Product Manager Jobs at athenahealth

athenahealth PM interview guide

athenahealth's PM loop runs about 3 to 5 weeks across roughly 5 stages: a recruiter screen, a senior PM screen, a case study round, then multiple back-to-back conversations with product and engineering directors who probe PM competencies. The defining trait is that you act as a scrum product owner, so the loop centers on whether you can write user stories, prioritize a backlog, and make scope-versus-schedule trade-offs in a healthcare context, not on whiteboard product design.

The interview process

1. Recruiter screen (about 30 min). Phone or video call on your background, why athenahealth, and role fit. The recruiter checks for healthcare or health IT exposure and a baseline grasp of the product owner role before passing you on.
2. Senior PM / hiring manager screen (about 1 hour). A deeper conversation with a senior PM or hiring manager. Behavioral and scenario questions test problem solving, how you handle competing priorities, and how you partner with engineering and UX.
3. Case study round. Candidates report a dedicated case study, sometimes shared in advance to prepare. You walk through your approach to a product scenario: what metrics you would track, how you would prioritize features, and how you would weigh user impact against business value and feasibility.
4. Panel / director conversations (multiple 30 min sessions). Several back-to-back rounds with product and engineering directors plus cross-functional partners (potential peers, UX, SMEs). Each round targets a different PM competency: stakeholder management, prioritization, defining success, and leading through ambiguity. Some include practical what-if scenarios.
5. Final review / presentation. The final stage often involves the hiring manager and can include presenting your case study or a structured discussion of past work, assessing product vision and how clearly you communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.
6. What they're really testing. Three signals carry the most weight: product owner execution (writing user stories, prioritizing a backlog, trading scope for schedule), stakeholder and cross-functional collaboration under competing priorities, and genuine empathy for healthcare users plus fit with the mission. Healthcare or health IT domain awareness is a strong differentiator.

Likely PM interview questions

1. How would you measure the success of athenahealth's electronic health record (EHR) system?Company-specific
2. Walk us through a product roadmap you owned: how you ran user research to find pain points, worked with engineering on feasibility, and prioritized features by user impact and business value.Execution
3. Tell me about a time you had to balance competing priorities and make a difficult trade-off that affected the project outcome.Behavioral