Alina Fu

Every company has its own system or values that they look for during candidate review. During interviews, especially at larger enterprise companies, the recruiter or hiring manager usually has a rubric that assesses how much the candidate fulfills the criteria. Here are what stands out for me in a pool of PMM candidates: 1. Achievement - how do they take initiative and demonstrate that they are results-oriented 2. Influence - how do they convey ideas that can influence others without formal authority 3. Leadership - how do they build on the work of others and help develop others 4. Adaptability/ Resilience - how do they navigate through ambiguous solutions and how do they pivot when needed 5. Self Awareness - how do they handle constructive feedback and how aware are they of their own strengths and opportunity areas 6. Problem-Solving - how well do they analyze situations, identify key issues, and produce an alternative solution 7. Strategy oriented - how well do they think beyond their current activity/scope into a broader vision The more senior the role, the more emphasis I have on finding a candidate that can address all 7 characteristics on this list.

If I could only pick 3, it would be: * Storytelling * Competitive insights * Customer-obsessed Telling a story isn’t just filling out a messaging and positioning framework but about being able to pitch a narrative on why status quo is broken, paint what that world would look like, and why your product will address the need. Layer in competitive insights in your analysis about the market, trends, and competitors to highlight your product’s differentiators and you can go even farther. Finally, doing all of that while being customer-obsessed and putting imaging how, when, and why they would choose your product and how to create a great product experience for them will help you reach that next level.

Like any good first meeting, ask yourself some discovery questions: 1. What do I enjoy doing the most at work? 2. Why do I want to get into product marketing? 3. What products do I think are marketed well? Why? 4. What products can be marketed better? How would I market it differently? 5. Did I enjoy thinking about these discovery questions? If so, try to break into PMM!

I think that depends on the hiring manager. I would even go so far as to suggest maybe you haven’t found the right role or HM who is looking for that broad horizontal PMM or you may be under-leveling yourself. As you become more senior, that is when the broad horizontal PMM skills come into play. It also has to do a lot with the culture of hiring at said company. I’ve worked at a company where they are looking for that ALMOST-EXACT fit and domain expertise; I’ve worked at a company where they didn’t know what they were looking for but knew a PMM was “hot”; and I’ve worked at a company where my colleagues and direct reports all have VERY different backgrounds. If you have a specific skill set and you feel like the companies you’re interviewing for aren’t looking for that, I would recommend changing a dimension of the types of companies you are submitting your application to and see if that gets better results.

This one is challenging because I’ve witnessed year long integrations from newly acquired products into the overall strategy, and even then, it wasn’t “fully” absorbed into the main strategy. First, I would recommend looking at the reasons why this product came under the fold. What was the vision and use cases of how it connects? Sometimes it's for strategic reasons, sometimes it’s to complement the product. Understanding the why will help with the how. Then, I would analyze the target segment for the newly acquired product and identify any overlaps with the current product portfolio. This will help the rest of marketing understand how this new acquisition fits in with their campaigns and programs. Product should be a key partner with product marketing to identify the market needs, use cases and solutions to come up with a joint strategy or narrative on how this new product ties into the existing pitch.

How much do you trust your manager/management chain? I’ve had direct reports who share their career aspirations with me, even if it’s a role outside of my team, and I count myself lucky that they trust me enough to share that. When they did, I would put them on projects that would expose them to the opportunity to build those skills. When I was at Google, they offered 20% projects and that allowed my direct report to experience what the other role would be like. I believe in nurturing people’s passions and leaning into their core competencies. I’ve also had team members or mentees who want to be managers and they knew in their gut that there was no upward path for them (because of headcount, their peers’ leveling, and their skillset) so they went to a smaller-sized company to be the first PMM or Dir of PMM (team of 1-2) to get the title before making the jump to a larger company. That’s another option. If you are truly invested in becoming a people manager, please start by telling your manager or skip level so they can keep an eye out for opportunities (this is assuming that you have a reputation as a high performer and you have a good relationship with your management chain). If you are in a company that invests in their employees (read: great culture), they would be able to offer alternatives such as managing an intern, leading more junior employees, or orchestrating a larger initiative. I also nominate people for managerial-type learning courses or support supplemental development - companies usually have an education/learning budget allocated for this. You just need to ask if these opportunities exist and if you can be considered for it.

ABM is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as we just announced 7 new ABM integrations and hosted a webinar about ABM strategies. Data-driven marketing has extended beyond analytics, social, SEO/SEM, and A/B testing into insights and 3rd party data on customers’ wants and needs to tailor and target more relevant messaging and content to the recipients. How does this impact what product marketing focuses on? It has made targeting and segmentation a greater focus for the team. In the past, I had to convince B2B leaders to run deeper segmentation beyond firmographics because the only segments they wanted to use were small business, mid-market, and large enterprise. But not all organizations based on size have similar tech adoption maturity, motivations and challenges. I prefer to use 2x2s to determine the target sweet spot, greenfield opportunities, and secondary audiences. This has made product marketing more influential and collaborative with demand gen, growth and campaign teams because of the retargeting opportunities and MarTech solutions available. Gone are the days when leaders say “We offer our products and services for everyone. We are one size fits all”. Now it is “what is your size and preference and we will find the perfect fit for you”.

Our team takes it seriously and does a great job of making sure the product roadmap is accurate, updated regularly and communicated with our customers in a timely manner. It is critical to understand this deeply as it impacts all aspects of product marketing and if done well can help increase customer satisfaction and pipeline. Ultimately knowing the future of the product before the customer does and being able to layout what the future looks like can be one of your biggest superpowers. After it’s not just called marketing, it’s product marketing.

Current customer requirements are helpful to give us a sense of where they are getting stuck, what are their pain points and unmet needs. A futuristic vision of the product roadmap would ideally extend at least 6+ months out and hopefully remain durable for at least that period. Otherwise, that isn’t a true futuristic vision. We recently announced our future vision of how Copilot will evolve at Build 2024. For example, we shared that Copilot as a personal assistant is expanding to include team copilot. This is our vision of expanding Copilot beyond a personal assistant to serve entire teams and departments. We are emphasizing that Team Copilot becomes a valuable member of the team and are demonstrating how Team Copilot takes on new roles across a broad set of scenarios including meeting facilitation, collaboration, and project management. This innovation is a result of our customers’ feedback and how we can make it more proactive and powerful.

My experience has been that product managers work with product design directly. I personally have not engaged with the design process beyond seeing their concept videos or Figmas. We communicate our design expectations or product experience needs to the PMs directly.