So you want to be a Product Manager… START HERE
TLDR: Follow this recipe to grow into a PM role
TLDR: Follow this recipe to grow into a PM role
Learn what a PM does, don’t just assume you know the job to be done.
Take ownership of your professional development, the more you think like a PM, the more likely you are to be ready for the job and sound like a peer during interviews.
Prepare for interviews, you never know when an interview opportunity will come around and it’s not easy to get your first PM job so you must shine!
What does a PM do?
Why do you want to be a PM? _________________ Write out your answer, I’m not kidding! Read some of the resources below to test if your why aligns with the day to day of a PM
A Product Manager’s Job by Josh Elman
Good PM vs Dead PM by Ben Horowitz and David Weiden
Understand how being a PM might be different depending on the company you’re considering joining. Some companies might want you to be more technical, while others will care about your business acumen.
Professional Development
Identify areas for growth and set a plan; this article is a great guide.
Join communities like Women in Product or r/ProductManagement to learn from other PMs; try and read at least 1 article a week.
Follow Product Hunt to explore cool new products and potential career opportunities.
Prepare for your interviews!
Identify what types of interviews to expect for your target programs and companies; organize your prep around those (e.g., Google has a technical interview, Facebook does not)
Generally expect these types of interview loops:
Strategy: Where should company X play? Does it make sense to develop a product for this space?
Product design: Identify a user and his/her target problems - how do you prioritize these problems and develop a solution that best solves them?
Execution: Identify success for your team and how you would measure it. Excel by becoming an expert at thinking about metrics to measure whether you’re making progress against your product hypothesis.
Behavioral: Be ready to talk about your past experiences; are you self-aware (e.g., how have you learned from failures)? Do you have initiative (e.g., how did you lead something)? Are you perseverant (e.g., how did you achieve something really hard)?
Technical: Design, but from a technical POV (e.g., design a messaging app’s architecture).
Take-home assignment: Combines elements of strategy, design, execution, and technical loops to test how you can develop a roadmap or product experience without having a 45 minute to 1 hour time limit.
Study and adapt frameworks in a way that helps you best breakdown complex problems (e.g., Circles Method from Decode and Conquer)
Practice, practice, practice! Find partners and example answers using sites like Stellar Peers or Lewis Lin’s Slack Community. Set a regular practice cadence and start practicing months before you expect to interview.
Draw all your favorite apps (exercise those design skills!), think about what goals the company had and how that influenced the design.
More instructions on how to learn Product Sense from this article by Jackie Bavaro.
Read this article by Ken Norton on how he thinks about hiring PMs.
If you need structure - use Lewis Lin’s 2 week prep guide.
Why I’m writing this? I made the transition to Product Management at Reddit in late 2018 after after ~3 years in Product Operations at Facebook. Making the transition at first seemed impossible for me, but with good resources, mentorship, and hard work I was able to make it and I think you can too.
Found this helpful? Have feedback or suggestions on other resources I could add? If so, please reach out and share the feedback!
And here is a picture of me smiling to inspire you with the optimism to pursure your career dreams.
🙏