First published in 18g Digest, by Yi-Wei Ang
This week, I got to grab a cup of Kopi and Roti with Homage’s Head of Product & Technology, Arnout Hemel, to learn more about how they hire Product Managers.
About Homage
Homage was founded in 2016 with the mission of helping seniors age with grace and dignity. Homage believes that by providing tailor-made care on demand, they can fulfill that promise. Homage caters to different needs for seniors: Customers can engage them for short term respite care when seniors get discharged from the hospital; they also have longer-term engagements to help seniors with simple activities of daily living: showering, meal preparation, or medical escorts.
Homage believes in using technology to enable the best quality of care. For example, their customers can stay constantly up to date about the care that has been provided to their loved ones through their mobile app. Further, caregivers are also matched to cases by a smart matching algorithm and they have complete freedom to choose the cases they are interested to help out with.
Homage’s Product & Technology team is still small (8 people) but they are aiming to double their team’s size within the next 6-12 months!
A Mission Driven Company needs Mission Driven PMs
- Arnout believes that culture fit is the most important aspect that Homage screens for. As an extremely mission-driven company, Homage only hires PMs who want to improve the lives of seniors in the region.
- Secondly, Arnout ensures that Product Managers have a “fire in their belly” – are they able to take on a problem and run with it?
- Thirdly, a candidate should be able to solve complex and vague problems (the Product role is 80% about solving problems).
- Finally, because Product Managers can’t drop the ball on the work that they do, attention to detail and being organized is an important quality that Homage screens for.
What past experiences matter?
Arnout believes that “more important than past successes is the kind of environment someone has been in.” Working at a startup is no easy feat – being able to hire people who know how to “get shit done” in their past job is critical. Further, because the role of a Product Manager can differ quite differently from a startup to a large MNC, Arnout does prefer to hire candidates who have worked at a startup before.
Interview Process
Homage has a 4 step interview process for Product Management candidates. The process aims to cover alignment to the company vision, product management skills, cross-functional team collaboration, and culture fit.
- Screening Interview that spans about 30-60 minutes to get to know the candidate
- Design Challenge where the candidate works with the team to come with with a creative solution to a problem. This is where a candidate’s product abilities are being tested
- Meeting others on the team to understand how the candidate works with marketing, operations, and other teams
- Meeting with CEO (Gillian) to determine final culture and skills fit
During the interview, candidates can expect to answer questions like:
- Why Homage?
- Why a startup?
- What were your biggest failures & what did you learn from them?
- What were your biggest successes and why are you proud of them?
Homage has lots of open roles!
Homage is currently hiring for a Senior Product Manager, QA Engineer, DevOps Engineer and Full-stack & mobile engineers. Check out their job postings here – https://homage.recruitee.com/
Looking for a fulfilling and exciting career? Join the Homage family today!
