How to break into Product Management?
I know there are already thousands of articles about how to break into Product Management. Lately, many people have reached out on LinkedIn asking me about ways to transition. This article describes my personal experiences and outlines what has worked for me. I am not going to describe what a product manager is or what he/she is expected to do here. I assume you have already done all this research before deciding you want to make the transition.
1. Skills Gap Assessment
- Make a list of your competencies based on current and past roles in a simple list format.
- Compare this with a PM skills list, and highlight the gaps in the core competencies needed to become a Product Manager.
- Read up on those topics (medium, blogs, and books), slack channels are also a good source of information these days.
- You could join some of these channels by MindTheProduct, ProductSchool, ProductManagerHQ and look for channels in your local city.
2. Aspired Companies Research
- Make a list of companies you aspire to join, look at the Product Manager job descriptions from their career sites and try to understand if you fit those.
- Think about the domains you are passionate about or aspire to work in. Its an important factor while shortlisting the companies.
- Find the missing gaps and try to learn about those topics. For example, I never knew how to conduct A/B or multivariate testing so I read a bunch of articles and spoke to some people about how they did and lessons learned from their experiences. So that I would at least be confident to speak about it during my interviews.
- Learn about their products, try to use them if a free version is available or read blogs on the company websites.
- Identify gaps or improvements you could make to their products, try doing a side project (UX improvement designs, or strategy proposal) on the product, publish an article about it on LinkedIn or Medium.
- You could use this article as a talking point while you reach out to Senior PM or Director level connections on LinkedIn and it will get your foot in the door.
I have my short term plans and long term plans documented in Notion. I always note down whenever I read something important/interesting about a particular company and also update my #dreamcompanies list from time to time. Also, noting down experiences and stories and articles I read for later reference helps for interview preparation and you don’t have to scramble and read everything on the internet 2 days before the interview.
3. Connections and Meetups
Connect with as many people as you can physically and virtually. It’s important to make these connections to get your foot in the door. Networking was not my strong suit, I hated being in a room full of strangers. But you will get used to it and get comfortable.
- Find all the local product meetups, try to attend as many as you can (Meetup.com or Slack channels are the best sources to find events happening in your area).
- Try to make at least 1–2 connections speak to them and connect with them on a personal level and add them on LinkedIn. Follow up after the meetup for coffee or drinks meeting, that would actually develop a friendship.
- You don’t necessarily need to connect with other Product Managers only, you can connect with Product Marketing Managers, Engineers, Engineering Managers. Any of them could refer you and land your first PM interview.
- You can also try cold messaging people at the companies you are aiming to join. Invite them for coffee or drinks which is a great way to find out insider information about the company. You might not always get a reply from everyone but from my experience, many people replied to me and at least agreed to refer.
- You definitely need to invest time to grow your network.
4. When you land THE PM Interview
- Focus on your experiences and narrate your story to the interviewers.
- Read, read, read about the company, blogs, news articles, glassdoor interview questions.
- Demonstrate to the interviewers on what approach you took and how you are continuously learning to fill your skill gaps.
- Make a short presentation about your approach, how you can bring value to the team.
- Always talk from the users perspective, solving problem midset, and working towards the company’s goals.
- It takes a lot to convince a company to give you a chance to a newbie Product Manager. But it is possible!!! There will be a lot of failures before you land your first job, don't be discouraged.
- Document the questions you were asked in each interview, and note down at which stage you failed. You can practice and read up about these topics/areas to improve.
I cannot emphasize how important it is to demonstrate a passion for the domain, product and the company and most importantly EMPATHY for the users to make the PRODUCT better as a PRODUCT MANAGER.
If you are curious about my journey: TL: DR
I was a Software Engineer, Consultant, and Senior Business Analyst before I transitioned into the Product Manager role. It took me over 1.5 years to land my first PM job, over 60 interviews (multiple rounds). Good luck!
Would love to hear your feedback if my article helped! Reach out to me on LinkedIn if you would like to chat further.
