10 questions to ask in your next Product Manager interview
I’ve been invited for an interview at a startup, but I’ve only worked at large corporates before. What advice do you have on what to look out for or ask during the recruitment process?
This was a question asked in one of the Product community groups I’m a member of. As the Great Resignation is upon us as a result of the pandemic, there may be more people looking to make the leap to pastures new. It’s a busy time for recruitment, and applications for posts are competitive.
As an applicant it’s important that you thoroughly evaluate that the role you are applying for meets your needs, as much as the interview process will enable the employer to check your suitability for the job. You can use the recruitment process to do your own due diligence on the company and its people, especially when you get to interview stage as you should have multiple opportunities to ask questions.
Here is my advice for the ten killer questions to ask your interviewer in an interview (although you can use these through the whole recruitment process!). They are along the 4 dimensions of risk, reward, people, product.
Risk
What is the funding source for this company?
As well as sales of products and services (revenue), does your potential employer have other sources of funding? This can come in the form of public investment (e.g. IPO, which means their stock is traded on the stock exchange) or private. With private investment, startups can go through a series of investment gates, starting with Series A or seed funding when they’re just getting started, through Series B as they scale (which can be done more than once), and even Series C when they are more established and reliably returning success to investors. The earlier the series the higher the degree of risk that the startup won’t make it (the startup failure rate in the first year varies from 20–60% depending on which report you read!). If they are a charity then they may get grant investment from benefactors, and there may also be “asset locks” and other restrictions on raising private capital to watch out for. The funding source may impact the way the company organises, what it prioritises and what its values are.
Along with funding source, you want to understand how much runway the company has. Runway refers to how long the money they have is going to last, based on burn rate (the rate of spend versus the rate of income). If you’re leaving a secure job at a big corporation you may want to know the startup isn’t going to run out of money in 3 months! Some industries have shorter runways than others, so this isn’t necessarily a concern, but it’s good to follow up with asking about their cash raising strategy so you understand how they manage this risk.
How does the company generate its revenue?
A company cannot survive on investment alone indefinitely: it will need to prove its value to investors and shareholders by returning a profit, which is going to come from actually selling the product or service it creates. It’s therefore helpful to understand its monetisation model, and how it prices its products for sale. You can also dig into who are the main customers (and is it B2C, B2B, or even B2G!), and whether they have all their eggs in one basket with just one or two customers, or if they have a wider spread. You could also look wider than the customer base, to the market itself, and identify if it’s a nascent market they are trying to create, or an established one that they’re looking to break into or take more share of. You may find as a startup that they don’t have any customers yet! In which case, the Sales strategy comes into play — who are they targeting (but note, they may not be able to disclose this during an interview if it’s deemed commercially sensitive).
Reward
What is the remuneration package?
The base salary is your starting point, although this is about so much more than just this. In light of recent focus on gender pay gaps and other aspects of pay inequity, companies are increasingly including the salary in the job advert. If they don’t, this should be your first question when you speak to the recruiter or hiring manager. Here’s a top tip to avoid selling yourself short — if companies ask what your salary expectations are then you can turn this around and ask them what the salary bracket is for this role. Startups have huge variation in what they can afford to pay, depending on investment stage and industry.
Along with salary you should consider the whole package, and what’s important for you at this stage of life. The package may include: bonus, equity, and non cash benefits like medical, pension, parental leave, holiday leave. Bonuses may be based on whole company or individual performance, and are usually discretionary. There may also be “golden hellos” which are paid once upon joining the company, usually once you have completed an onboarding period. If the salary is low, the company may “top up” with equity options. These are payable upon an exit event, such as the company being sold. In respect of holiday allowance, I personally have mixed feelings about UTPO: if the culture is healthy then it can support flexible working, but if the culture is bad then it can lead to perverse and damaging behaviour where people simply do not take holiday when they should, leading to burnout. A check question to validate this is to ask first, what is the minimum amount of holiday that the company mandates must be taken (in the UK and Europe you are protected by the Working Time Directive so you have to take a certain amount of holiday per year by law) and second, what is the average holiday taken by employees.
Finally on this question, if you get an offer (which means they really want you), everything is negotiable. Be courageous in asking for what you want, considering the risks you are taking in joining a startup.
What are the career progression opportunities?
I came across an article recently that talked about career moves rather than career steps, meaning that it’s not just about vertical progression in the form of promotions, but also about expanding your skill set or responsibilities, or trying out different adjacent roles (horizontal progression).
You may not be thinking about your next move after this one just yet: after all, you have to get the job first! But there’s nothing wrong with thinking about how you might grow your career with the company, and to do that you want to suss out the opportunities. Another aspect to consider is whether there are separate tracks for individual contributors and managers — not everybody who is great at their job wants to or is suited to managing people as their career progresses, and we need great people as SMEs too. This may not be worked out yet at the startup, so it’s good to know if they’ve given it any thought at the stage you’re joining (if not, you have a good opportunity to shape what this looks like!)
People
What is the background of the founders / C-suite?
Experience can be incredibly useful for senior positions, but as with everything it also has its limits. Are the leaders of the business fresh out of uni or have they successfully exited other startups? One is not better or worse than the other — but I would look for a blend of backgrounds to ensure there is balance across the senior team. Another aspect to watch out for is their diversity: is the leadership team homogenous, or is it composed of people from all walks of life? At early stage startups, the culture can be heavily influenced by its starting team, so make sure it is a place where you will feel belonging and inclusion.
What is your team make up?
This comes down to a few sub-questions including what employee number are you, who is your boss and who is in your team? There is a huge difference between being the first product hire at a company and being the 30th. A reflection question to ask yourself is, do you prefer building products, processes or teams? If you’re early in the company’s journey then you will need to do a bit of everything!
Early Product hires also have an emphasis on education and evangelism across the business. With any luck you will have someone at senior level who “gets” Product and can be a useful ally — root out who this person is during the interview process and see if you can grab 10 minutes with them to learn more about their perspective and vision, and how they can support making this role a success.
Who else works in the company?
Product is cross functional, so it’s important to suss out early on who will be your key stakeholders. Are those people already in place, or are teams in the process of being built out too? It’s going to look different for every company, but generally the key folk to know include Engineering, Marketing, Operations, Commercial (aka Sales or Business Development) and Finance (ok, that’s everybody…) There may also be specialist teams depending on the sector. If the industry is regulated then check if there is an in house specialist in that area, or if external consultants are used.
When it comes to Engineering, it’s helpful to know if the team is based in house or composed of contractors. With the shortage of engineers and the increase in remote working in the tech industry (even before Covid!) there are more and more offshore teams. If that’s the case then you want to dig into remote working accommodations (e.g. meeting room hardware, timezones and meeting schedules, culture of inclusion).
What support functions are in place for Product?
Having worked at startups in the past, I know sometimes Product people can be expected to wear many different hats: designer, scrum master, data analyst, and others. Will you have dedicated support in this area — either internal roles or external consultants? These additional responsibilities can really shape the product role — if you are expected to do these roles as well as Product what support is available to up-skill in these areas? I’ve always found this aspect of startup life fun and exciting — but it can also be exhausting to wear so many hats, and comes with considerable amounts of context switching throughout the day.
Product
What problem is the product looking to solve?
I mean, this is what it’s all about, right? Is the problem interesting? Does it align with your own personal values and interests? If you care about the environment and sustainability it might not be a good idea to take a role with a crypto startup…
You can ask questions to gauge what stage the product is in its lifecycle: is it in stealth mode, launched to market, or achieved product market fit? A good question to ask to dig into the maturity of the product process is how has the product problem been validated? This will reveal if any research has been done, and if so of what kind (market and / or user) and what the research revealed about the appetite for the product.
Bonus question: Does Product get a seat at the big table? (Is it a Product-led company?)
If you’re the first Product hire will you be joining the senior leadership team in their weekly meetings? If not, who is representing Product? Based on my experience, the most successful startups are those that have a Product bod in key meetings, particularly where business strategy is being discussed. If there isn’t Product representation in those meetings, you need to think carefully about how you are going to secure your resources and get buy in to what you are doing. Sometimes in startups Product doesn’t have a dedicated Chief Product Officer, and will instead report in via another function (common ones include Marketing, Engineering and Commercial). In this case, stakeholder management, particularly influencing without authority, becomes even more important.
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The hard thing is that there’s no right or wrong answers for these questions, you have to evaluate the opportunity based on your own needs and attitude to risk. Leaving a corporate job to join a startup can be scary — but it can also be an amazing adventure, where inevitably you will learn loads. Hopefully these questions will help you make the right decision — to take the leap, or not!
