15 minutes, report the moment they finish
Product manager skills assessment
Twelve written situations, about fifteen minutes, that measure how a product manager separates a request from a problem, prioritises against real constraints, and handles a stakeholder who has already decided the answer.
The gap
What you cannot see when you hire a product manager
A CV lists shipped features. It never shows which ones they argued against, what they killed, or whether the roadmap was theirs or handed to them.
The case starts here
“Sales lost three deals this quarter because we don't have SSO. Put it in the next sprint.” — the CRO
Every case opens with a request that already contains its own answer — because that is how requests arrive at work. What we measure starts with whether they notice.
What this case shows you
- Whether they interrogate the request or write the ticket
- How they size an opportunity with incomplete data
- What they say no to, and how they say it
- How they react when the deadline halves
- Which single metric they would move, and by how much
Scoring
The same six capabilities, every role
The case changes. The rubric does not. That is what makes a product manager comparable to another product manager, and a score meaningful across your whole shortlist.
- Spots when the brief is wrong
- Knows what the data supports
- Sweats states and edge cases
- Knows what is cheap to build
- Explains decisions outside the team
- Holds a position with a senior stakeholder
- Moves without being told
- Keeps going when the plan changes
Marta R. · Product Manager
Leads with both of the things you named
Reaches first for knows what the data supports. The distance here is not capability, it is how your team works.
How much of their attention this one gets — not a pass mark.
How it works
Three steps.
No calls, no setup.
What must they be good at?
- Spot when the brief is wrong
- Knows what the data supports
- Moves without being told
- Sweats states and edge cases
One credit per candidate, spent only when they start. The first is free — see what the packs cost — and nothing expires, so a role on hold costs nothing.
Related reading
Worth reading before you decide
8 min
How to evaluate a frontend engineer beyond the coding test
A coding test answers whether someone can build it. It does not answer whether they should have — whether they spot the states a design forgot, how they respond to a spec that breaks at scale, what they cut when the date moves, and whether they name the risk they are shipping with. Those are the decisions that make a frontend hire expensive or excellent, and none of them appear in an algorithm exercise.
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How to evaluate a design engineer
Evaluate a design engineer on the decisions nobody logs: when a component should be new, a variant, or should not exist at all; how they trade system consistency against shipping this week; what they do with a design that ignores the system; and which debt they take on purpose. A GitHub profile shows what they merged. The value of this role is largely in what never got built.
Read it10 min
How to evaluate a UX writer
Evaluate a UX writer on whether they fix the interface or just the sentence: whether they flag the broken flow behind a confusing message, how they handle a destructive action, what they do with a legal constraint they cannot remove, and how they decide what not to say. A writing sample shows the final line. It never shows what the screen looked like before, or what they refused to paper over.
Read it
Hiring a product manager right now?
Invite one candidate and read their report the moment they finish. The first one is free, with no card.