How To Land Your First Full-time Product Manager Role, and Learn the Core Skills Along The Way
Product Management is one of the hottest and trending career options today. Students and professionals from diverse backgrounds are looking to explore this particular role.
I’ve made the transition from an Analyst to a Product Manager (PM), which is why many such aspirants often ask me for advice:
- How do I get into Product Management?
- What are the most important skills to learn for an entry-level position?
- Can you tell me more about your experience?
I’m truly grateful to all these people who trust me enough to ask for advice. One of my key suggestions has been to try the process of experiential learning i.e. learning by doing.
Below are my three tips that clarify the process. Let’s begin:
Tip 1: Internships
This is hands down the best way to get a taste of experiential learning. Internships are a great way to get your hands dirty. You can learn many core product skills from internships, especially if you get a chance to intern at startups.
The best part about a career in PM is that it involves a diverse set of skills. So, you as a student have the opportunity to intern with different firms for different roles
- customer success
- marketing
- data analytics
- data science
- business strategy
- product management
- product design
And the list goes on. All these roles have different responsibilities & all are highly relevant to the work of a Product Manager.
Internships also teach you discipline & time management which is a bonus.
Fact: I worked as an intern, twice, after working full-time because I was hungry to learn more about the role.
Tip 2: Case Studies
Case studies are a document or a presentation that showcases your problem-solving skills. Case studies are a great way to build up
- the habit of writing
- the diversity of your thought process
The content of a case study depends on the problem you want to solve:
- Product Design- design a fridge for the blind, build a marketplace for collectibles
- Product Strategy- you’re a PM at Meta & they want to explore the travel space, is it a good idea? if so, what would you build?
- Product Teardown- take any product & do a full breakdown(about the product, competitors, user flow, problem it solves, features, pros & cons, your improvement suggestions, metrics etc.)
If you’re an absolute beginner, then you’ll need help. Start by understanding some basic frameworks and evaluating past solutions of different case studies. Then start trying it out on your own.
Here are some communities for case studies & teardown challenges:
Fact: Product case studies helped me land my first two product internships
Tip 3: Side Projects
Here comes one of the most frequently discussed yet less frequently pursued options.
Side projects are solutions that you have created for real-life problems. It can also be a much better & evolved version of a case study.
Case studies focus on thought processes, ideation, documentation & problem-solving. Side projects go one step further i.e. actually building your idea instead of just documenting it.
Due to the abundance of no-code platforms & design tools nowadays, it requires very little effort to create an app. Still, try not to build an app for any regular problem, instead, focus on a crucial problem/use case that you can think of.
For instance, one of the “ideas” I explored is a voice-based learning app for kids suffering from speech disorders. Think of it as a gamified and user-focused app like Duolingo, but catered towards a niche segment of young kids(<14 years) suffering from speech difficulties.
Now, maybe this app has been already developed before, but every industry/market has multiple players. The fact that you were able to think about a specific user segment, understand their problems, come up with creative solutions & build a prototype around it is in itself a great achievement. Brownie points if you’ve been able to release the app to the audience & get some feedback.
Some key things to remember for side projects:
- You don’t always have to release the app at scale. A prototype of an app that you share with your friends is also a side project.
- Side projects are generally a result of one’s passion & interests. Creating a non-profit community to help the underserved, creating a WhatsApp group to share customized lecture notes on to help hundreds of students etc. will count as side-projects.
Fact: I’m currently developing my portfolio, which is also a good side project, and brainstorming for a web application I want to build.
That’s it folks. Here are my last two articles on How I Discovered Product Management and the Associate Product Manager (APM) Interview Process.
I hope you find value with all these. Let me know if there are any other tips you feel are critical for grabbing the coveted Product Management role.
Fin.🙏🏻
Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
