it and get buy-in internally? How did you roll it out?  How was it received in the market? (Can be anecdotal if needed, but of course ideal to ha ...Read More

I'd recommend having on hand: Your story. Be prepared to give a brief walkthrough of your background and experience. I always like to see when someone has a strong narrative about their career — why they made each move, the highlights of their experience and what they learned, and what they're looking for next.  An example of a product launch or major project you led that you were particularly proud of. Be prepared to talk about the process of putting it together, any difficulties you faced and ...Read More

1. They didn't prepare. It's really hard to justify moving a candidate forward if they don't know basic details about our company, their answers lack details and depth, and/or they don't have questions for the interviewer. 2. They are too long-winded or rambling, and/or their answers are mostly jargon. Of course we want to hear candidates reference terms we use in our day-to-day work. But if all their answers are more buzzwords than substance, or if they struggle to communicate in a concise and ...Read More

Absolutely writing samples! I always ask for those. (As you can tell from my other answers, communication is something I care deeply about!)  Case studies, landing pages, pitch decks / other enablement assets, and messaging frameworks can also be great additions to a portfolio. Just make sure you can speak to the process of building those, because it's impossible to know just from looking at them how much was built by the candidate vs. a collaborator.  What really makes a candidate stand out, I' ...Read More

As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of focusing on process, not just outcomes. I like to ask people to walk me through a project they led, and I ask them plenty of questions — things like 'why did you decide to position it that way?' or 'what was the most difficult part of the process, and how did you handle it?' Usually when you dig into the details it becomes apparent whether they led the work autonomously or just played a small part.  I'm also a big fan of hypotheticals. I give someone a ...Read More