If you were to hire a PMM today, what skills and attributes would you value most in a candidate?

Go-to-market strategy and execution is probably one of the most sought-after hard skills for PMM. But a Product Marketing role varies from company to company.

When hiring, I start by evaluating two things:

1. What are our business objectives? When writing a job description, I like to work backward. I always start by considering our business north stars and what pillars a new hire should be responsible for to help us achieve our strategic goals. From there, I break down the pillars into tactical lines: "plan, lead, and manage go-to-market strategies across various channels to drive awareness, demand, and advance our differentiation in the market.” My tip here is to pay close attention to the job description. It can tell you what specific skills the hiring manager is looking for in a new hire. So be prepared to elaborate on your experience in those areas with compelling stories (situation, task, impact, results).

2. What are my shortcomings? Having a well-rounded team is important to me. In a perfect world, we'd all be experts at everything. But that’s never the case. So I try to hire people who excel in areas where my team (myself included) might be lacking. Maybe we're great at GTM, but we can improve on writing. In this scenario, I'd look for someone whose superpower indexes more towards writing vs GTM execution. This way, we balance each other's strengths and weaknesses to maximize business impact.

I personally place a greater emphasis on soft skills since almost all hard skills in PMM can be taught. But it depends on what the business needs (now) and what you can develop over time. If I were to hire someone right now, I’d look for someone with the following skills:

Soft skills:

• Communication skills
• Relationship-building skills
• Passion and empathy for customers
• Adaptability
• Problem-solving skills

Hard skills:

• Writing and storytelling skills
• Planning and project management skills
• Data fluency

In hiring PMMs, typically, there's a specific problem I'm looking to hire for, and I want someone who is an expert in solving that type of challenge who can bring best practices to the table (i.e., a specialist vs. a generalist). For example: in one of my most recent openings, I was looking for an expert in consumer segmentation and audience strategy, and ended up hiring someone with deep experience that came from a strategy background (who was incredible). In addition to domain-specific experience, I'm also looking for:

• Executive Presence & Communication: Can this individual lead with the takeaway, and present a recommendation in a clear, concise, and compelling way.

• Strategic Thinking: Can this individual take an ambiguous/unstructured problem, and define a clear framework to systematically solve.

• Analytical Skills: Can this individual be a smart consumer of data, and understand how to 'think in SQL' so that they

• XFN Leadership: Can this individual manage a complex project with diverse stakeholders.

With this in mind, I highly recommend that PMMs that are on the market create a narrative around where they specialize, and run a focused search for companies that need your particular experience/expertise. When prepping for interviews, spend time researching how your specific skillset can solve the team's most urgent problems.