How To Build Your “Portfolio” as a Product Manager
Lessons on identity for a notoriously amorphous profession
Product management is one of the most in-demand roles in tech. There are more Product Manager job openings than any other job in Glassdoor’s top 10 (other than Software Engineer).
It’s also one of the hardest to define and measure.
“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.” — Deep Nishar (Former SVP, Products & UX @ LinkedIn)
“There’s a terrible amount of confusion on what a good product manager does. Since the role is so different across the industry, the understanding of what makes up a good “product manager” is so undefined.” — Hemal Shah (Product @Instagram, @Facebook, @Twitter)
The result is that, unlike many other roles in tech (e.g. design, engineering), it’s extremely difficult for product managers to not only explain what they do but, more importantly, showcase and communicate their accomplishments.
As a former product manager, I can attest that the ability to consistently and concisely share your best work/professional story is often the biggest difference between product managers whose careers grow and develop vs. those whose stay stagnant and sputter.
For the past several years, I’ve been thinking deeply about, and experimenting with the best ways, for knowledge workers like product managers to build their professional identities (and portfolios). It led me to build our product Mural and I wanted to share some of my takeaways.
1. Product managers are defined by two key performance indicators:
- Primarily by outcomes they helped drive (business metrics, UX/customer love, team reviews)
- Secondarily by the processes they used along the way (methods, templates, culture)
2. As such, when building their identity and showcasing their work, product managers should:
- focus primarily on outcomes they helped drive
- focus secondarily on the unique/compelling ways they did it and/or conduct product management in general
3. The extent to which you should balance focus between outcomes and process often depends on the lifecycle of the products, features & experiments you help launch.
If a particular feature, sprint, initiative succeeds…
- lead with/explain the outcome + how you contributed to it
- provide evidence by linking to blog post announcing/explaining the feature, a GA/analytics report showing the outcome, media coverage of the launch, or even the feature itself.
If a particular feature, sprint, initiative does not succeed…
- ‘Lift the hood’ as much as you can and show the most important/compelling part of the process (esp. If the feature/product is no longer live and privacy concern mitigated)
- Linkable examples: experiment design doc, product spec, cohort analysis spreadsheet
- If you can’t lift hood on specific features, see point below about ‘transferable elements’.
4. Whenever you’re sharing a story, or trying to convince an audience about something, it is always most effective to show and tell, rather than simply tell.
- As mentioned above, it’s important to always explain your role/contribution to both successes/failures and provide linkable evidence of that contribution. The types of links change based on the type of story (e.g. outcome vs. process).
Evidence of Outcomes includes:
- A blog post announcing/explaining the feature, your process, and any learnings
- An analytics report showing just how successful the outcome you helped drive was
- Media coverage of the launch
- The feature/product itself
Evidence of Process includes:
- Product spec
- Experiment design document
- Cohort analysis spreadsheet
- A post reflecting on lessons/takeaways from the experience
- Slack posts or other reviews of your work by teammembers and bosses
5. In addition to specific things you worked on, also feature transferable elements of your time at XYZ company, on XYZ project or with XYZ client.
- Lessons/takeaways from time on job (e.g. blog post)
- Templates (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)
- External media (any publicly posted stuff you contributed to, podcasts/talks/panels/etc.)
6. In all cases, always be sure to:
- Be as specific and concise as you can be
- Don’t get lost in weeds — minimal necessary context :)
- Give credit to others
If you have any tips, ideas, or best practices for product managers to build their identity and reputation, I’d love to hear them! You can find me on Twitter, email (ajay@corelabs.xyz) and in the comments.
Mural is the fastest and easiest way for people to build, and share beautiful portfolios of their work. It was born out of the frustration of trying to communicate the work that we do inside the constraints of a traditional resume. We understand that work is dynamic, and careers don’t always fit into neat bullet points. We want to help you tell your professional story, in anyway that you think is best.
*Thanks to Kunal Tandon, Gauri Manglik and Donna Lichaw for their help on this post.
