Interviewing after a failed product or company
It's important to turn failures into success stories without trivializing the impact of those experiences.
A job search, especially in this market, can be challenging enough, but rising from the ashes of a failed product will definitely complicate things.
A couple of years ago, I said my goodbyes and closed my laptop for what would be my last time working as a Head of Product at a Toronto-based tech startup. I had worked there just shy of two years, and for a few reasons, it was time to move on and experience something new. What I didn't know was that nearly everyone else would be given layoff notices the next day. In the future, that made talking about that part of my job history with potential employers challenging.
Even if you weren't in a leadership role, being part of a cancelled product, project, or company can be a massive blow to your confidence. There are always things we could have done better, and it's not a great feeling to see something you put so much energy into not achieve its full potential. In the story above, we had struggled to meet our goals for a while, but even though the company closed and the software was shutting down, it was still possible to find success stories in my work.
It's not a great feeling when something fails, but products, projects, companies, and features fail every day; it's not that unusual.
There may be things you could have done better or differently, but there are also plenty of things outside your control that can stop you in your tracks, some of these could be considered 'black swan' events. Even very experienced product managers would struggle under these circumstances. It's important to identify things outside your control and not take them too personally. Things like:
Market shifts: Trends in consumer behaviour, preferences or beliefs that could make your product obsolete.
An economic downturn or recession: This happens about every 7 to 10 years, so you might be able to predict it in the future.
Technological advancements: A leap forward in technology could make you obsolete.
Competitor innovation: A larger incumbent could outpace you by doing something better.
Natural disaster or crisis: I'm sure you can recall many recent examples.
Unexpected health issues: Your own or that of key players in your business.
Supply chain disruptions, Which could co-exist with many of these issues, could make operating your business difficult.
Regulatory and legal changes: New laws, policies, or compliance requirements could suddenly make your product illegal, harder to sell, or more expensive/less lucrative.
Media or PR issues: A product or industry issue that gets a lot of media attention could negatively impact you.
Acknowledge the failure, but focus on the successes
When interviewing, you have to showcase your success stories. This is difficult when there's a line in your job history dedicated to a company or product that no longer exists. We really have to dig into that experience and focus on the wins we had while we were there.
So, focus on what you accomplished. Maybe you missed your growth targets, but you were able to really improve user activation or repeat rate. Or, perhaps you implemented a new efficient automated QA process and reduced deployment times from weeks to hours.
Some examples of my past failures:
Despite getting laid off at one company before I could complete the project I was hired for, I improved internal ticketing by leveraging AI and automation to summarize and categorize tickets. This reduced response times from days to hours.
At another startup, we failed to close our next fundraising round; our growth numbers weren't great for the last 6 months, but I built an amazing team and an incredible design and development practice and was still able to achieve incredible YoY user growth while lowering customer acquisition costs. (Sometimes, you need to adjust the timeline and zoom out a bit)
Often, we can learn more from our past failures than successes. There is plenty outside of your control, but what can you do better next time? What did you do right? Acknowledge your past failures, but also take note of what you did well and what you could do differently. This isn't the end of the road, and there are still great things you've accomplished, you just might need to change your perspective a bit.