Get Your First Role in Product Management: A Step by Step Guide
Getting the first role in product management is like getting into a select club. Diplomas don’t matter, only prior experience. So how can you possibly become a regular?
If you want to land your first role as a product managers use this method. This method works for both new people in the job market, or if you want to switch your career and move into product development.
1. Earn product management skills in your current job
Chances are you can get product management skills in your current job. Identify the tasks a product manager does, and take on one of those tasks immediately. For instance:
Work closer to designers or engineers during a project. Jump on user interviews. Give feedback on a roadmap.
This stretch will get you a line or two of product responsibilities on your LinkedIn profile. Working on side projects and practicing product development skills works as well.
2. Find a promising company that gives you a chance
The best way to become a product manager, is being one — now. Find a company that gives you that chance.
Don’t over-optimize for the title. Instead, look for a company that gives you proper product manager responsibilities.
Most importantly — check whether the team is well staffed with cross-functional responsibilities. To find promising startups, check those near you with coverage on Tech Crunch.
3. Do whatever the company needs from you
At early-stage startups, product managers do a lot more than product, such as performing quality assurance (QA) or writing business cases. Embrace that reality and stretch on your responsibilities. This will give you “tokens” in exchange for opportunities you’ll be able to use later.
4. Frame your ideal role
By now, your company and team should have grown. Use the tokens you collected to define your ideal role, within the context of your company’s needs. Focus your responsibilities around product management skills as much as you can.
Congrats you’re a Product Manager! And now…
5. Train yourself
Often your company resources won’t be enough if you really want to grow fast. So train yourself.
Read books, attend webinars, and apply these learnings in your day to day. You’ll grow faster than anyone.
6. Optimize your career for learning
At this stage, you have some leverage. You have 2+ years of product management experience on your resume. Don’t rest. You need to keep optimizing for learning.
Seek opportunities to learn, whether it’s inside or outside your current company. Sometimes it means changing companies.
7. Find your guiding line
Product managers that grow the fastest are somewhat specialized. Build expertise in a booming industry, or work on topics relevant to cross-industry. This way there will always be a company out there looking to recruit you.
I started to do product management in fintech, and I still receive job offers from fintech companies to this day. It’s because I once worked in a marketplace, I got approached by a SaaS company to build their marketplace.
I hope this step-by-step guide helps you get into a product management career. Need more help, please don’t hesitate to write me: enzo at june dot so. My emails are opened 🤗
Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
