It was with a feeling of relief - and disbelief - that I removed the purple ‘Hiring’ badge from my LinkedIn profile this week. I’ve been solidly hiring for product marketers at Pleo since I joined back in November. I absolutely love building teams and finding exceptional people, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to full focus on the work. So I’m extremely excited about the next chapter for our Product Marketing team.
As I wrote about at the start of the year, there wasn’t a better time to be a product marketer looking for your next job than earlier this year. Companies were queuing up for experienced, talented PMMs. So this made my job even harder.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to put together a dream team of brilliant product marketers, to come tell the story of Pleo’s products - and help these stories find an audience. It was a bit of an undertaking, so I thought I’d share some tips that I followed along the way.
1. Only hire people you absolutely have to work with.
This is a rule that any hiring manager should follow. Did you come away from the interview feeling like you absolutely have to work with this person? Are you excited about the prospect of working with them? Would the team be worse off without them?
When you’ve been trying to fill a role for a long time, or there’s an urgent need for someone ASAP, it can be tempting to say ‘well, this person can do the job…’ Don’t do it! Wait for exceptional. You’ll be so glad you did when you reflect back a year later.
2. Choose people that will complement each other.
There’s a point, early on, in a business’s life where it can be useful to have a team made up of likeminded people. It can mean faster execution and fewer disagreements. But if you’re at the point of building a proper Product Marketing team, that suggests your company has achieved some kind of product market fit, and you’ve therefore reached the challenge of scaling.
At this point, if you’re really looking to have a high-performing team, you’ll want a group of PMMs that complement each other - and that means finding people who are different. Hire PMMs with different work styles, who are from different industries, and who have different values for what drives them. Yes, there’ll sometimes be friction, but you’ll have such a better team for it.
Work gets properly scrutinised before it’s rolled out to the rest of the business. Everyone in the team benefits from the learning and personal development that comes from a diverse mix of experience and expertise. And you’ll get better at communicating your work to the wider company, where there’ll be an even more eclectic mix of personalities.
I tend to balance this tip with a secondary goal: I look for people who I believe are going to get on with - and like - each other, even though their experiences and styles may differ wildly. It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it makes the work more fun.
3. Find people that are better than you.
Here’s another general hiring tip: Try to find people who are better than you at what they do.
Some hiring managers don’t love this idea and prefer to hire at a more junior level - or avoid top talent because they’re worried about how this would affect their own standing within a company.
But, for me, this is a no-brainer. Hire people that have experience you don’t have, or who are simply better. It makes the the team the best version of itself possible, improves the perception of Product Marketing within your company and, selfishly, makes you look great for finding that person.
4. Build on your own personal brand.
This was a piece of advice given to me a couple of years ago and I’m so glad I followed it. There’s a lot of great jobs out there, so it’s important to stand out in the crowd and improve your visibility as a hiring manager.
It can feel a little awkward doing this kind of thing, be it posting content or speaking at events, but it’s a way of showcasing your expertise and leadership - and for people to get a sense of the kind of manager they could be working with.
It’s a big reason behind why I started the Product Marketer (am pretty sure a few of my team had a read of this newsletter before we met…) And it’s why I’ll always say yes to podcast requests and event invitations. In fact, at last year’s Product Marketing Alliance Summit, I unashamedly opened my talk with a plug for Pleo’s hiring efforts.
It’s still a tough market out there for hiring PMMs, so put yourself out there and be somebody people want to work with.
5. Make sure they can talk about Product Marketing.
‘What is product marketing?’ is a question I still get asked at Pleo and I’ve been here nine months. I’m sure it’s the same at a lot of companies. And there’s still a lot of debate about what it is within the Product Marketing community itself..
If you’re building out Product Marketing as a new function within your business, you’re going to get asked this a hell of a lot, and you’re going to need a team that can articulate this clearly and effectively on your behalf.
For everyone person I interview, I ask them to define Product Marketing for me. I then ask for some examples of where they’ve seen it done really well. This follow-up question is where you really get a sense of what they think good looks like. You don’t have to be fully aligned on the answer, but you have to be sure a new PMM can express the definition and vision of the team to your colleagues in Product, Sales and Marketing.
6. Hire ‘T-shape’ product marketers.
Product Marketers are known for being generalists - jack-of-all-trades, even. And it’s important that your PMMs be able to turn their hand to any of the skills that live within our function, from user interviews and competitive analysis, to crafting sales collateral and Go-To-Market plans. I believe you should be able to drop most PMMs into any part of a business and see them add value.
The ‘T-shape’ product marketer is an evolution of this idea. Being a T-shaped means you are a strong generalist, but are also an expert or specialist in a particular area. This will help you execute at a faster speed, and also develop a reputation for Product Marketing as a strategic function with tons of expertise and experience.
So you’ve found your dream team of product marketers. Now the hard work really starts.
Inserting or growing a Product Marketing function within a business is tricky stuff! So I’d better cover it in a Product Marketer post in the near future…
Tips for Building a New Product Marketing Team
Tips for Building a New Product Marketing Team
Tips for Building a New Product Marketing Team
Tips for Building a New Product Marketing Team
It was with a feeling of relief - and disbelief - that I removed the purple ‘Hiring’ badge from my LinkedIn profile this week. I’ve been solidly hiring for product marketers at Pleo since I joined back in November. I absolutely love building teams and finding exceptional people, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to full focus on the work. So I’m extremely excited about the next chapter for our Product Marketing team.
As I wrote about at the start of the year, there wasn’t a better time to be a product marketer looking for your next job than earlier this year. Companies were queuing up for experienced, talented PMMs. So this made my job even harder.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to put together a dream team of brilliant product marketers, to come tell the story of Pleo’s products - and help these stories find an audience. It was a bit of an undertaking, so I thought I’d share some tips that I followed along the way.
1. Only hire people you absolutely have to work with.
This is a rule that any hiring manager should follow. Did you come away from the interview feeling like you absolutely have to work with this person? Are you excited about the prospect of working with them? Would the team be worse off without them?
When you’ve been trying to fill a role for a long time, or there’s an urgent need for someone ASAP, it can be tempting to say ‘well, this person can do the job…’ Don’t do it! Wait for exceptional. You’ll be so glad you did when you reflect back a year later.
2. Choose people that will complement each other.
There’s a point, early on, in a business’s life where it can be useful to have a team made up of likeminded people. It can mean faster execution and fewer disagreements. But if you’re at the point of building a proper Product Marketing team, that suggests your company has achieved some kind of product market fit, and you’ve therefore reached the challenge of scaling.
At this point, if you’re really looking to have a high-performing team, you’ll want a group of PMMs that complement each other - and that means finding people who are different. Hire PMMs with different work styles, who are from different industries, and who have different values for what drives them. Yes, there’ll sometimes be friction, but you’ll have such a better team for it.
Work gets properly scrutinised before it’s rolled out to the rest of the business. Everyone in the team benefits from the learning and personal development that comes from a diverse mix of experience and expertise. And you’ll get better at communicating your work to the wider company, where there’ll be an even more eclectic mix of personalities.
I tend to balance this tip with a secondary goal: I look for people who I believe are going to get on with - and like - each other, even though their experiences and styles may differ wildly. It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it makes the work more fun.
3. Find people that are better than you.
Here’s another general hiring tip: Try to find people who are better than you at what they do.
Some hiring managers don’t love this idea and prefer to hire at a more junior level - or avoid top talent because they’re worried about how this would affect their own standing within a company.
But, for me, this is a no-brainer. Hire people that have experience you don’t have, or who are simply better. It makes the the team the best version of itself possible, improves the perception of Product Marketing within your company and, selfishly, makes you look great for finding that person.
4. Build on your own personal brand.
This was a piece of advice given to me a couple of years ago and I’m so glad I followed it. There’s a lot of great jobs out there, so it’s important to stand out in the crowd and improve your visibility as a hiring manager.
It can feel a little awkward doing this kind of thing, be it posting content or speaking at events, but it’s a way of showcasing your expertise and leadership - and for people to get a sense of the kind of manager they could be working with.
It’s a big reason behind why I started the Product Marketer (am pretty sure a few of my team had a read of this newsletter before we met…) And it’s why I’ll always say yes to podcast requests and event invitations. In fact, at last year’s Product Marketing Alliance Summit, I unashamedly opened my talk with a plug for Pleo’s hiring efforts.
It’s still a tough market out there for hiring PMMs, so put yourself out there and be somebody people want to work with.
5. Make sure they can talk about Product Marketing.
‘What is product marketing?’ is a question I still get asked at Pleo and I’ve been here nine months. I’m sure it’s the same at a lot of companies. And there’s still a lot of debate about what it is within the Product Marketing community itself..
If you’re building out Product Marketing as a new function within your business, you’re going to get asked this a hell of a lot, and you’re going to need a team that can articulate this clearly and effectively on your behalf.
For everyone person I interview, I ask them to define Product Marketing for me. I then ask for some examples of where they’ve seen it done really well. This follow-up question is where you really get a sense of what they think good looks like. You don’t have to be fully aligned on the answer, but you have to be sure a new PMM can express the definition and vision of the team to your colleagues in Product, Sales and Marketing.
6. Hire ‘T-shape’ product marketers.
Product Marketers are known for being generalists - jack-of-all-trades, even. And it’s important that your PMMs be able to turn their hand to any of the skills that live within our function, from user interviews and competitive analysis, to crafting sales collateral and Go-To-Market plans. I believe you should be able to drop most PMMs into any part of a business and see them add value.
The ‘T-shape’ product marketer is an evolution of this idea. Being a T-shaped means you are a strong generalist, but are also an expert or specialist in a particular area. This will help you execute at a faster speed, and also develop a reputation for Product Marketing as a strategic function with tons of expertise and experience.
So you’ve found your dream team of product marketers. Now the hard work really starts.
Inserting or growing a Product Marketing function within a business is tricky stuff! So I’d better cover it in a Product Marketer post in the near future…
Cheers! 👋