The VP of Product leads a business's product function — what gets built and why. Hiring one well means matching product leadership to your product and stage. Here is how.
Match to your product and stage
A VP of Product leads the product function, but product leadership differs across businesses — a digital product, a physical consumer product, a platform, or a mix — and across stages, from building a first product to scaling a mature portfolio. Define your product context and challenge, and match the leader's experience to it. Product expertise is context-dependent, so relevant experience with a comparable product and stage matters more than generic product credentials.
Product craft and customer insight
Look for genuine product craft — a real feel for building products people want and value — grounded in customer insight and judgement about what to build and why. The best product leaders combine deep customer understanding with the judgement to prioritise and shape products that succeed. This product sense and customer grounding is central, because the core of the role is deciding what to build and ensuring it genuinely serves customers and the business.
Prioritisation and judgement
Much of product leadership is prioritisation — deciding what to build, what not to, and in what order, amid more possibilities than resources. Sound prioritisation and judgement, balancing customer needs, business goals, and feasibility, are central to the role. Assessing a candidate's judgement and track record of making good product decisions, and saying no well, matters greatly, since poor prioritisation wastes resources and misses opportunities, while good prioritisation focuses the business on what matters.
Leadership and delivery
Product is delivered through teams and cross-functional work, so a VP of Product needs the leadership to build and run a product team and drive delivery, working closely with engineering, design, marketing, and commercial. Combining product craft and judgement with the leadership to deliver through a team and across functions is what strong product leadership requires. Define the role and a retained search can match a product leader to your product and stage.
Hiring a product leader?
We recruit VPs of Product and Chief Product Officers across consumer and digital businesses.
Explore Product Search →Frequently asked questions
What should you look for when hiring a VP of Product?
Genuine product craft and customer insight combined with the leadership to build and run a product team and deliver — matched to your product, model, and stage — plus sound prioritisation and the strategic-executional balance the role requires.
What is the most important skill for a VP of Product?
Prioritisation and judgement — deciding what to build, what not to, and in what order, balancing customer needs, business goals, and feasibility. Poor prioritisation wastes resources; good prioritisation focuses the business on what matters, grounded in genuine customer insight.
Related: What Does a Chief Product Officer Do? · How to Hire a Chief Product Officer · What Does a Chief Innovation Officer Do?
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