Better Product Managers, and Product Management

Whether it ended in a job offer or a “no thanks”, when is the last time you had a job interview for a Product Management role that you felt actually addressed your ability to do the job?

Asking about past accomplishments doesn’t separate out your role from the environment (could you do it again in a different team, in a different industry?).  Asking for PRD writing samples proves that you’re literate, but doesn’t tell you anything about how well those requirements were understood or implemented.

As Eric Ries writes in a recent VentureBeat post:

I’m not interviewing for the right answer to the questions I ask. Instead, I want to see how the candidate thinks on their feet, and whether they can engage in collaborative problem solving. So I always frame interview questions as if we were solving a real-life problem, even if the rules are a little far-fetched.

These 8 questions are things I’d want to know if I were hiring a product manager.

They are biased towards smaller companies/more startup-like environments – they assume a breadth of responsibilities that may not be relevant for a big-company Product Manager.  But since there are no “right answers”, and since I’d expect any capable Product Manager to be able to think on their feet, I’d say they’re all fair game.

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How can you change people’s perceptions?  Show them (or hint to them) that other people feel differently.  Think of the classic Tom Sawyer, making whitewashing look so appealing that soon he has half the town bribing him to take their turn at it:

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

Scarcity makes things more appealing.  A couple weeks ago, there were Girl Scouts camped out near the BART exits on Market Street – with commuters lining up to buy boxes.   I know, because I was one of them.

Feeling like other people know something you don’t – also makes things more appealing.

IBM banner ad with a "replay" prompt

I was flipping between browser tabs yesterday when I saw this ad.   I hadn’t seen what played previously and I don’t particularly care about travel congestion or IBM.  But that “replay” call to action jumped out at me immediately – did I miss something? There must be some reason why I’d want to watch this!

It’s funny that this would work on me (yes, I clicked replay and watched the ad) – because I’m testing out the same concept in Loomia’s recommendations module.

I know that “popularity” is a strong driver for people to read an article or watch a video – but I’ve also seen through A/B testing that a predictive algorithm that takes context and similar readers’ behavior into account is a stronger driver.  What if we could combine them?

For all articles over a certain “popularity threshold”, we added an X People Viewed This annotation.

What this implies: not only is this probably something you want to read, but lots of other people read this.

What users think: 25,000+ people can’t be wrong.  What if I’m missing out on something useful?

The potential social cost of not being “in the know” outweighs the time cost of reading the article.

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In advertising, many financial institutions are racing to reassure consumers with soothing messages — that focus on important “S” words: strength, safety, stability, security.  (Ads That Soothe when Banks are Failing, NYTimes)

Well, better late than never, I guess.  But this shouldn’t be a new trend.  It’s a long overdue step.  I’ve worked with consumers on financial applications since 2002, and one thing remains constant in that time: people are nervous about their money.

Whether someone is a paycheck-to-paycheck or a high net worth consumer, they feel a lot of anxiety around whether their money is safe, will their bills be paid on time, is their credit rating okay, are they saving more than spending, are they safe from identity theft.

And for the most part, banks have done a really crummy job of reassuring them.

Recently, threatened by drops in deposits and rises in withdrawals, banks have finally been forced to be a little bit more “human”.

A little humor:

“We love Chase,” reads the headline of an ad for Washington Mutual. “And not just because they have a trillion dollars.”

Or honesty:

“The current environment for investors is in many ways unprecedented and clearly unsettling,” the text of the letter begins on the Web site schwab.com.
“Is it a tough environment? Yes,” the letter continues. “Is it a time to be rash? No.”

Well, it’s good to see some effort applied to financial marketing, at least.

But the next step – and it’s a big one – will be to apply these same principles of strength, safety, stability, and security to financial institutions’ online experiences.  A soothing ad is one thing, but where is that concern when a first-time online banking customer is trying to understand the difference between current balance and projected balance?  When a customer can’t figure out when to schedule an online bill payment to arrive on time?

There’s still a long ways to go.

Please comment:

Who’s doing a good job of this? Financial institutions OR other product companies? Who is doing a good job with reassuring and making you feel like they respect your investment of time and money into their product? Comment away.

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How do you respond to the questions, comments, issues, and complaints of thousands or millions of customers who have gotten used to Internet-speed responses?  And make it feel genuine and personal?

Most companies have realized: you don’t. Or rather, you can’t.

Solutions like Lithium, Get Satisfaction, Telligent, and SuggestionBox offer  ways to solicit customer feedback easily and harness your customer community to do a lot of the answering and helping for you.

Microsoft decided to build their own solution, and it’s a great example of how a product can include all the right features but provide an entirely unappealing user experience.

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