Since a lot of my recent recruiting and market research efforts have been within the Product Leadership space, I often get asked about how to structure the function or effectively recruit for them. There are a few areas that are important to gauge when recruiting for new talent (and candidates should consider before joining the company).
As many of you are already aware, recruiting for strong product talent has become increasingly competitive as technology companies look to develop technical advancements and breakthrough solutions before their competitors do. Given the competitive landscape, the user experience has become a key success factor which brings the Product function to the spotlight.
So as a growing tech company looking to build a strong product management capability within your team, there are three things that will help determine the type of Product Leader you need for your team: the tech culture you have built, the state of your business, and the product vision itself.
What's Your Tech Culture
It's important to be honest and clear about the tech culture that exists in the organization as well as the culture you are trying to develop (if it's different from the current state). This is one of the most important decisions that needs to be made prior to conducting any search so make sure you have a clear, intelligible, and transparent decision.
There are three different tech and product cultures to consider. Each of these will lead to a different organizational structure as well as determine the type of skillset needed to build a strong product team.
Engineering Drives Product
With many technically oriented companies such as big data, cloud-based, or networking companies, the culture is typically engineering driven. This means that the engineering or development teams have a bit more liberty to create technological advancements and design breakthrough solutions while the product teams are responsible for validating the solutions in the market. The Product Managers (PM"s) are, in some sense, servicing the engineering team by gathering user feedback and then circling back for corroboration.
Organizational Structure: The organizational structure is typically designed so that the Head of Product reports into the Technology function, typically the CTO.
Product Talent Requirements: Here you will need to hire Product Leaders who are strong at conducting customer interviews and user testing. This requires high emotional intelligence to astutely assess and understand the customer's priorities and pain points while keeping their own personal preferences from creating any biases. These PM's need to have strong relationship management skills, communication skills, and is customer obsessed.
Their technical skills do not need to be as advanced but they do need to have general knowledge of the development process in order to work with the engineers on improving and strengthening the user experience.
These Product Leaders also need to have a strong marketing knowledge here in order to take the advanced technology to the market and know how to monetize it. And while the Engineering team may spend a lot of time coming up with the next exciting advancement, the PM's need to be comfortable with pushing back when the technology does not meet the market requirements.
Product Drives Engineering
This culture is typically found in more consumer or brand focused companies where competition may be more fierce and the user experience is the key differentiator. These organizations let the Product team determine the requirements since they are more attuned with the customers' needs. The Engineering team takes direction from the PM's to determine the technical aspects.
As an Engineer, this structure may sometimes be preferred because it allows the Developers to focus on the coding without the distractions of the business. That said, it does become a concern when the Engineers are too removed from the users and they start to lose the customer empathy required to design a strong user experience.
Organizational Structure: Here you may see the Engineering teams report into the Business Units.
Product Talent Requirements: The Product function is not always a standalone team in these organizations. Because these teams are more customer and sales focused, the product talent may be embedded in the Business Units. These PM's will need to have strong marketing capabilities, go-to-market experiences, as well as pricing knowledge. They will have a lot of direct customer interaction so the high emotional intelligence and relationship managements skills remain key here. In terms of background and experiences, these Product Leaders have a combination of marketing, UX, and strategy skills.
Product and Engineering as Peer Organizations
This structure allows for a more equal partnership and shared accountability for the gathering of requirements and design of new products. The development team joins the product team in customer meetings and the product team joins the engineering team in tech design meetings. There is a healthy balance between product and R&D here.
There are many advantages to a partnership like this but also challenges. To avoid a lot of confusion and frustration, there needs to be clear lines drawn between the functions and an understanding of the team differentiation.
Organizational Structure: Both Chief Product Officer and Chief Technical Officer report into the CEO as peer functions.
Product Talent Requirements: In my personal opinion, this structure is the most ideal for many modern organizations. Here the Product Leaders will need a strong balance of experiences including roadmapping, user experience, as well as technical capabilities. Their backgrounds may be a combination of development, general management (or some type of customer facing sales role), as well as marketing and strategy work.
Often I will recruit GM or Business Heads for the Chief Product Officer roles in an environment like this if the organization they're with has a strong product and UX focus embedded in their business. You may also see some Chief Digital Officer profiles that are a match depending on the structure of the organization they're coming from.
Other Functions To Consider
There are additional functions that work closely with the product teams and, depending on which tech culture exists, they may fall within the product function itself or other corporate functions teams. Although we did not discuss these above, they are still critical to the business. These functions include Analytics, Product Marketing, and Research which is sometimes embedded in the UX team.
Stage of Your Company
Understand the stage of the company as well as the growth speed and trajectory, which will impact the product vision substantially.
Start Up
In early stage or start up companies, the product leadership responsibilities will be folded into other roles since resources are minimal. It's quite common to see the Founder of a tech start up lead the product vision and strategy, but sometimes there will be a separate Product Leader on the team. Regardless of what role it is, the Product Leader will be accountable for the design and discovery, planning, pricing, marketing, sales, and support of these products. This is a "wear many hats" environment which means you'll need to recruit for Leaders who thrive in scrappy environments, enjoy ambiguity and lots of accountability, as well as be very involved in strategy.
This environment can be quite thrilling for many Product Leaders and therefore really fun to recruit for. It's an attractive opportunity given the higher exposure to the CEO, more direct impact on product strategy, as well as the higher risk tolerance. Be cautious, however, when recruiting here. It's easy to get drawn to the Leaders who are energetic, charismatic, and excited about the business. But think long-term and make sure you also assess for strategic thinking, flexibility as the direction will continuously change, and leadership capabilities. Although there may not be a large team to lead now, it's important to hire a Leader who will inspire and attract strong talent as your teams grow.
A few disadvantages in this situation are the lack of structure, tools, and best practices that may be more available at larger companies. Product Leaders may need to leverage their external network for mentorship, coaching, or trends so be sure to hire with this in mind. Your budget may be limited and you don't want to set someone up to fail if they don't have the right resources available to them.
Maturing
Once an organization is maturing it becomes more organized and structured. The various functions will have more distinct responsibilities that are described by their job titles. Here you will see the Product Management function become a bit more standalone, larger in size, and responsible for a more narrow scope. They will have shed the pricing and marketing responsibilities which are now with peer functions and have larger teams and resources available.
In these organizations you will have more tools and best practices in place. It's a great time to hire for less experienced product talent and develop them into strong leaders. Although this is a great environment for leaders to further develop their leadership skills and increase the size of their teams, they are less visible to the C-suite and less directly involved in organizational strategy. Many times they feel a bit "lost in the crowd". So when recruiting for this situation, be sure to look for talent who is driven by scalability, leadership responsibilities, mentoring and coaching, and incredibly strong relationship management to effectively maneuver within the organization. They do not get easily frustrated with corporate politics and are a bit more laid back with the process.
We have successfully recruited for organizations within both early stages as well as maturing phases. We are happy to share our expertise and advice on how to effectively recruit for your organization.
Your Story and Product Vision
Obviously it is very important to have a clear vision in mind but I have seen too many Leaders generalize their thoughts and do not articulate this in a compelling way. It's important to share a detailed story that is developed around the current state of your strategy as well as where you want to go from here.
Create a Compelling Story
I worked with an organization that was highly successful. They had an existing brand that was already very strong. Their products were widely used and their customers generally had a good reaction to them
Their concern was that they were too traditional with their technology and the products were good but not breakthrough. They were not introducing new tools nor were they improving their customer experience to compete with other products in the market. Organizationally, they had been more engineering driven but wanted to become more product driven. Culturally, they did not have a lot of turnover which also meant they did not bring in new talent with fresh perspectives. So they created a new Chief Product Officer role as well as changed their Chief Technology Officer role in order to transform them to a more modern technology organization.
Hiring for this company was fun and easy. Why? This was a very exciting opportunity for a strong product leader to join the team and turn an already strong brand into something incredibly thrilling and fun for their users. The new Leader would have the rare freedom to introduce modern technology, design new relevant products, create big partnerships with other strong brands, and change the user experience on mobile devices. It was a fun and fascinating opportunity that allowed for big impact - exactly what strong product leaders get excited about.
The story of where the product performance and strategy currently is versus where you want it to go is the key to your recruiting strategy. This is what attracts strong product talent to you so do not overgeneralize this narrative. Make it a compelling story that excites everyone.
About An McLeod
An McLeod is Founder of HEXA Executive Search. She is an experienced Executive Search Leader and Certified Coach who helps high-growth companies build their leadership teams and bench strength.
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