Carving My Pathway to Product Management in Tech
[Insert bland remark about how the title captures the point here]
I want a role in tech. My expected daily work in product management role overlaps my operator skills, interest in tech, core business strategy, and being customer/problem focused as the priority. Most results are compared over the denominator of unit time. It also hits personal interests in meta topics around effectiveness, productivity, and fluctuating between first principles thinking or 80/20ing.
Here’s the plan.
TLDR Version:
Spend just a couple of days preparing myself for more presentability as an applicant in order to do some initial interviews to establish a baseline of where I am at.
Brush up on common interview prep with PM knowledge, current tools, and studying/performing mock interviews.
Fine tune my knowledge, presentation, and skills based on data from live PM interviews or case studies.
Potentially work on projects for my portfolio to show case what is relevant.
Tap into my network, or networking skills, to find a mentor working as a Product Manager and for referrals to opening.
Continue to work on projects, applying for openings, and networking with people in the bay area until finding a PM role that aligns with my criteria.
Long Version:
Month 1 - Objective: Litmus Test
I’m looking for data on myself as a candidate. This is best achieved doing live interviews, where the stakes are raised and I am forced to show my hand.
As for learning, I’m applying this TED talk’s concept (captured in its title as well): The first 20 hours
The large knowledge and skill gains comes from all the uncharted territory there is to explore and import into my brain.
Sections of how I am spending my time in order of priority/importance:
PM Job Skills - Hire Readiness
Application logistics
Workflow/Tools
Projects
Design
ai/ML
1 is for PASSING the interview
2-4 are for getting the interview*
5-6 are extra/for fun
*time constrained enough to get the interview and hopefully job. It’s important to focus on it more when it’s explicitly being a blocker with not getting the job. It’s easy to spend a lot of time with unbounded improvements and modifications to portfolio projects.
My personal interests are in machine learning & ai. I see myself continuing to frequent communities and create content centered around this as a hobby, and thus don’t put as much weight into it as “getting a job” as a PM.
Job Submission Basics
The name of the game is passing Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). This will involve taking the keywords for skills and experiences typically found for that title across all listings. These updates will go in all text-based copy: LinkedIn profile, resume, cover letters. I’m using a paid template form Papermoon.com
PM Skills
Reading Cracking the PM Interview and
Design principles
Mainly watching and note taking from Refactoring UI’s YouTube channel (and other free resources of similar quality)
Familiarity Industry Standard Workflow Tools
1-2 hours of tweaking around on Figma
1-2 hours of tweaking around Jira and Confluence
The first week
Predicated to immediate, short-term tasks for better presentability and interview prep via Pareto’s 80/20 principle.
This means: familiarity with terminology and lingo
The rest of the time? Spamming Easy Apply LinkedIn ads, or any/every possible avenue.
Week 2 ~ 4 - Iterate on learnings from Month 1
Read 2-3 Product Management Books
At this point in time, depending on how confident I am after experiencing 3 live interviews, and learning from mistakes, I will tap into my network for referrals.
Month 2 & 3 - Deep Interview Dive
I’ll have some more information about myself, and where to best spend my time during this time period.
It’s why some people recommend taking a practice GMAT without any prep, just to see what areas you are lacking the most to spend time in. Taking a week to better a section you are scoring ~30% in versus 75% in will result in a greater comprehensive gain.
If it turns out that my PM skills are not up to date or par, I can spend time on this. Perhaps I don’t know some concepts. Perhaps I got stumped on a question testing how well I know a workflow tool (e.g., JIRA) and need to learn about that.
Beyond Month 3
keep going. creatively get more interviews. Possibly message startups directly and offer to contract at a lower rate with Junior PM job duties for 1-3 months (eg customer interviews, product roadmapping, and various nitty gritty stuff to support management or engineering).
I could potentially do more of my own projects, make buzz and noise on social media as an independent product manager, and making splashes for more visibility.
I can take more time after first two months for networking in San Francisco or bay area technical communities. Ask out VC folks to coffee or calls for conversations about product manager roles in their AI tech companies.
