What are you looking for when hiring PMMs?

Let me start by saying this: I’m hiring! Check out the GitLab careers page or HMU directly.

When I’m hiring a product marketer, I’m looking for a set of experiences that will add to the capabilities of the team – see my answer on capabilities – so the specifics are highly dependent on the context of the team and the company. For some roles, I look for domain experience since the team is trying to accelerate its understanding and entry into a specific category. For others, I’m looking for more generally applied skills and experiences.

Still, there are a few qualities that I look for in every product marketer. First, I look for a level of understanding of positioning, messaging, and narrative development. PMMs are frequently at the center of messaging development, so this foundational capability is critical to delivering on virtually every other part of the function. In interviews, I’ll frequently ask ‘What is an example of messaging that you’ve developed that you are proud of. How did you develop it? Why did it work’. I'll also ask candidates to critique messaging or offer up who they think is world-class in positioning and messaging. 

Second, as product marketing sits at the intersection of marketing, sales, customer success, and product (just to name a few), it requires people who thrive in cross-functional collaborative settings. People who can lead by influence and have high degrees of empathy (towards teammates and towards customers) tend to be happier and more successful in product marketing roles. Since product launches are frequently the events that bring out this quality, I’ll frequently ask ‘what is an example of a product launch that you are particularly proud of? How did you work with your cross-functional team to bring the product to market?’. Again, this question differs by specific capability in product marketing, but the general idea is to understand their proclivity to and experience with collaboration.

Finally, I look for people who have an innate sense of curiosity and a growth mindset – after all, product marketing is a relatively new function and we are always learning about our market, our products, our customers...and ourselves. As part of this, I’m also looking for people who can thrive in ambiguity and who can tackle multiple challenges. I’ll frequently append each of the questions above with ‘...and what did you learn in the process’.

PS: Like I said...I'm hiring :)

I'm looking for Motivation, Soft Skills, and Hard Skills which might vary based on the company's needs, stage, and product focus 👇

Motivation:

• Interest in the company, product, industry
• Passion for PMM
• Passion for the challenges we are a company have exactly right now

Soft Skills:

• Hight user empathy
• Ability to learn new products fast
• Adapting to changes and bias toward speed
• Skill to build a structure to chaos
• Love for cross-functional collaboration

Hard Skills:

• Research skills: user research, competitors research, ICPs
• GTM: strategy + execution
• Narrative design: positioning + messaging
• Sales enablement + content: case studies, product content, sales collateral
• Analytical skills

While it sounds pretty straightforward and simple, it's rare when there is a 100% match on all those criteriasl.

This is a great question! While I often look for Product Marketing experience explicitly, it is not a hard-and-fast requirement for me. I often look for skills like problem solving, ability to function with ambiguity, ability to create processes, stakeholder management, etc. Aside from skills, I tend to look for candidates who are able to thrive in a similar stage of growth as the company I am working at. I find that not everyone considers this important factor when submitting their job applications so it is something I like to discuss in detail during the interview. If someone doesn't have realistic expectations, they will be set up to fail. Lastly, and most importantly, I look for someone with no ego, someone who is willing to learn, and someone who is willing to fail.

A bit of technical background and outlook towards understanding the market is a must trait which is required while hiring B2B PMM. PMMs are often considered close to the business, hence they need to understand the product correctly and simultaneously design the go-to-market strategy for that product.

PMM candidate should also be a good writer and must be able to communicate their thought process on the paper.