Hire a PM

MEMORANDUM

TO: Rosa Lindqvist, VP of Product FROM: Director of Product, Medvia DATE: October 24, 2023 SUBJECT: Hiring Recommendation: Group PM, Patient Payments

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Rosa,

Following yesterday’s debrief, I have reviewed the scorecards, interview transcripts, and reference notes for our open Group PM role. We are tasked with finding a leader who can set strategy, lift our online payment rate from its current 41%, lead a team of three PMs, and collaborate effectively with Finance and Compliance in a regulated healthcare environment.

The CEO needs our decision by Friday. My recommendation is that we extend an offer to Joy Adeyemi at $230k. We should not hire Dev Malhotra.

Below is the evidence, the associated risks, and the pre-offer checks required to secure Joy.

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1. The Evidence: Why Joy Adeyemi over Dev Malhotra

While the final entered scores (Dev straight 4s; Joy straight 3s) suggest a clear winner, the raw interview notes and hidden dynamics of our debrief tell a different story.

• Product Sense & Problem Solving: Dev is a classic "feature factory" ideator. The Head of Design noted Dev pitched six features in five minutes before asking who pays and why. Conversely, Joy spent her first 15 minutes investigating the root causes of friction—asking who pays and why others don’t—before proposing a targeted, high-leverage solution: text-to-pay tailored to the 58% of patients currently paying via phone. For a critical metric like our 41% online payment rate, we need clinical execution, not a scattershot feature list.
• Analytics & Rigor: The Data Lead’s notes on Dev are a red flag. When pressed on metrics, Dev offered vague marketing speak ("grew massively," "shipped 40+ features") with zero data attribution. Joy provided hard, demonstrable impact: she raised payment completion at her previous company from 33% to 47% over 18 months. Crucially, she also walked through a failed experiment and extracted lessons—proving she understands the complex trade-offs of healthcare payments.
• People Leadership & Culture: Dev speaks entirely in the first person ("I," "my wins") and casually remarked that his last team "struggled to keep up with me." Rosa, you likely noted your contact’s warning that his team suffered high turnover. Joy is the inverse: she coaches struggling reports, promotes talent, and attributes wins directly to her engineers. The VP of Engineering’s pre-debrief notebook literally rated Joy as a "4, strongest leader we've seen," before social pressure in the debrief caused the scores to normalize.
• The "Presence" Bias: The primary knock on Joy during the debrief was a lack of "presence" and a concern about whether she could "command the room with the CFO." This is a subjective trap. We do not need a charismatic showman to present slide decks; we need a strategist who can build bulletproof business cases with Finance and navigate Compliance. Joy’s methodical, customer-first approach is precisely what Finance will trust.

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2. Risks to Manage

• The CFO/Executive Presence Risk: Because the interview panel worried Joy might be quiet in front of executive stakeholders, we must validate her ability to defend her strategy to our CFO and Compliance leads.
• Compensation and Closing: Joy is asking for $230k (right in the middle of our $220k–$250k band), making her a financially sound hire. However, because she is measured and thoughtful, she may take a few days to deliberate. We need to move decisively.

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3. Pre-Offer Checks (To Be Completed by Thursday EOD)

Before we release the offer to Joy, I will execute two final validation steps:

1. Backchannel/Targeted Reference Check: Since our previous reference calls did not explicitly probe her dynamic with Finance or Compliance, I will spend 10 minutes with her former manager specifically asking: “How did Joy handle budget cross-examinations with Finance? How did she partner with Legal/Compliance when building payment flows?”
2. The "CFO Alignment" Test: I’d like to spend 30 minutes with Joy and our current Director of Finance (or you and I) presenting a mock 10-minute briefing on our 41% online payment bottleneck, asking her to walk us through how she would construct the business case for the Q1 roadmap.

Conclusion

Dev is dazzling in a pitch meeting, but his metrics are hollow, his leadership style is toxic to retention, and his instinct is to build before understanding. Joy is rigorous, customer-obsessed, metrics-driven, and a multiplier for her team and cross-functional partners.

Let’s trust the substance over the theater. I am ready to initiate the final check and prepare the $230k offer for Friday morning.

To: Rosa Lindqvist, VP Product Subject: Group PM, Patient Payments — recommend Joy, subject to targeted checks by Friday

Rosa,

I recommend hiring Joy Adeyemi, contingent on validating her ability to set strategy and influence Finance and Compliance. The interview evidence is stronger for Joy on the work this role requires: improving payment outcomes, making customer-grounded product decisions, and developing PMs. Dev’s presentation strength is clear, but the evidence does not support his uniformly exceptional scores.

We should complete focused checks before Friday rather than let either the debrief’s consensus or the deadline substitute for evidence.

Why Joy

Our agreed scorecard—not presentation polish—should drive the decision.

Why I would not rely on the recorded scores

The 4s for Dev and 3s for Joy were entered after the discussion, so they are not independent assessments. The VP Engineering’s contemporaneous note—“Joy: 4, strongest leader we’ve seen”—conflicts with the submitted 3. Combined with the Head of Design speaking first and enthusiasm about Dev’s deck, this creates a credible risk of anchoring and presentation halo.

“Not much presence” and “command the room” are not sufficiently specific hiring criteria. We need evidence of gaining alignment, handling disagreement, and changing consequential decisions—not a proxy based on communication style. This does not prove bias or invalidate every judgment; it means the scores need reconciliation with observed behavior.

I would ask each interviewer to independently reassess their dimension against the original rubric, cite evidence, and explain any change from their pre-debrief assessment. I would not manufacture replacement scores from these notes.

Risks in hiring Joy

• Executive and cross-functional influence is unproven. Strong product judgment will not be enough if she cannot resolve disagreements with Finance and Compliance.
• Group-level strategy remains under-tested. One well-reasoned product proposal does not establish an ability to set a portfolio strategy or allocate work across three PMs.
• Her reported impact needs attribution. We need to understand what she owned, what other changes contributed, and whether the gains were durable.

Dev’s executive presentation skill is a genuine strength. However, selecting him now would require overlooking gaps in measurable outcomes and substantial unanswered leadership questions. His current direct-report references offer a limited perspective; the informal turnover report is also insufficiently substantiated.

Checks before an offer

1. Focused, structured working session with Finance and Compliance. Ask Joy to outline a patient-payments strategy from our 41% online payment baseline, identify missing data, prioritize opportunities, and explain how she would organize three PMs. Introduce a realistic conflict involving collections, patient experience, cost, and compliance constraints. Assess decision quality, listening, trade-off handling, and ability to reach a workable decision—not performance style. A CFO or senior Finance delegate and Compliance partner should score independently before discussing.

2. Targeted reference follow-ups, with Joy’s consent. Ask her former manager and peer for concrete examples of disagreement with a CFO or Finance leader, work with Compliance, strategy ownership, and developing PMs. Verify the 33%–47% result, her contribution, and measurement. Seek an additional relevant cross-functional reference if those references lack direct visibility.

3. Reconcile the interview record. Complete the independent score review and explicitly resolve the leadership-score discrepancy. Document remaining uncertainty rather than forcing consensus.

Friday decision: If these checks substantiate Joy’s strategy and influence capabilities, proceed with her offer. If they reveal a material gap—or cannot establish the essential evidence—I recommend neither, not defaulting to Dev.

Joy’s $230k request and Dev’s $245k request are both within the $220k–$250k band. Compensation should not decide this choice; set Joy’s offer based on scope and internal equity, not simply her lower ask.

To: Rosa Lindqvist, VP Product Subject: Group PM recommendation — Joy Adeyemi

Recommendation: Hire Joy, subject to focused reference and influence checks before the offer. She has the stronger evidence against the role’s core needs: measurable payment outcomes, thoughtful product judgment, and the ability to lead through other people. The CEO needs a decision by Friday; I would not let the debrief scores alone drive it.

Evidence

• Execution and influence (35%): Joy gave a specific result from her last company—payment completion rose from 33% to 47% over 18 months—and explained a failed experiment and what she learned. Her leadership examples showed investment in others: coaching a struggling PM into a different role and promoting another. Dev’s evidence was less concrete: he described platform growth and 40+ shipped features but supplied no outcome metric when pressed. His stories were consistently framed around his own contribution, and he said his team struggled to keep up with him.
• Product sense (25%): Joy investigated who pays and why before proposing text-to-pay for the 58% who currently pay by phone, including trade-offs. That is relevant to our 41% online payment rate and reflects problem-first judgment. Dev’s creativity and presentation were strengths, but six ideas in the first five minutes—before clarifying who pays and why—are a concern for this role.
• Analytics (20%): Joy’s quantified result and discussion of a failed experiment are stronger evidence of analytical ownership. Dev did not provide a measurable result.
• People leadership (20%): Joy’s examples demonstrate coaching, development, and shared credit. Dev’s confidence and presentation are positives, but they do not offset the limited evidence of developing a team or his comment about the team struggling to keep up.

Risks and scorecard

Joy’s main risk is whether she can influence senior stakeholders, particularly the CFO and Finance. The “not much presence” and “command the room” comments are concerns to test, not proof that she cannot do it; we should assess her ability to make a clear, evidence-based case rather than equate influence with a particular presentation style.

Dev may be compelling with executives, but we need to understand the team-turnover signal and whether his leadership style scales. His two references are current direct reports, which may limit candor. His former-company reference’s report of high turnover is important but unverified.

I would treat the 4/4/4/4 versus 3/3/3/3 ratings as weak evidence. The VP Engineering’s pre-debrief note called Joy the strongest leader seen and rated her a 4, then the score became a 3 after discussion; the Head of Design also spoke first. This does not establish why the ratings changed, but it is reason to rely on the underlying evidence and check for independent calibration.

Before making the offer

1. Ask Joy’s former manager and peer specifically about her influence with Finance/CFO-level stakeholders, including a difficult disagreement and the outcome.
2. Ask for one additional Joy reference who can speak to cross-functional execution; ask Dev’s references about team turnover, feedback, and how he develops PMs. Seek candid, comparable evidence where possible.
3. In a short structured conversation, ask Joy to make the case for a payment-rate strategy to a skeptical CFO. Evaluate clarity, use of evidence, and handling of challenge—not polish alone.
4. Confirm Joy’s 33%→47% result, her role in it, and the scope of her people leadership.

If those checks reveal a material gap in Joy’s influence or ownership, I would choose neither rather than default to Dev on presentation strength. Otherwise, proceed with Joy at her requested $230k, within band.