Recruitment for the position of Product Owner

Are you yourself already a stakeholder in the Product that requires ownership? Or is this a position that has been advertised generally to candidates who are not presently stakeholders at all?

I presume that you are not currently working for this company. If an organization hires an outside PO, it would be interesting to know why they do so. The most obvious reason would be that Scrum is not fully implemented / understood / supported by upper management. In this case I would not expect questions like in the assessments. I would concentrate on showing maturity in Scrum, and expertise in product ownership.

Hi Piotr,

Having given many interviews on hiring Product Owners, here are some of the questions I might ask -
- what is your primary purpose as Product Owner?
- What should you consider when prioritizing?
- How do you handle a situation where 2 different stakeholders are wanting different things for the product?
- Write an example of a user story or however you have captured PBIs
- What interests you more, the How something is done or the What something is?
- Can you give an example of when you've had to make trade offs? What did you consider?
- Can you share when you have had a different view of things from the development team?
- How do you (the PO) and scrum master work together?
- How do you navigate conflict? Can you give an example of when you've had to navigate conflict?
- Can you give an example of the difference between a vision for a product and a sprint goal?

Also, I would want the PO to come prepared with several good questions
- What are the expectations of the role?
- How many teams will I be working with?
- Are the teams colocated?
- how empowered am I in the PO role? Do I have to get sign-off from anyone on decisions i make?
- What tool(s) do you use?
- if we were sat down in 3 months and you were telling me how successful I had been, what would be the reasons for that?

Good luck!

Also be prepared

Thank you very much for all replies. I mostly appreciate the list of possible questions PO can/should ask during the interview, Muchas Gracias Tim!

Great answer.

I would add that as a PO is in charge of requirements, basic requirements gathering skills are also required:

What is the difference between a functional and a non-functional requirement?
What do you do when a requirement suggests a specific implementation? (Example: "The user wants to select xxx options from a drop down box" versus "The user wants to select xxx options".)
Give an example of a story including acceptance tests.