Hello 👋

I'm Christina-CEO here at askbootstrap.

We're a high-growth, bootstrapped HR-tech start-up building and selling software that helps in-house talent acquisition teams attract, hire and retain the best talent.

We launched in 2018, and have since grown to hundreds of customers, millions in revenue, consistent triple-digit year-on-year growth, a team of ~20 incredible people, and a robust and beautiful product used by growing organisations every day, all without taking on a penny of outside capital.

The journey so far has been awesome - and we're just getting started - but these first signs of meaningful scale have meant our team are spread thin, our customer base (and their expectations of our product) has broadened, and it's harder to manage the competing priorities of our various stakeholders (customers, internal teams, etc.).

We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Product Manager to join our innovative team. In this role, you will be a key driver in shaping the product strategy, defining the product roadmap, and ensuring successful product launches. The ideal candidate is passionate about technology, has strong leadership skills, and thrives in a collaborative environment.

It's time for our first product manager.

We need someone to own product end-to-end, and (more importantly), we need someone with a set of skills and experience that I (CEO and de-facto product manager to date) don't have! The role will report directly into me, but you'll work closely with every leader in the business (Customer Success, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, etc.) and in time will be responsible for building out a fully-fledged product team.

If this sounds like the kind of role that'd be appealing to you, read on - but before we dive into the detail, here are a few things about askbootstrap that'll either make you say "hell, yeah", or "hell, no":

What you'll be doing

You'll help us drive the product vision and development of our core user experience across our three main personas - in-house recruiters, hiring managers and their candidates.

To do this, you'll own the complete product lifecycle - defining product requirements, working with the team on low-fi wireframes, drafting and reviewing specs and partnering with engineering, design, marketing, sales and customer success to deliver meaningful product improvements for our customers and prospects against a planned schedule.

The specifics of how you allocate your time, what initiatives / projects you prioritise from a product perspective and so on are all up for grabs. The team and I all know that we need to level-up the way we think about product, and this role is going to help us do that. We're looking for someone who can very quickly ramp up (i.e. in weeks, not months), develop an understanding of our market, product, team, processes and so on - once you've done so, basically everything about how we deliver product is up for grabs.

That said, if you're looking for examples of how we're spending our time from a product perspective at the moment, here are a few:

• Understanding our customers, their pain points, and how they're using our product - having direct conversations with customers, reviewing support requests, evaluating survey responses and digging into analytics.
• Reviewing our 'product stack' and implementing systems and tools to help streamline and scale product internally - e.g. Linear for issue tracking, Segment for customer data / logging, Abstract for design review and so on.
• Defining both a short and long-term roadmap and communicating that effectively both internally and externally.
• Implementing better product education (again, both internally and externally) - working with sales and customer success to ensure they're aware of new releases and the ramifications of those releases on our customers and prospects, and working with customer success specifically to ensure we're delivering a fantastic in-product support experience.
• Working on our ecosystem - we are strong believers in an open ecosystem - we want to 'stay in our lane' and focus on the ATS market, but have an Open API and a large (and rapidly growing) ecosystem of third-party integration partners that offer best-in-class point solutions across the wider HR Tech landscape. There's work to be done to improve our partner programme, better roadmap integrations, continually improve and better document our Open API, etc.

What you'll need to do well in this role

Our ideal candidate will have:

• 3+ years' work experience in a product lead / product management role at a growth stage SaaS business, ideally in the B2B space.
• Much better than average written and verbal communication skills.
• Exceptional listening skills and the ability to assess information quickly.
• Strong technical acumen, plus solid data and analytical skills. We want someone who has a real instinct and can think strategically, but who can validate / back up their strategy with data.
• Strong user experience and design sensibilities. We care a lot about design, and we'll need you to do so as well.
• The ability to tell compelling stories that offer valuable perspectives / the ability to evangelise our product both internally and externally.
• The ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders of all roles and levels within the business - you'll need to ensure engineering, sales, marketing and customer success are all working in alignment, and build authority and mutual respect with individuals within all of these teams to deliver in the role.
• The ability to learn fast and get up to speed with our systems and processes quickly, as well as to help us define and implement new systems and processes as needed.
• A desire and ability to perform exceptionally well in an ambiguous and fast-paced start-up environment.

Please note that the experience, skills and so on listed above are not explicit requirements. They're there to give you a feel for the type of person we're looking for - if you have some but not all of these, but don't be put off from applying - but be prepared to explain how your perspective / experience / skills / etc set you apart from our applicants when we speak.

About askbootstrap

We're changing the way companies hire, and rewriting the rules of recruitment.

With our simple, intelligent software and unlimited help from our team our customers attract more 'good fit' candidates, select from the best, and wow their new hire from the moment they say 'yes'.

If you're looking for somewhere you can learn quickly, make a meaningful impact in a fast-paced business, and grow your career, you're in the right place.

We'll enable you to do your best work with the tools you need, support from the rest of the team, and an expectation that you'll challenge that status quo—helping us continually improve what we do.