As a hiring manager, what do the best product marketing candidates have in common?

I've done a lot of interviews and hiring over the years and I'm constantly impressed by how smart and driven Product Marketers are! It's one of the things that makes interviewing so much fun - you get an opportunity to talk to and learn from the best of the best. That said, I think there are a few things that really stand out for me, and they are: Curiosity - Most candidates are well-educated and skilled, so it's the folks with humility and a curiosity to learn that really shine during the inter ...Read More

In my mind, the best performing product marketers exhibit three must-have skills: Research Storytelling Project management To expand on each: The instinct and ability to research, talk to customers, and analyze data to find new insights The ability to combine insights + product features into stories that resonate with your audience The drive and cross-functional skills to work across any internal scenario to drive external results In my experience, folks with (1) and (2) but not (3) tend to be r ...Read More

I love this question because in my experience I have hired PMMs from a variety of backgrounds, including people that have had no direct PMM experience, but they all had the right aptitude for the role. Depends on the level of seniority you are looking for OR the kind of product you have, you might have specific technical skills you require. In my opinion, technical skills can often be learned on the job, but there are a few more “softer skills” that cannot. Here is what I always look for: The ab ...Read More

The best product marketers have the following traits in common: 1) They are type A. All of them. 2) They have a growth mindset. There is no finished product, product marketer. This role requires constant learning to succeed day-to-day and only people who enjoy the treadmill of non-stop skill building will last. 3) They are sharp. If the candidate isn't incredibly sharp, I won't trust them, and this cannot be micromanaged. 4) They are "tactfully pushy" which is my term for people who can convince ...Read More

I don't care about the candidate's background when interviewing for my team. I've hired folks from engineering, solution engineering, sales, and customer success teams and they've become successful PMMs. That being said, most of them have this in common:  Can-do and flexible attitude - Ready to take on any challenge. Open to solving it creatively and however long it takes to wrap it up.  Connecting the dots - Instead of being siloed as just a PMM, thinking about the adjacent functions like campa ...Read More

My answer spans the top hard + soft skills: Hard: Well-rounded across words and numbers. You often hear that PMMs have to be strong storytellers (framing, positioning, mesaging, writing), but the highest-performing and highest-potential PMMs I've worked with are also very analytical and comfortable with some number crunching. In the B2B space, in particular, backing up any story with inspiring message, facts, and data will do wonders.  Soft: Empathy and stakeholder management. Someone who can pu ...Read More

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

I’m always wary of painting with too broad a brushstroke when it comes to hiring. Your job as a hiring manager is to spend time understand the super powers of the people you meet as part of your interview process, and to evaluate if those super powers have a place at your company. With that in mind and the current context of our work at Coda, I can share some commonalities in some of our recent all-star hires: Curiosity with the intrinsic motivation to go find answers (vs. letting questions pers ...Read More

I think the best product marketing candidates have three things in common They are strong on the core requirements for the role. In most cases, it involves a degree of comfort with developing or activating messaging/positioning/value propositions for products/solutions/audiences/segments. They can simplify complex ideas, convey it in different media types and can explain the process behind it confidently They are natural collaboators and very very strong at working with others. Could be product, ...Read More

I have some data here. For years, I used "candidate fit tests" (offered by Pittari.io). It's like Myers-Briggs but focused on workplace style & drivers. For successful PMMs, I noticed a pattern. When it comes to workplace style, PMMs scored highly for "commanding" and "outgoing", favoring an "easygoing" style more than "exactlng". In other words, they like to enage with people and push conversations forward, but they're still flexible in groups. Then, across 7 possible drivers, PMMs scored h ...Read More

The ‘product marketing skills’ question has been answered really well by a lot of others on Sharebird already so I will focus my answer specifically to the interview itself:  I always look for candidates who have a strategic mindset and who can articulate what success in their current role looks like. I interviewed one candidate once who really impressed me with her ability to paint ‘before and after’ pictures. It’s less common than you would expect and she completely differentiated herself beca ...Read More

The best product marketing candidates have: Excellent communication skills that come to "fitting" them to the role I'm hiring. Proven experience in product marketing with measurable results. The best candidates have hands-on experience with user research, competitors research, ICPs, GTM: strategy + execution, narrative design, sales enablement, and content. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with use cases from their past experiences. Desire to invest time into preparation. They have d ...Read More