What is the most common mistake you see from product marketers during their job interview?

• Not being able to strongly respond to the question “Can you pitch your product to me ?”
• Not being ready with good writing samples
• Not coming with strong examples of your leadership skills - influence, persuasion, relationship building, collaboration and more

These questions demonstrate the fundamental aspects of product marketing. The first is about messaging/positioning/value prop. The second is about whether you can write/communicate that in words (even a pitch deck or a webinar abstract or a demo video whose script you wrote is a writing sample). The third is about your ability to work with others and be a connector and orchestrator. I believe you will get one of these questions, or their derivatives, in most PMM interviews

The most common mistake I see is candidates not doing sufficient research about the company and the space.

It’s quite common for hiring managers to throw out problems on their desk that they want an opinion on, and some basic grounding in the business can go a long way in facilitating a good conversation.

Getting too lost in the details. I am always evaluating a PMM's craft knowledge and attention to detail, but I don't need to know all of the details to know if you're a good PMM. Instead, I want to see you flex your storytelling muscle and show me that you can elevate mundane concepts into a strong and compelling narrative. When I'm interviewing PMM candidates, one of the questions I ask myself is, "Would I be able to put this person in front of the sales team/leadership team/entire company to get them excited about a launch or some other big PMM initiative?" If they are getting lost in details and not bringing it back to some larger narrative, then I worry that they would get lost and ultimately not fulfill one of our primary charters: aligning teams through a shared goal or purpose.

A lot of product marketers will simply rehash their functional activities during their interview. They’ll talk about how they conducted messaging, built personas, created sales enablement. Maybe they get more strategic and talk about a product launch but will still spend more time on the mundane mechanics of it. I want to hear about outcomes. What were you trying to achieve and how did you progress to that goal?