ExamopotamiaWhy test product management skills before you hire?
Product management attracts people from engineering, design, marketing and consulting, and their CVs are hard to compare. Many have the right vocabulary, fewer have the habits: asking about the problem before agreeing to the solution, choosing metrics that reflect real value, and making trade-offs openly. A short assessment helps you see those habits early and keeps the expensive steps, such as case studies and panel interviews, for the people most likely to succeed.
What this template covers
- Discovery: MVPs and asking about past behaviour rather than opinions.
- Prioritisation: calculating a RICE score and handling urgent stakeholder requests.
- Metrics: churn rate, vanity metrics and what an A/B test can and cannot tell you.
- Specs and delivery: user stories, acceptance criteria and what belongs in a requirements document.
- Trade-offs: low adoption after launch and the scope against quality decision.
How to run it well
Give candidates 15 minutes for the twelve questions. For an associate or junior product manager, 65% is a fair pass mark; for a senior hire, expect 80% or more, especially on the hard questions. Shuffle questions and options, and allow a calculator for the RICE and churn questions.
Read the results with the hard questions in mind. Choosing the past-behaviour interview question, investigating low adoption before building more and protecting quality under deadline pressure are strong signs of experience. In the interview, ask the candidate about a time they said no to a stakeholder and what happened next.
Who this test is for
Use it for product managers, associate and senior PMs, product owners, and people moving into product from engineering, design, analytics or customer success. Start-ups hiring their first product person often find it useful, because there is nobody inside the company yet who can judge product skills from experience. It also gives founders a shared, consistent standard when several people take part in the hiring decision.
Make it yours
Add questions about your own market, customers and product: the metrics you report to the board, the way your teams plan work, and the trade-offs you face most often. A business-to-business product might add questions on working with sales and handling customer-specific requests; a consumer app might add onboarding and retention scenarios. Edit freely, and use the AI generator to draft more questions on a topic.