With 43% of companies hiring more product managers and being one of the 25 roles with the highest rising demand, product management is a field that presents immense opportunities for professionals both as a lucrative career option and a fulfilling role that results in tremendous personal and professional growth. If you are one of the people looking to understand how to start a career in product management, given the potential, this article will help you know what you need to do to take your first steps.
Why Is Product Management So Important?
Product managers work at the trisection of customers, business, and technology. They are the bridge for balancing strategic thinking with operational execution. It is a role that is crucial to ensure that companies can achieve their goals sustainably by continuously providing value to the customers through efficient development & deployment of features. Product managers are responsible for understanding customer needs, developing product strategies, managing product development processes, and ensuring that products meet customer expectations.
Businesses are increasingly adopting a product-led growth strategy. By mid-2022, over 53% of SaaS product companies had their PLG strategy framework in place, with 43% of organizations planning to increase their investments significantly.
As PLG becomes the core strategy for growth, it is clear that product management will continue to be an area of focus for companies around the world.
What Does Product Management Entail?
The first step towards a product management career is understanding the role and responsibilities in detail. This area is the one that has many dimensions. The role encompasses a broad spectrum of duties, from understanding and influencing business strategy and aligning the product strategy to ensuring that products are launched commercially viable while ensuring solutions to consumer pain points. The following graphic provides a high-level overview of all the activities that a product manager does.
However, every organization may divide product management roles into various areas. Many organizations divide the role into three categories;
1. The first is to understand customer pain points and define possible solutions
2. The second is to define the product strategies and roadmap to give a practical shape to those solutions.
3. The third is to execute the product strategy by employing project management to oversee product development.
Any combination of these three major areas is also possible.
In addition, product ops is another area that is gaining prominence. This area complements product management throughout the product lifecycle. The contours of this role also vary based on the organization’s context.
Given these complexities, how you start your product management journey depends on what the organizations want and where you are. Primarily, your current standpoint can be divided into two distinct categories. You either are a complete fresher and want to start your overall career with product management or have some experience in other business areas and now want to shift to product management. While there will be a common set of skills, you will require, in either of these cases, a specific path for your entry into product management will be determined by what other skills you have that relate directly to the product management skills.
How to start a career in product management as your first job?
Step 1: Assess the opportunities
Available product management jobs and their requirements vary considerably, given the broad area of influence this role has. Carpet-bombing strategies for looking for your first job may sometimes work, but since your first job is critical to shaping your career, you should take a proactive stand to look for opportunities. The easiest way is to go to LinkedIn (or other job boards) and see if there are any roles companies offer for people starting their careers. Evaluate what kind of requirements they have in terms of education, skills, and experience. Identify the few best opportunities for you and note down the standard requirements across those opportunities.
The common requirements become your MVP (Minimum Viable Product)(borrowing a term from Product Management).
Step 2: Evaluate the gap
Once you know the opportunities and the requirements of those roles, you will need to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Generally, you can divide the requirements into three areas;
1. Areas of mastery: These are the areas where you have strong knowledge. You also might have some demonstrated experience through internships or projects you might have done. However, what is critical is to have clarity about the fundamentals of the topics in this area and understand how you can apply this knowledge to real-life situations.
2. Areas of intermediate knowledge: These are the areas where you have a little bit of an idea. These areas are where you need to focus as you can quickly acquire mastery over them.
3. Areas of no knowledge: These are the areas where you might not have any knowledge. Once you identify these areas, understand how much effort you should put in by comparing them with the requirements. If you don’t know about many requirements, you will need more effort to gain proficiency in these areas. However, if what you don’t know consists of only a tiny fraction of available opportunities, you may put more effort into the areas of intermediate knowledge.
Once you have this analysis, you can create your roadmap to fill the knowledge gaps.
Step 3: Upskill yourself
Now that you have the roadmap, it’s time to execute it. Fortunately, many opportunities are available now to fill your knowledge gaps. Depending upon your educational background, the kind of knowledge required, and the available resources, you can choose the best combination to upskill yourself.
Education
Formal education might be best if you have time and money with you. You should choose an institution and a course that will allow you to understand the subjects from both fundamental and practical aspects thoroughly. Additionally, if your course has placement opportunities, it can pave the way for you to enter the product management field effectively.
Courses
While online courses are abundant, you should also consider short-term offline courses that will allow you to ramp up your knowledge in specific areas quickly. Irrespective of the medium, choose one that will give you maximum value, with a preference for practical assignments to cover. The assignments will be a demonstratable artifact of your skills since you wouldn’t have any major work experience.
With online courses, be cautious about choosing the best possible alternative. Both free and paid courses are available, but ensure that you stick to one at a given time and complete it. Then, use these courses and their on-demand availability to implement the skills independently.
Mentorship
In combination with formal education and other courses, it works best to find a mentor who can guide you through the knowledge acquisition and career-starting process. The mentors can be anyone from the circle with either academic or practical knowledge. While someone directly associated with the product management field is the best, anyone with sufficient insights into the learning process and career management will be valuable.
The primary objective of mentorship is not to acquire product management skills directly but to have someone guide you through the process. The work with your holistic development rather than focus on specific areas of knowledge acquisition. However, there might be some areas where such direct mentorship may be helpful.
Step 4: Gather experience
While you may have yet to work on a regular job, you can still be proactive about gathering experience. There are many internship opportunities available. In addition, with remote work the norm, you may also land a remote opportunity that can allow you to gather some real-life experience.
You may also work with non-profit organizations that will give you some experience while providing you with an opportunity to contribute to the greater good.
If nothing else works out, you can productize your idea. Such an approach gives you experience and may even lay the foundation for future entrepreneurship.
Step 5: Seek opportunities
Now that you have identified the strong and weak areas, upskilled yourself, and gained some experience, reach out to potential companies where you see opportunities that match your skills and provide the career path aligned with your aspirations. Many helpful resources about approaching your job search are available online, so we will not go into that in this article.
How to switch to a product management role?
If you already have some work experience, you will have been part of at least one of the facets that the product management function influences. For example, you could have been a project manager, or you might have been involved in product design, influencing the user experience. You will also have picked up technical skills as part of the development team.
Despite this, your approach would be similar to what a new job seeker would take. Although, how you approach each step would change.
Assessing the opportunities
Finding the opportunities may be easier for you, as your current organization may also have some roles with product teams. However, if that’s not the case, you will need to find the available opportunities commensurate with your experience and knowledge.
Evaluating the gap
For a switch to a product management role from your current profile, you need to broadly consider two dimensions; domain knowledge and product management skills. First, you must decide whether you want to continue in the same domain or switch entirely to another domain. If you want a complete switch, you will need to put in more effort to understand the new field of your choice.
Upskilling
Picking up the new skills based on the gaps you have identified will follow the same template as in the case of a fresh professional seeking their first career opportunity. Based on the gaps, you might have to take a few product management courses to understand the product development process if you are a subject matter expert in your domain or your target industry.
Gathering Experience
These are the areas where you have strong knowledge and demonstrated experience. Demonstratable experience is critical, as it implies your capabilities to apply the underlying knowledge to real-life situations. Use the STAR Method to prepare a mental model or document to represent your experience on various facets of your vital areas.
It may be tricky to gain experience in new areas for you. Therefore, the best action is to see if any such opportunities are available in your company. If yes, you can volunteer for those opportunities in addition to your primary responsibilities.
Seeking Opportunities
You have added advantage of seeking the roles inside your organization. In addition, such an internal switch can be easier than joining a completely new organization since you would already know a lot about the product, industry, and how the company functions internally.
Overarching Skillset
While each company and each role will have specific requirements depending upon the context, there are a few overarching and essential product management skills and areas that you will need to gradually master as you progress toward being a successful product manager. These areas include soft skills, people skills, and product skills.
Conclusion
Product Management is a complex and challenging area. While many opportunities are available, choosing the right one that aligns with your skills and aspirations is the key to starting your product management career. It’s best to start from where you are and what you have and gradually build your skills.
