PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
killer product #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
Job interviews are a terrible way to assess how someone will perform in role
All genAI companies are evil, but some are less evil
Accumulated inefficiency has come back to bite organisations – what to do about it
hello
For you this week #
There’s no particular theme for this week’s PRODUCTHEAD. I write below about why job interviews are not fit for purpose; Christina Wodtke is conflicted about generative AI; and John Cutler talks about thriving as organisations become flatter.
As Christina puts it, she loves genAI but hates genAI companies. She set out to put her conscience at ease by finding the most ethical one to use, but instead found herself compiling a ranking of the least unethical companies.
John, wearing his Dotwork hat, talks about how organisations are responding to AI, ‘founder mode’, layoffs and the desire to do more with less.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
Job interviews are rubbish #
I’m coming to the opinion that job interviews are a terrible way to assess whether someone can do the job. They take up loads of time to organise and run, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll select a capable candidate at the end of the process.
My track record on interviewing product people is by no means 100 percent successful. I’ve participated in dozens of product manager interviews over the years, some for roles on my own team, others as an expert panel member for my clients. However, for the most part, the people I’ve hired or recommended for roles have been good people, thrived in their careers and gone on to bigger and better things.
Interviewing can easily become very subjective, which is why I always try to follow a procedure that mitigates my personal biases. It would be unrealistic for me to expect that every product management interviewer will assess candidates in the same way as I do. And it’s still not even a given that the person interviewing you knows much about product management to begin with.
Nevertheless I’d like to share what I look for in candidates as it may be helpful to product people applying for jobs.
The purpose of the interview #
For me, the purpose of the interview is to uncover how the candidate thinks about product management and how they behave naturally. In other words, what are they going to be like when they’re actually in role and working alongside me and my colleagues.
Unfortunately, I find the interview process is an imperfect way to observe this. It approximates how people perform by subjecting them to an artificial situation. The only reliable way to see how someone will operate in a role is for them to actually do it for an reasonable length of time. Clearly that’s impractical when you have hundreds of people applying for the same role. So we’re stuck with interviews as a proxy measure of role suitability.
What I look for in a candidate #
As an interviewer, I’m trying to cut through the veneer of polished, prepared answers to uncover what the candidate is really like. I expect the candidate to have practised how they answer uncomfortable questions such as why they’re looking for a new job. I expect them to be able to talk about their prior experience in a way that makes it sound like everything was peachy and they were super-effective at everything they did.
All of that’s lovely, but it doesn’t necessarily tell me how they’re going to perform and behave here.
When you’re in your face-to-face interview, assuming you’ve been able to battle your way past the thousands of automated, AI-assisted competitors, there’s two ‘games’ at play.
The two games of product management interviews #
The first game is the social ritual of the interview itself, how you present yourself and how you play along according to the unspoken social norms. This is about striking the right balance of preparedness, engagement, enthusiasm, etiquette, curiosity, and showing enough of your true character to be authentic and distinctive. I personally don’t think that doing all that is enough to secure a role by itself, but I’ve certainly seen candidates put themselves out of contention by misjudging how they present themselves.
I’ve seen people turn up to interviews seemingly with no idea about the organisation or even the job role they’ve applied for. I’ve listened with horrified fascination while a candidate decides to share all their uncensored views on their current / previous employer. I’ve grimaced through my annoyance when candidates say a collection of words that bear no relation to any of the questions asked. In short: don’t f**k up the basics.
The second game is a bit ‘meta’. I believe there should be a tacit understanding between the interviewer(s) and the candidate that the whole interview is just a social dance. I expect the candidate not to answer the questions simply at face value, but to think about what is the interviewer’s intent behind the question or exercise.
What skills or thought processes are they actually asking you to demonstrate?
How can you show that you’re a capable product person by the way in which you engage with the interview ritual?
How do you acknowledge the limitations of the question or scenario you’ve been set, but still ‘play along’?
The ‘gas station’ question #
A question that did the rounds for a while was to ask candidates how they would go about estimating the number of gas stations in the US. The exercise is meant to highlight the candidate’s reasoning and numeracy and show how they tackle a problem with an uncertain answer. Which is all fine and good as a thought exercise, but conveniently ignores that any self-respecting product manager would just Google the answer.
I’m not arguing that critical thinking isn’t a valuable skill for a product manager, nor am I suggesting that we as interviewers shouldn’t attempt to assess it. It’s just that in the weird world of the job interview, candidates are sometimes asked to ignore reality. The internet exists. I’d frankly be more perturbed if my product managers spent all day figuring out from first principles things that could be easily checked as facts.
Even a more relevant product management exercise can be too artificial and a bit of a trap. Imagine the kind of scenario where a fictional product has a set of problems, perhaps related not just to the product itself, but also to users, the delivery team, stakeholders and so on. There’s a temptation to dive in and offer suggested solutions to each problem in turn, and this is the trap.
The exercise often lacks detailed context, so in order to come back with any course of action, the candidate has to make assumptions to fill in the information gaps. I’m less bothered about the ‘solution’. For me at least, the more interesting observation is what assumptions the candidate is making, and whether they’re aware of them or not. Better candidates tend to call out their assumptions explicitly and explain why they’ve had to make them (usually due to the lack of context in the scenario presented). Worse candidates may not even notice they’re making the assumptions in the first place.
What good answers to scenario exercises look like #
A good answer (again, in my opinion) to these kinds of limited-context scenarios is not a single, linear course of action. Instead, I’m expecting something more like a branched decision tree.
I’d love a candidate to talk me through where they see ambiguity or missing information, then present a few likely assumptions to account for the information gaps. Then for the purposes of being able to progress with the exercise, to call out a couple of the many potential corresponding courses of action before moving to the next step.
This feels to me to be more like reality. Product people are continuously absorbing more information, then they refine their preferred course of action in response. When something is uncertain, we have a ‘Plan A’ and usually also Plans B, C and D so that we can roll with the punches rather than being floored by them. We’re continually reassessing the trade-offs and probabilities of different things occurring, and deciding where the threshold lies that would trigger us to change the plan.
Ideally, we should be able to do all that with good grace and humour. At least most of the time, anyway.
What’s the alternative to job interviews? #
I personally don’t think a job interview as traditionally structured really serves to uncover all that. Alas, I have no quick-fix alternatives. If money were no object, I would start a cohort of candidates on real, paid but low risk product work for 3-6 months under the supervision of an experienced mentor. I would then select some (or none) of the most effective candidates to stay on as permanent hires. That way the selection process would be based on candidates showing how they work, learn and develop, rather than telling me about it. (This is more akin to an paid apprenticeship.)
Final thoughts #
Traditionally structured job interviews rely on proxy measures to assess the suitability and capability of a candidate. If both the interviewer and candidate have a tacit understanding of the artificiality of the process, it’s still possible for the candidate to demonstrate what the interviewer is really looking for, while still performing the interview dance with panache.
what to think about this week
I Love Generative AI and Hate the Companies Building It
I’m just a regular person who buys fair trade coffee, uses a reusable water bottle, and takes Caltrain instead of driving to the city. Not an eco warrior or a professional ethicist, just someone trying to do the right thing when I can. So when I fell in love with generative AI, I wanted to use it ethically.
That went well.
A ranking from most to least evil
[Christina Wodtke / Medium]
Thriving During The Great Flattening
We’re in the middle of the Great Flattening. Fewer layers, more hands-on leaders, and a push to do more with less. Teams are juggling AI, innovation, and efficiency all at once. It’s like asking a race car driver to win the race while saving fuel. How can leaders navigate the competing tensions and still move their teams forward? And how should you adapt your operating system to meet the moment, without jeopardizing future impact?
Near-term efficiency or long-term prospects?
[John Cutler / Dotwork]
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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from the more I know, the less I understand.