What they REALLY mean when they say you don’t have enough experience
If you are currently in the process of looking for a Product management position, and you got that dreaded “we decided to progress with more experienced candidates” email, this post is for you.
In the past year I had interviewed dozens of candidates for Product management positions of different seniority levels. I met all sorts of candidates, some with more experience and some with close to none, some that didn’t make the cut and some that I wanted to hire, but they signed somewhere else mid-process.
What I noticed was that the reasons to reject candidates were kind of repeating themselves. In this post I’m sharing the most common ones, almost all of which can be categorized as “lack of experience”, with my advice on what to improve and how to practice. I hope you’ll find this list helpful.
Reason #1: Resume didn’t stand out
The job market is crazy right now. Every open position gets hundreds of applications, and even if the initial filtering is done by someone else or by software, hiring managers have to scan resumes manually to find the right candidates to interview. Going through so many resumes, you learn to quickly identify those who stand out and those who do not. Here’s a secret: Hiring managers don’t read every word in your resume, we scan through the paragraphs with our eyes and look for the interesting bits. Each resume gets no more than 30 seconds to make an impression.
My advice: Make sure your resume highlights your success. Forget the fancy designs and the complex fonts. Make the interesting bits stand out, use the KPIs you worked on to show us where you succeeded, it will make the review process easier and will make sure we know what you want us to know.
In my opinion, the three most important things about a resume are:
- Easy to read and scan
- Shows actual data that proves you were successful in past jobs (yes, show real numbers!)
- Shows off your strengths
Don’t fall for the same traps as all other resumes, “led product from start to finish” doesn’t tell me anything about you. Make sure yours stands out for the right reasons.
Reason #2: No business sense
When hiring product managers, we’re usually looking for team players who can also be independent players. Unless you’re interviewing for a junior position or an associate one (in which case we expect to mentor and guide you more closely), your hiring manager is looking for someone who can work independently, that can be trusted with a business opportunity and figure out how to lead it to become a success.
My advice: Remember, the company’s goal is (usually) to make money or grow as fast as possible and with the least amount of resources possible. If you can’t define a good business model or understand how to scale a product to help scale the business then you should probably learn some more about it. Look here for some book recommendations.
Reason #3: Unable to define a true MVP
Another important aspect of making a product successful is nailing the MVP game. The MVP’s goal is to offer a minimum viable product, minimum being the key word here, and allow us to test an hypothesis fast. If we see that you are unable to define an MVP that is actually doing the minimum possible, or that is actually going to test what you think it’s going to test, this is a sign that you are not yet fit to lead a product on your own. The risk here is mainly wasting resources, either yours, your manager’s, or of your development team. We usually can’t risk waiting until your complete solution launches only to then see that it doesn’t offer enough or any value at all.
My advice: If you are unable to minimize a product to an MVP — practice practice practice. A great way to practice is using this method described in Noa Ganot’s post: Choose a product, first use your own words to describe it, take as many pages as you need. Then, write it again, this time limiting yourself to one page. Then write it again this time in a single paragraph. And then a single sentence, then a single word. You’ll find that you have to “give up’’ certain aspects of that product to fit in a paragraph or a sentence, this will leave you with the core value proposition of the product, this is your MVP.
Another option: Watch “Product Sense” or “Product Strategy” mock interviews on YouTube. I recommend ExponentTV or Rocketblocks. Start by just listening to a few, but after watching 2–3 interviews try to pause the video after the question is asked and write down your answer before watching the one given in the mock interview. Map the gaps between your answer and the answer in the mock interview, this will help you identify where you should focus your energy on.
Reason #4: Unable to see the full picture
Another mistake that I saw repeating itself quite a lot is candidates confusing themselves as the user or the only type of user that a product has. Let me give an example: let’s imagine that you’re interviewing for a job at Spotify, and the hiring manager asks you how would you increase their conversion rate by 1%. If you use Spotify mainly for streaming music when you workout, it will be easiest for you to think of features relevant to your case — you are the user. But Spotify is used for more than just streaming workout music, it is used for casual listening, for podcasts, for following your friend’s music and finding new playlists and artists. Focusing on your case as the only case means that you’re losing a huge part of the user base, and can show the hiring manager that you are unable to look at the product with objective eyes.
My advice: Before going on an interview, take time to think about the product and analyze its different uses and possible personas. Then if you get asked a question like that during the interview, go back to the personas you thought about and make sure you cover as many as possible with your answers.
Reason #5: Did not talk about research at all
This is an error that I saw repeating itself so many times. You get asked to come up with a solution to a problem, it could even be during a home assignment and not during the interview. You come up with a new cool idea for an awesome feature that you’re really excited about. You define the solution, the MVP and even the KPIs, but you forget to explain how you’re going to validate your solution. This is a big flashing red light for hiring managers. Is this also going to happen during day-to-day work? You’re going to release features and changes without testing them first? If you release products without validating them you are risking wasting resources on the wrong solutions.
My advice: You need to understand why it’s important to test and verify things before you release them, and you need to communicate that in your interview. Even if you were not asked that explicitly, make sure to always mention how you’re going to validate that your hypothesis is correct.
Bonus reason: No cultural fit
To be a good product manager you need to perfect your soft skills. You’re going into a role where most of your work involves working with other people from all across the company. This means that communication skills and cultural fit are amongst the most important things you are going to be evaluated on. No one wants to work with people who can’t listen to other opinions or that are rude, especially if they are the ones who are going to be leading product development in the company.
My advice: Be proud of yourself and your achievements, but be careful not to come off as obnoxious. Be polite and open to constructive criticism, don’t make the interviewer feel like you’re doing them a favor by sitting with them for an interview. Respect the interviewer’s time, don’t be late, be present and listen.
Finding your first few product positions is hard, it can take time to find the right fit. If you were able to get an interview, even if you get rejected, don’t hesitate to ask for feedback so you can learn from each interview and improve for the next one. Good luck!
