5 Practical Tips to Make Smart Career Decisions to Accelerate Growth
Shyvee Shi
Product @ Microsoft | A forward-thinking product leader combining creativity, user psychology, and AI to drive growth and scale communities | ex-LinkedIn
Welcome to the latest issue of the Product Management Learning Series - a series of live streaming events and newsletter articles to help you level up your product career! ??
In our 24th installment, our speaker was Nikita Miller , Senior Vice President, Head of Product Management at The Knot Worldwide. There, she leads the global Product Management team, focusing on product strategy and growth across all brands. Nikita has spent her career in product management building great teams and creating products that users love. Most recently she was the VP of Product at Dooly. Prior to that she led product teams at Trello and Atlassian for five years. Nikita’s experience ranges from early stage startups to multinational companies and from EdTech to Enterprise SaaS. She is also an active startup advisor, angel investor, and board member.?
If you missed the event, you can watch the full event recording here .
Below are the main takeaways from the conversation I had with Nikita:
Optimize for what’s right for you at any stage of your career and find the area of the product life cycle that resonates with you.
Nikita shared that a good mental framework to make smart career decisions is to ask yourself at any given moment, “What am I optimizing for?” Your answers may change depending on your career and life stages, so make sure to check in with yourself from time to time.
Early in her career, Nikita optimized around learning and experiences.? She asked herself what experiences she might need to become an expert in an area and have the experience to work abroad. This led her to opportunities to work in Shanghai and London.
When figuring out if you want to be a specialist or generalist in product management, Nikita recommended you find the area of the product life cycle that resonates with you. Nikita took the approach to get experience across a broad spectrum. She leans more towards the user experience and empathy side of product management, however, some of her friends resonate with specific technologies. She mentioned that figuring out the type of a product manager you want to be is a personal decision, which may change over time.
Keep an open mind, be a sponge, and seek out every opportunity to learn when starting in product management.
When pivoting into product management as mid-career professionals, Nikita recommended you get a sense of what’s required from a product manager. Look at the PM rubric and competencies and see where they overlap with things you’ve done to demonstrate relevant transferable skills. She also suggested you be open minded about what starting a new PM role might look like, including potentially taking a step backward from a senior position to start over.
Nikita advised that when you’re starting in product management, any role in product can be a good learning experience. Instead of debating the company size, she recommended you figure out if the problem they’re solving is interesting to you and if you want to be around the people at the company.
Working at a small company early in Nikita’s career was beneficial because she had to do a little of everything. Working at a small company involves a lot of trial and error and you won’t get much guidance as opposed to more mature and developed companies, which come with training, rubrics, and guidance.
Seek international assignments to step out of your comfort zone and develop a heightened sense of awareness.
Nikita recommends everyone try to work in a different culture. Working in Shanghai was one of her most formative personal and professional experiences.The experience forced her to step out of her comfort zone, ask questions, and was incredibly humbling. The process of finding ways to connect with people was an amazing way to start her product journey.
She pointed out that we’re global and the products we build are rarely for a niche audience.? Getting the right understanding about people, their different diversities, ethnicities, and cultures can lead to a remarkable product.
Conduct self and company assessments and understand the user and business problems to determine if a company is the right fit for you.
You are making a MAJOR investment when joining a company. So you want to make sure that you are aligning yourself and what you need with the right company. When deciding if a company is right for you, Nikita suggested you first do a self assessment to get a sense of the work you’re great at and enjoy doing. Then do a company assessment to decide if the company needs the skills you can bring. If not, then it’s probably not a good fit, regardless of the team and pay package.
She also recommended you to ask yourself if the user’s problem interests you and go deep in understanding the business problems: how the product is doing and what growth looks like. If you don’t want to solve these user and business problems, then your day to day life is going to be really challenging.
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Have a sounding board and be a supportive sounding board member to help yourself and others make better decisions.
When it comes to making smart career decisions and balancing different aspects of her life as a mother, a wife, a friend, a product leader, a runner, an artist, and the trade-offs that come with everything, Nikita shared that she has a small group of mentors who serve as a sounding board for the decisions she makes. She emphasized that peers are equally valuable as your managers and executives and you should strive to maintain a good balance of give and take with your sounding board members: ask them for advice and also be a supportive teammate and collaborator, and be the person that someone can reach out to if they need a hand. Nikita concluded by saying that it’s very valuable to be able to pull information from different sources and people to help you see different perspectives, but ultimately, it does go back to sitting down with yourself and reflecting about what you want and what you want to learn.
Additional gems from Nikita:
?? The Knot Worldwide is hiring !?
?? Peloton , a subscription-based fitness app, is Nikita’s favorite product.?
?? You can learn great things from your peers and that starts by being a great teammate.
First Round Review is a great resource for people in product and tech overall
?? With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Nikita asks everyone read his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
?? Special kudos to Niarcas Jeffrey for writing this article.
Next up,
?? A Special 4-part Product Job Search Series with Phyl Terry ??
More sessions coming… subscribe to stay tuned!?
Learn more about the Product Management Learning Series and view past recordings here .
??????Computer Engineer| ?? Creative Maverick | UI/UX Designer ?? | Figma Aficionado ?? | Web Designer Expert | Webflow Specialist | Cross-Functional Collaborator ??| Crafting Exceptional User Experiences ??
1 年Amazing!!!
Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan
1 年Love This.
Innovating the Future of Reality ?? | Principal Product Manager
1 年Great Post. Optimize for what’s right for you at any stage of your career and find the area of the product life cycle that resonates with you.