On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Kate Leto, Author of Hiring Product Managers Using Product EQ to Go Beyond Culture and Skills. Kate and I talk about some of the trends and tactics needed for hiring the best product managers and why there needs to be more of a balance between technical and human skills in the process. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger founder of Insideoutside.io, a provider of research events and consultant services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week, we'll give you you're a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Interview Transcript with Kate LetoBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today with me we have Kate Leto. She's the author of Hiring Product Managers Using Product EQ to go Beyond Culture and Skills. Welcome to the show Kate. Kate Leto: Thank you, Brian. It's great to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. Our mutual friend Jeff Gothelf suggested we talk, and you're based in the UK. Is that correct? Kate Leto: I am. Yeah, just outside of London. Brian Ardinger: I wanted to talk more about all this concept of product managers and some of the new things that you're seeing out there. Tell us a little bit about that. How you got involved in product management at the very first Kate Leto: Probably like the majority of product managers, I didn't intend to get into product management. Didn't even know what it was. When I started out over 20 years ago, it was still very much a new and developing area and profession. And I fell into it really just before I joined Yahoo, but I was actually working in Chicago at the time at a startup. Back in the late nineties. And actually, fell into product management, I was doing marketing, which led to product marketing, which led to product management. And went to grad school at Northwestern University and ended up at Yahoo directly after that, again, working with product marketing and slowly made this transition into product management. So, it was trial and error and it was by accident just as it is with many of us in product management. Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk a little bit about some of the changes that you've seen over the last 20 years in product management. And, you know, it seems to actually have become quote unquote profession now, and people actually know what that means, but maybe what are some of the big highlights that you've seen over the years that have really changed how people think about product? Kate Leto: Number one is product has more credibility and a bit more clarity around what it is. I think a lot of that's come from the different communities that have sprung up around the product world over the last 10 plus years. Groups like mind the product have been really powerful globally and encouraging, creating a space for product people to come together and talk about what is product management?What is it? How do we do it? How do we do it? Well, like many product people. Still within my friends and family group, people have no idea what product management is. My partner just tells everybody that I'm a spy because he doesn't quite understand it. So, we just roll with that. I think one of the best things that I've seen over the last 20 plus years within product, is amongst ourselves more clarity around what it is that we do. And to create a support system, really in a support structure to help us have a place to go to learn, to vent, to talk about what's challenging us what our tensions are and how to do that in a different way. And one of the things that I really latched