Our experience building product teams for tech startups and scaleups has shown us that there is no single path into a product management career. Successful product management leaders and individual contributors enter the profession through any number of earlier careers, whether engineering, marketing, sales, or as a subject matter expert from the industry.
The same applies to Product Operations. Our Product Practice Lead, Heidi Ram, recently surveyed 116 Product Operations Managers, asking about their path into product ops:
- 44% had been Product Managers
- 25% came from a delivery track (project management, program management, agile)
- 18% were from a Customer Success role
- The rest were evenly spread across Product Marketing, Partnerships/Alliances, and general business
So what does this mean when hiring a Product Operations Manager?
Well, that depends on a few things:
- Is your organization’s product ops a net-new role, or has the value of the function already been validated?
- Does the role report to a leader of Product Operations? Or does it report to the leader of the larger Product Management organization?
For Net-New Product Ops Role
When product operations is a net-new function, and the organization is looking for its first hire, one of two scenarios generally occurs:
- The hiring stakeholder wants an ‘expert level’ hire to be its champion and stand up the function, showing the business value and what great looks like.
- The hiring stakeholder wants someone with the broadest, most generalized hire, often resulting in a diluted version of the role, which is more of a cross between an Agile Coach and a Delivery Manager.
Understanding your why is foundational to kicking off a search for Product Operations talent.
- Why do you need this hire?
- Why now?
- What do you hope to achieve from this hire?
- Why does that matter?
Marty Cagan has stated that elevating product operations to the same level as product and design leadership creates a “force multiplier.”
For these reasons, we are placing big bets that product operations will be a key area of growth in 2024 and that more leaders will invest in the function. The key to successful product ops hiring is figuring out your why and finding candidates with the right skill sets, experiences, and even paths into product ops that align with your “why” and growth objectives.
Check out the top 5 product operations manager interview questions to help you make the right hire.