Insights

Master Your First Product Hire: Step-by-Step Guide

Below is the intake I led with a CEO, CTO, and Head of Engineering to make their first Product hire—ready for you to copy, paste, and share with your team. Stay tuned for how I draft a scorecard, conduct research, and more.

How to Run the Call:

  1. Share the Objective: Define success from three perspectives—CEO, CTO, and Head of Engineering. Each participant answers two unique questions and one overlapping question on how the new hire’s time will be allocated. Aligning on this from the start is crucial in resource-constrained environments. There are no wrong answers; focus on where we have conviction and what needs further discussion.

  2. Process: If remote, screen share only the relevant questions for each speaker. Ask participants to refrain from taking notes (I’ll circulate verbatim notes afterward) and to save questions until the end. Mute and turn off your camera (while note-taking) to create and preserve space in the room. Facial reactions and background noise can be distracting; focus should be exclusively on the speaker.

Intake Questions:

CEO:

  1. What specific gaps or challenges are we addressing by making this hire?

  2. Can you describe short-term and long-term success for this role? What metrics or outcomes will define success?

  3. How does the PM spend their time each day, broken down by percentage?

CTO:

  1. What specific competencies should the PM have to complement the engineering team?

  2. How do you balance technical debt with new feature development? How should the PM contribute?

  3. How does the PM spend their time each day, broken down by percentage?

Head of Engineering:

  1. What are the current challenges with cross-team communication? How can the PM address these?

  2. What tools or processes should the PM introduce or improve?

  3. How does the PM spend their time each day, broken down by percentage?

After the Initial Q&A, I Asked:

  1. Who does this person need to complement them? Will they be part of a larger organizational build?

  2. What will be challenging for this person?

  3. What is the ideal candidate profile, starting with their initial experiences?

I intentionally did not address tactical details like compensation or reporting structure during this call to preserve trust and make the best use of stakeholder time. These details are reserved for the ultimate decision-maker.