What are your top questions to ensure you are hiring the right product marketing candidates and why?

I like to frame questions in two parts. 1) Walk me through (WMT) an example of...XYZ. I do several of these that each map to the key responsibilities I'm looking for. I want to hear real-life stories – both for experience and ability to articulate. This was inspired by my product partner when I was at Amplitude. Great article here: https://runthebusiness.substack.com/p/wmt-interview-questions 2) Follow the WMT question with some form of why, what did you learn, what would you have done different ...Read More

Top questions depend a bit on the role since I always try to make sure each question is evaluating a specific competency tied to that job. (More on this below). That being said - here are a few questions I find useful a lot of time when hiring PMMs.   What can product marketing contribute to an organization? of What's the role of product marketing? Tells me about how they view product marketing's role and value and their general understanding of the role. I'm listening to see if them talk about ...Read More

I think a universal experience among product marketers is that the role and contribution of product marketing is highly dependent on the company or organization that you are working for/ applying to- size, focus, where the pmm's sit in the organization, all are influencing factors. To that end, before the hiring process even begins, I spend a lot of time getting clarity on the purpose + goals + focus of the role and the outcomes that need to be achieved. It's from there that I start to create a ...Read More

Why product marketing? - Tells me their motivations. If they have a drive to serve customers and a discipline for storytelling, it'll shine through. If not, I'll know it's not a good fit. How do you define and measure success of product marketing? - It's important to suss out if your philosophical belief/metrics in PMM aligns with your candidates' view. They can often be different, and in some cases that's okay! But this question is a great level-setter to establish domain expertise, perspective ...Read More

These may seem overly simplistic, but I've found these to be effective even when interviewing for senior PMM roles: Tell me about your current/last company - what do they do? Who are their customers? What problems do they solve? When customers pick your company, why (why do they win)? When customers pick competitors, why (why do they lose)? What launch/program/piece of collateral are you most proud of? What impact did it have? How did you pull it together? What skill do you have that was the har ...Read More

These are my questions - aiming to understand that even the most junior of candidates has an overall understanding of what the job really is all about.  What does GTM strategy mean to you? Can you give me a detailed example of a product launch tier/bucket? What stakeholders does the product marketer primarily support in any company and how? Describe a successful relationship between the product manager and the product marketer. What are the top 3 skills that you believe every product marketer sh ...Read More