Hiring rubric for a senior growth manager.

The rubric.

Weights sum to 100. Calibrated across small-team hiring panels.

Ten questions to ask.

Each includes what a strong answer contains and what a weak answer sounds like.

1. 01

   situational medium · short-term

   CEO wants a 20% lift in signups this quarter. What do you do?

   Strong answer

   Distinguishes what's actually achievable in a quarter from what needs longer. Finds highest-leverage levers. Proposes a plan with risk acknowledged.

   Weak answer

   Agrees immediately. Or says it's not possible without offering alternatives.
2. 02

   experience baseline · resume-probe

   Your resume says you grew sign-ups by 30%. What was the baseline, and what contributed most?

   Strong answer

   Specific baseline. Specific interventions. Honest about what DIDN'T contribute as expected.

   Weak answer

   All the wins claimed as personal.
3. 03

   culture medium · failed-experiment

   Your last experiment had a null result. What do you do?

   Strong answer

   Documents what was learned even from null. Validates the experiment was well-powered. Doesn't p-hack. Doesn't call it a success.

   Weak answer

   Reruns with different segments until something is 'significant.'
4. 04

   growth hard · experiment-design

   You want to test a new onboarding flow. Design the experiment.

   Strong answer

   Power analysis. User-level randomization. Guardrail metrics. Exposure criteria (who counts). Pre-registered success criteria. Sufficient ramp duration.

   Weak answer

   50/50 split. Runs 'until we see something.'
5. 05

   growth medium · channel

   You have $100k/month in paid ads. What's your framework for reallocating?

   Strong answer

   LTV/CAC per channel. Saturation curves. Diversification vs consolidation trade-off. Attribution quality. Time-to-signal.

   Weak answer

   'Double down on whatever worked last month.'
6. 06

   communication medium · exec

   Explain why the last growth experiment you ran was worth the cost to a non-technical founder.

   Strong answer

   ROI framing. Opportunity cost of inaction. Concrete counterfactual.

   Weak answer

   'It was interesting.'
7. 07

   growth medium · seo

   Walk me through how you'd start an SEO program from zero.

   Strong answer

   Keyword research by intent + volume + competition. Content calendar. Technical hygiene first. Measures leading indicators (impressions, rankings) before lagging (traffic).

   Weak answer

   'We'll write blog posts.'
8. 08

   situational medium · cross-functional

   Engineering won't build your landing page experiment this sprint. What do you do?

   Strong answer

   Understands their constraints. Proposes a no-code or lightweight alternative. Builds trust by being low-friction. Not adversarial.

   Weak answer

   Escalates to management.
9. 09

   growth medium · cac

   Your CAC is $40, your LTV is $50. What do you do?

   Strong answer

   Questions whether these numbers are right. Asks about payback period, not just ratio. Considers unit-level path to $20 CAC or $100 LTV. Doesn't just kill the channel.

   Weak answer

   'Kill the channel.' Or 'we'll figure it out at scale.'
10. 10

    growth medium · funnel

    Walk me through how you'd diagnose a drop in conversion rate.

    Strong answer

    Segments first — which users, which channels, which time. Correlates with recent changes. Forms hypothesis then tests. Doesn't panic and add more features.

    Weak answer

    Proposes a new landing page without looking at where the drop is.