Mastering the PMM interview

In the before times, we would often ask prospective product marketers to perform take-home tests. The idea is that we would be able to measure whether or not a product marketer knew the fundamentals of what they were doing and could produce the typical artifacts necessary for the product marketing role.

• The market requirements document
• The positioning framework
• The go-to-market plan
• Sales enablement content such as slide decks

Of course, these days an LLM can generate this content with extraordinary detail and high accuracy.

So what is the product marketing interview now?

What the interview is actually testing

As I've said before, the product marketing role is not about creating artifacts and documents. Certainly, this may be something that some executives and leaders look for. But they've missed the point entirely of what product marketing is. As I've always said, product marketing is "the ringleaders of the circus." Leadership is the core trait and the first, second, and third most important aspect of the product marketing role.

So what you need to be prepared for in a product marketing interview is not necessarily a recitation of facts and an ability to sketch out a template for one of the core artifacts. It's concrete examples about how you use those artifacts and your leadership skills to imbue an entire team to follow you and your vision.

Everyone's deck is good now

In a world where every deck is perfect, the key to stand out is to demonstrate how you use that deck to lead.

"I built this line deck, and then I scheduled a series of meetings for our entire sales organization across time zones to teach them how to use it."

"I built a series of data sheets, and I organized them on the company notion in a way that they were easy to find and easy for people to use. I then modified a custom linear issue template so that it became very easy for anyone to request future data sheets."

"I built a system where a salesperson could use ChatGPT to ask questions about competitors while they're actually in a call, and all the information came to them from competitive analysis documents that I prepared. The idea was that the competitive analysis would not just tell you what was different about other products, but also teach the salesperson how to frame it properly while they're in the middle of a meeting."

These are all examples from my last 18 months. And each one of them demonstrates that it's not just the artifact. It's how you use your leadership skills to communicate what's important about the artifact and how to use it.

The Q and A is the interview

Like all interviews, it's the give-and-take with an interviewer that makes or breaks your candidacy. It's important that, at every step of the interview process, you have clear-cut examples of how your leadership was demonstrated. Ideally, you do this while also providing the context of the artifacts you created and what they were for.

You should obviously be prepared to answer questions about the artifacts you created, but it is important to pivot directly into the leadership example. This frames your candidacy as at a senior level and not just someone who can do the run work. As I've written before about pi-shaped marketers, hiring managers today are looking for people who are not only good product marketers, not only good leaders, but also good content marketers or demand gen marketers or any number of other specialized roles.

Demonstrate that you're invaluable in a number of areas. Demonstrate that you have a strong desire to learn and keep your skills current. Demonstrate that you value innovation over tradition.

Why candidates fail

Our industry has changed irrevocably. One can argue whether this is good or bad, but one cannot argue that change is here and it is permanent. Further, the change itself is evolving. What was fact yesterday is now a distant memory, and there are new facts to be reckoned with today.

The candidates I have seen fail are people who don't embrace this change. ChatGPT and Claude are not just artifact-generating tools. They are research tools. They are coordination tools. They are your single pane of glass onto all of your other tools.

AI is, for good or ill, a tool. Knowing how to wield the tool and demonstrating willingness to learn how to wield the tool is what separates candidates today.

As I told one hiring manager a few months ago, "A great product marketer today needs a small team and unlimited tokens."

By company type

If you're interviewing for a product marketing role at a big tech company, it's obviously quite different than if you're interviewing for a product marketing role at a startup.

At a startup, you're looking for someone who has a "get it done" attitude. You're looking for someone who knows how to break rules intelligently. You're looking for someone with good judgment. You're looking for someone who's a risk taker. You're looking for someone who's not afraid to fail. You're looking for someone who's not afraid to learn from their mistakes. You're looking for someone who's not at all afraid of being the only person on the marketing team.

And things are dramatically different if you're looking at a product marketing role at a larger company. I found during my time at a big tech company that the most valuable skill I had demonstrated as a product marketer was, in fact, leadership, but it's different leadership than you would find at a startup. For every move-fast attitude at a startup, at a big tech company, you're looking for someone who's more measured, who's more considered. Who knows how to connect with people in far-flung reaches of the organization, build consensus, and move the game forward. Big tech companies rarely make decisions overnight. Even the most consequential decisions take time, consensus, and buy-in. The kind of leadership you would demonstrate as a product marketer at a big tech company is someone who knows how to navigate the politics and logistics of the organization to get things done.

When you are interviewing for these roles, you need to frame your background and your skill set in the proper manner.

Always be interviewing

The last thing I'll tell you is you need to always be interviewing. You need to be taking calls with recruiters, even if you're happily employed. You need to be meeting with founders. You need to be meeting with other product marketers. You need to be meeting with other leaders in the industry. You need to be meeting with other people who are doing the same work you are or who value the work that you do.

We know now, and if you don't know now, you probably will soon learn it: there is no such thing as a sure thing. No matter how much you love your job and no matter how much you believe you're valued in your job, you need to stay in practice with interviewing. You need to keep your skills and your network alive.