How To Train and Retain Top Product Managers

Jeana Alayaay, Director of Internal Products and Services at Pivotal (right) and Poornima Vijayashanker, founder of Femgineer (left)

Interview with Jeana Alayaay, Director of Internal Products and Services at Pivotal

All this month, we’ve been sharing best practices around and . If you checked out both episodes, you might be thinking: “This is a lot of work! How can we be sure we’ll end up with a stellar product manager, and that they won’t quit in three days or three months?”

We get that hiring and interviewing are just two pieces of a larger puzzle around talent management. And of course it’s not enough to just attract top talent; there’s more that needs to be done to make sure they stay motivated and productive. So to quell your concerns and help you figure it out, we’re going to do a deep dive in today’s episode around what to do after you hire a product manager. We’ll be sharing why current practices often fall short of meeting a new employee’s expectations and some alternate best practices for onboarding, training, retaining, and evaluating the performance of product managers.

Jeana Alayaay, Director of Internal Products and Services at Pivotal, is back this week.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this meaty episode:

• How to onboard a new product manager and set expectations
• Why you need to have a development plan ready for your new product manager and how to walk them through it
• Why an annual performance review is too late to check in and provide feedback, and what to do instead
• Why even a seasoned product manager will benefit from coaching and guidance as part of their onboarding process
• What success metrics look like for a new product manager
• How to evaluate your product manager’s performance in the midst of changes that are beyond their control
• Why it’s good to set granular expectations around deliverables and milestones
• What to do when your product manager stops performing or suddenly quits

Listen to the episode on iTunes!

You can listen to this episode of Build on iTunes.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.