A Pneumatic Product Manager Hire Built for Long-Term Product and Market Success

Our client, a regional fluid power distributor, sought an adept product manager to support their sales and engineering teams, and add value day 1. The position also required being onsite daily. This newly created role was driven by growth in a highly saturated market, where differentiation depends heavily on technical credibility and speed to value. Our client needed a true pneumatic expert, someone with years of hands-on application experience who could support the sales team in customer-facing situations while also collaborating closely with engineering.Talent with this combination of experience is increasingly scarce. Many candidates brought either strong technical backgrounds or sales exposure, but few had both, and even fewer could bridge communication effectively across commercial and engineering teams. The risk was hiring someone who would require a long ramp-up or struggle to add immediate, practical value in a competitive environment.

We began by partnering closely with leadership to clearly define how this newly created role would support both commercial growth and internal teams. Aligning on success criteria centered around deep pneumatic application experience, the ability to support sales in customer-facing environments, and the credibility to collaborate effectively with engineering.From there, we identified 171 candidates looked to meet the criteria and have the required skill set. Given the technical depth required, this search demanded more than resume screening. Leveraging our fluency in fluid power and automation, we assessed candidates for true hands-on pneumatic expertise, sales exposure, and communication style. Candidates were evaluated not only on what they had managed or sold, but on how they supported sales teams, solved application challenges, and worked cross-functionally ensuring the selected product manager could add value immediately without a long learning curve. We identified 4 candidates for review.