How to find a Product Manager positions: 5 key recommendations
Entering the Product Management industry and getting your first PM position is a real struggle, especially in the recent context. Technology being a fast moving environment and product being at the heart of value addedness, PMs have a key role in tech companies. Training someone is costly and time consuming and companies are therefore reluctant to hire a novice.
However, it is hard for enterprises to recruit skillful people: with few courses and training, good PMs are rare and highly demanded.
Recently I’ve been facing this issue and I’ve tried to figure out how I could overpass this dilemma. I asked this question to Rémi Guyot who shared a post on Linkedin. This post received many comments with wise suggestions which changed my viewpoint on this issue. I gathered all the comments and extracted the 5 main suggestions that were pointed out to me to share it with you in this article.
Key recommendations:
- Get involved in a side project:
The first thing people suggested was to get involved in a side project. This project doesn’t have to be highly technical or elaborated. You can use no-code solutions, the idea is to create something from scratch.
You’ll gain first-hand PM experience: creating a project requires you to perform many PM tasks such as elaborating an idea, doing user research, drawing hypotheses, testing and validating them, plan features and iterate. This will demonstrate your ability to run a project and allow you to see all aspects of product creation.
Recruiters will be very sensitive to such initiatives. - Be proactive:
First, don’t take job offers at face value. There is no perfect candidate but only one that fits the best. No matter the requirements don’t hesitate to apply. Demand for experienced PM is higher than supply and companies are forced to look at a wider range of people.
Secondly, PMs are obsessed with product. So don’t only apply but dissect the product of the company you’re applying at to highlight its strengths and weaknesses. Start a discussion with a manager and bring solutions. It will both show your motivation and competences. - Gaining visibility/brand yourself !
When you’re starting your career you lack visibility: with a limited network and short experiences (internships, …) it’s harder to put yourself forward. You need to enter the PM community and get people to hear you.
Lucky you, it is a tight-knit community full of helpful people. Many of them are sharing high quality content (medium articles, podcasts, …)
To be heard you need to create online content easily accessible. First, make sure you have an updated, precise and clear Linkedin profile. Secondly get involved in PM subjects on Linkedin: comment posts, share articles, …
For example, if you have a side project, share your work and progress. Write Medium articles on your previous work, latest news or any related PM subjects (books, …). - Network: others have a lot to share:
Product management being recent, especially in France, the knowledge is within the community. As I mentioned, it is a tight-knit community and people are happy to welcome and help motivated people. Many experienced PMs share their expertise in talks, articles, … Engaging discussion with them will bring you and teach you a lot.
However, when you reach out someone don’t forget to prepare your meeting. Your discussion will be much more valuable.
For example, when I meet senior people, I always come with a few basic questions such as: “according to you what differentiate the best from the worst PM you’ve worked with?”, “What qualities are you looking for when you recruit a PM?”, “If you were looking for your 1st PM role what kind of companies would you look for?”, and finally: “If you were me what would you do to find a job?” - Learn as much as you can from existing content:
You’ll easily find lots of great contents on product management: from articles, newsletters or blogs (Olivier Courtois PM snacks, The Product crew), podcasts (The product squad, Generation do it yourself, …) and books (Agile Product Management by Thiga) there is a lot to explore !
Finally, finding skillful PMs is a struggle for companies. To tackle this issue product management courses are offered. For example I joined Maestro, a PM training in Paris.
Finally I would like to thank Rémi who shared my question. And all the people that brought suggestions to me and helped me out.
I hope this article will be useful to people looking to get their first PM role. And more broadly to anyone looking for a job. I would obviously be glad to discuss more about it so don’t hesitate to reach me out.